All in Kids
Not long after Melody’s Rainbow Ranger birthday party last year, she already knew she wanted a Doc McStuffins birthday party when she turned 6. I waited until earlier this year before really planning though. We all know kids can change their minds so easily. But she was still wanting that Doc McStuffins party, so that is what she got.
Melody turned 6 back at the end of May! We celebrated by letting her pick all the things we did and ate.
It’s hard to believe Melody just finished her FOURTH dance recital a little over a month ago. I feel like it was just last year we were walking in that 2 year old for her first dance class, and here we are four years later. Even though this is our fourth recital, we have only had one real recital prior to this year. The prior two years were not full recitals due to COVID (I’ll share each of those posts at the bottom). So this is the first year we are back to normal.
This spring things finally started getting back to normal at the dance studio. We were able to go back into the classrooms every single week after class to watch. And we were able to remove masks as well. It was a pretty fun year getting to dance with friends and enjoy this routine. It is hard to believe the dance year is already over though!
Because this was our first full year of gymnastics, we experienced lots of new things. One of those was pictures. During the summer, pictures are not taken. Pictures were optional and you wore whatever leotard you wanted. I ended up getting both pictures because they were cute.
I was torn on whether to send end of year gifts for the students in Melody’s class. But since there are only 15 kids in her class, I thought why not. I kept it simple with some different candies and a “sweet” signed card.
When it came to dance pictures this year, I took a different approach than years’ past. I decided to pay someone to do her hair and makeup. That is the worst part for me. It always ends up in tears. Now seeing this was a few months ago, I am actually confident in her makeup now, but the hair, not so much. But I am really happy with the way her pictures turned out this year.
I repeated some teacher gifts from the past since we have a lot of new teachers. But I did want to share what I did this year.
We recently had Melody’s Easter pictures taken for the year. She was actually really brave and wanted to take pictures with the baby lamb. Usually we opt for the baby chicks because they aren’t as scary to her, but she was determined to sit with the lamb. Luckily my cousins were there and had no fears. So she was able to warm up to the lamb through them! I thought the pictures turned out adorable!
March was full of lots of fun. Brad had to travel some, but he started what we hope to be his last trip of the year this month. Melody also had her spring break at school. And we had glimpses of spring with warm days!
With both Mother’s and Father’s Day coming up in the next few months, I thought I would share a craft we made for the dads in our lives last year. This was a very easy craft, and I had most of the supplies on hand.
So until Melody brought home her weekly newsletter that mentioned celebrating “2” day, it really had not crossed my mind that 2/22/22 fell on a Tuesday making it TWOSDAY.
Melody decided she wanted to do store bought Valentine’s this year for her school. This did break my heart a bit, but she seemed so happy about it. But I was able to come up with a cute idea for her teacher.
Melody has a LOT of Barbies. She receives them for most gift giving occasions, and she spends her allowance on them frequently. With Barbies comes a million tiny pieces. I had to find a way to solve it, and back in January I did.
January has been quite the month. Brad had to go out of town basically the entire month. We went to school some but also started virtual school. We went to Opryland. And we caught COVID!
On January 2nd, we had the unthinkable happen…it snowed! And it was a fairly heavy, wet snow. Now the surprisingly part is that on January 1st, it was in the 70s, and we were having tornados. Alabama weather is purely insane.
We took Melody to her first college football game back in 2019. We went to a non-SEC game, and while it was cold, she had a lot of fun. We decided to not go to any football games in 2020 due to COVID. But we continued with our season tickets this past 2021 season. We decided to take her to the Ole Miss/Vanderbilt game. This was basically the best game for us timing wise to take her due to Brad’s work travel and such.
We had such a good experience with gymnastics this summer, we wanted to give it a go full time. We waited about a week too late and were waitlisted for the fall, but by October they had found us a spot. Melody still wanted to try it out for the year, so we signed up. I have really enjoyed seeing her progress with a full semester worth of gymnastics and not just a few classes in the summer. She has definitely become braver and is more willing to try things. Here are a few pictures from our time this fall.
On Christmas Eve, we spent the majority of the day at the ER with Melody. It was her first visit. You can see a little bit about it below.
Dance started out very similar to how it ended in the spring. We are still dropping off and picking up via a carline. This is our first year having to take a night class since Melody is in elementary school now. It is kind of sad and really hard on bed times, but we survive. Near the end of the year, they did start letting us come in for the last 5 minutes to see what they have learned. I hope that will continue into the spring as well. Here are a few pictures I was able to get this fall.
