Tea Parties and Ballerinas

You should always buy an old lady house.  Old lady houses are fabulous, not just because they've usually been meticulously maintained, have excellent taste in velour/foiled wallpaper, but because the gardens are FABULOUS.  Right now in the planter behind the pear tree we have a riot of hot pink roses in bloom.  To celebrate, the girls made a fort (which means I made a fort for them, then they made a butcher paper sign for it & dragged all their crap outside.)

In case you don't know already, I am an idiot.  We had two spectacular things going on this week.  And somehow I didn't realize till last Friday that they were BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.  I was so sad.  I look forward to the girl's dance recitals all year.  And we definitely weren't going to miss Gretchen's BFF's birthday party.  It was Alice In Wonderland themed.  And is was amazing.

Thanks to Auntie Krista, and waaaaaaaaay too much coordinating, we were able to make it work.  Gretchen & I went to BFF's house to decorate at 8:30 am.  Colby took Ella straight to the recital.  Krista came & got Gretchen & dropped her off to the recital. 

 I stayed till the cake (DUDE, CHECK OUT THAT CAKE.  BFF's mom must love her.  And be awesome.  {yes to both}).

 Hannah approved.

 Then I raced downtown to the recital.  I got there literally LITERALLY 15 seconds before Gretchen started her dance.  Thanks Jen for sending me this backstage photo!

 I made it to a seat by the time Ella went on, 5 minutes later.  Awww, look at how graceful she is!

 Apparently this is how Ballerina's stand.  Cause when I told her to do a Ballerina pose, this is what I got.

Thanks to Jennifer, we also now have this AWESOME VIDEO of the recital's Grand Finale.  Now....can you find Gretchen?  (HA!)  (PS - Gotta love that somewhere in that crowd of ballerina's some poor kid is just sobbing her heart out....)



Then we collected Gretchen's car seat from Krista and raced back to BFF's house to help clean up (below is their version of a ballerina pose).  Gretchen was sad her hair wasn't hot pink, so BFF's mom painted it right after this photo.  And it didn't all come out in the shower this morning, so her hair was still pink for church.  It was cute.  Maybe that's why her friend in Sunday School couldn't keep his hands (or lips) off her today. 

That was our first real week of summer.  Not quite as much sitting around and relaxing as I thought.  But still fun.  Maybe THIS WEEK we'll sit at home all day and do nothing....  (ha).