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.
May was quite a chaotic month (let’s be honest, so is June hence my lack of writing). But I am finally catching up on all the things, and I wanted to share as much of the fun as I could!
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.
Back in April, my mom and I took a cruise to the Bahamas. It has been about 7 years since I have taken a cruise. This is mainly due to being pregnant with Melody, then not wanting to leave Melody. Well with COVID, prices have dramatically decreased for cruises. With Melody in elementary school, I felt this was a great time to go again. With that I had to pack my things!
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.
Mother’s Day was productive (by my request), relaxing, and really special this year!
I found it appropriate to share the Mother’s Day craft Melody did for our moms on Mother’s Day itself!
Life is currently so crazy, but I have lots to share over the next few months! First up is Easter. Yes, it is a few weeks late, but such is life right now. We celebrated Easter a few times to make sure we saw as much of our family this year as possible.
I am a little late, but I still wanted to share our Easter baskets from this year.
I have many Nora Fleming minis. I have several for every holiday as I have several dishes I keep out year round. The big problem I have is storing them. I was storing them in the boxes we would receive them in when ordering online. Many problems came from this. You can’t see what minis are in the box, some are too big and bulky for the boxes, the boxes are different sizes making it hard to store, etc. They make boxes for them, but they are really expensive, and I thought I could make something better myself.
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.
We decided to do something different for spring break and stay close and cheap. We have been discussing doing a trip to Tupelo, MS and including a stop at Oxford one of the days during our trip. Well Brad has a lot of hotel points from his traveling, and there happened to be a baseball game the weekend that started Spring Break. So that was our plan!
So normally when we go to Nashville, we always stop at the American Girls store and The Cheesecake Factory. Well our trip back in January, we did go to AG, but we skipped TCF. We just got one here in Huntsville, so we decided to try something different. It was also a Friday night, so we figured it might be busy too. Near AG was a restaurant called Party Fowl. It didn’t look busy, so we decided to give it a try.
I know we are beyond Mardi Gras, but I did want to share this very easy king cake recipe I found on TikTok. It is mostly about presentation and buying the right cinnamon rolls!
