Not that I ever get much time to play on the computer anymore, I have created this blog to brag about the things that mean the most to me in life, firstly my husband, David and then close runners up are my daughters Jade that is 10 years old and Amber who is 4. This is just a way for all our family and friends in South Africa to keep up to date with our lives over here in the States. Hope you enjoy it.
REMEMBER TO SCROLL UP AND DOWN ... SORRY FOR THE CONSTANT REMINDER BUT HAVE UPDATED A BUNCH OVER THE PAST WEEK OR SO !!!
Just a few pics of our girls around Easter time, they were outside the entire weekend and we worked in the garden all Sunday so I missed out on pretty Easter dresses and all but here you go, the latest pics of the girls that I took Monday morning :-)
Look at those blue eyes ... and her so called princess look (hehehe) that is what she calls that hairdo !!!
This is my favorite and it was such a natural one, they just went to sit like that and it seemed like such a posed pic but it totally wasn't :-)
Ok this is my last one for today, hope you enjoyed them all.
This was Ambers visit with the Easter Bunny at her preschool, we spoke about it for days before coz she is not big on these characters and dogs :-( so I thought there was no way she would sit on his lap of get near him. Told her that if she does not talk to him, he may not bring her eggs this year and yay she did it !!!
And this one is for mommy coz I told her that she had to give him a big hug ... now looking at the pic before this, this bunny was pretty scary looking, like a deer in headlights kind of look so am glad she was brave enough :-)
This was taken the morning or was it afternoon the same day, probably more the morning, but look at that naughty face :-) got to love this girl !!!
Look how pretty, can't believe how different my girls are but so cute in their own little ways :-) Love my girls to bits.
Totally inspired to do stuff like this now that I am hooked to Pinterest ... bought these little storage bins and have them at the bottom of my stairs for all the junk left downstairs, turned out cuter than I thought, love them :-)
Sadly I didn't get to go to Jades Field Day this year coz we were in the midst of potty training but I was so thankful that Dave took the day off and went to watch, dads miss out on so much so this was great for both him and Jade.
She won her class race, here you can see how ahead of the rest of girls she was, dad was very proud :-)
Such a happy girl, can you tell ???
This was one with some of her class mates.
After school Dave took her to Carowinds for a treat, they came home late, exhausted and sunburnt, long day full of fun, made me such a happy mommy to see daddy spend some quality time with his girl like that !!!
REMEMBER TO SCROLL UP AND DOWN, ADDED A BUNCH OF STUFF LATELY.
Ok so Amber has been taking swim lessons the past few weeks and I think it is safe to r was at her age but that is not to say she won't get there eventually but for right say she totally loves the water, thank Heavens but she is no fish like her big sistenow ... this is going to take a while but thanking God that she loves loves loves the water and smiles from ear to ear from when she steps in to when she steps out, even comes up smiling when you think the poor child is about to drown, love that my kids are so trusting, could be a bad thing but in this case, probably not :-)
What is so bad that both my girls love music and dancing so much but my gosh are they both uncoordinated, golly ... all I know is Amber is going to be great at the backstroke, every time the teachers say, show me your swimming arms, omg no matter how much they teach her to do her arm like the crawl she got backstroke, we die laughing all the time, it is so not funny but you can't help but kill yourself laughing, we really need to work more with her at home before next weeks lesson !!!
Jade was a natural and learnt so fast but there is no way Amber is going to be there, should have gone to the same swim club that we did with Jade but it was too out of my way, anyway I have signed her up for another 8 lessons after these and if by then she can't swim then we will do lessons at our pool with the lifeguards through Summer, hoping for the best, cross your fingers !!!
Saturday it rained most of the day so Sunday morning we grabbed the opportunity to go down to the beach for two hours before we needed to checkout at the hotel, thankfully we got late checkout so that was cool. The girls actually swam Friday when we got to the hotel, the pool water was heart attack cold, they are not normally open so early in the season but because our weather has been crazy, they opened it but still it was dreadfully cold.
They had a nice indoor pool and a couple of Jacuzzi's which the girls enjoyed more, our entire squad stayed at either our hotel or the hotel next door so it was nice they could meet up at the pool and socialize together, really was a great weekend. Anyway here is a pic of our three girls on the beach.
The girls in the middle which you can't see is Kadey's older sister which was a great help to us with babysitting the weekend too, gave us adults some time to relax without the kids, it's the first time really I have allowed Jade to go off at the beach without an adult, it scared me a little but they stayed together and that was good.
This is the video from the second days competition. Remember to double click to open it if you can't see it full screen.
Our girls once again did amazingly and came second in their division, they were only beaten by 3 points but again it was one of those things that is totally fair but was yucky, they lost to a team that had been competing in level 3 all year long and came down into level 2 just for this competition, again all middle school girls but this time with lots of tumblers and really good stunts, they totally deserved to win but it was a let down for our girls. We had no deductions which is amazing so had they competed with a more fair competitor they stood a good chance to win ... but then there is always next year !!! I am very proud of them, they did amazing and over two days with very little sleep, they really did great.
Now watch this ... this is the parents division, when they came out I said, now that is just embarrassing and well did they make me eat my words, these not so young, not so little parents did amazing, wow !!! Remember to double click and open in youtube if you cannot see it full screen.
This is after the competition when their coaches presented them with engraved medals.
Our three girls.
Most of the Shooting Stars squad with their coaches Ms Barb and Ms Erika, Erika is Barbs daughter, she has another daughter in the squad too, Dani which is who we drove down to the beach. These coaches really have been amazing this year, Jade has learnt so much but most of all she has learnt to be a good team player, love how they taught our girls.
Two weekend ago, Dave and I took Jade down to the beach for the biggest competition of the season, The Battle At The Beach at Myrtle Beach. It is a National competition with over 700 squads, can you believe that, yep it ran over two days, our girls competed on both days.
My neighbor Colleen took Amber for the weekend, this was a very emotional thing for me coz it was the first time I had left her without Jade being with her, but she had a ball and I am so thankful to Colleen for doing this for us so we could concentrate on Jade all weekend without distraction.
I kept Jade out of school on Friday and we left about 10h30, we gave her coach and her daughter a ride down too.
We stayed with two other couples in an executive suite which landed up being such fun and our girls had a ball together, below you will see some pics of the three of them taken on our balcony just before we left for day one of the competition. Kadey the little one is one of our fliers, Laurin is a base and Jade is a tumbler and base.
You know their uniforms look so cute but really are nothing compared to the uniforms we saw there this weekend, wow, golly ... wow !!!
Love this pic of Kadey and Jade, just looking out at the ocean in anticipation of the competition to come that afternoon.
These girls are so cute, sad that we cannot be sure they will be in the same squad next season as they have to try out again in the Fall. We really had a great squad this first year, no drama between the 17 girls, can you believe that ?
Cutie pies.
One of the families we stayed with, Jen was team mom this year and it was her birthday on the Saturday. Can you believe been the six adults we had two Tracy's and two Davids.
I have found a new hobby ... well kinda hobby, there is this new program called Pinterest and for me that is not a crafty or arty person it is very inspirational, I have taken on a few projects, two that I am still working on so will post pics later but one that I am loving is, I went out an bought two Hurricane Vases and am now finding all sorts of ways to fill them, actually loving all I have found to do with vases so in time you will see all my creations :-)
For those of you that don't know what Pinterest is about, it's like paging through a magazine and pulling out pages you like, of stuff for the house, of crafts, of recipes or whatever and pinning it to a pinboard in your house to refer to later. This is an online page that has all these different sections you can into, like one just for recipes or crafts or you can go into a general page where it has everything, then you grab what you like on that page and pin it to an online board that you have created, sounds difficult if you have not done it but it is so addictive once you get into it, just in case you didn't get it ... I am totally loving it.
This is my St Paddy's Day Hurricane for this year, layered it with split peas and black beans, added a candle and a bow.
Then I swapped it up slightly for Easter and added jelly beans. Here you can see both of them on the table. I have great ideas for Summer and Fall so am excited about this, silly I know but when you aren't arty and get inspired, it's cool.
You have seen these door hangers already but these are my new Spring ones.
Then we finished painting Jades room and just need to hang all the stuff which I am going to work on this coming weekend, will post pics afterwards, it looks pretty cool.
Then it is onto Ambers room and eventually onto another craft idea which I can't wait to get done on the wall coming up the back stairs ... loving this :-)
Cannot believe I didn't get a pic of both my girls on this day ... representing for my brother and Gigi living in Ireland :-( It was such a nice day and Jade was out playing all day and well it just didn't happen.
Anyway and as you can tell, Amber was not interested in pics today, no big smiles ...
Her hair was very untidy and she had just woken up from her nap but anyway wanted to show you how long her hair is now.
Anyway Gav, hope you guys had a fabulous day ... when are you going to start keeping a blog so we can hear everything you have been up to.
I know you guys probably have viewed all this a gazillion times and it probably looks the same each time you look but every time they compete it is changed up some :-)
Anyway this competition in March was super cool, they are all cool and we have won most of the competitions we competed in, or won our division at least but in this competition we were competing against a team that most the girls were way older than our girls, how that works is our cap on age is 14 but Jade is the youngest at 9 and we have very few 14 years olds but this team the majority were 14 year olds and I think all the girls were middle school girls. Our coach even said we really did not have a chance but for the girls to do their best. Parents that attended this competition last year also said, we have no chance.
The big thing is we are a Rec team and most the teams that have ever beaten us are All Start teams, what that means is they train in an All Star Gym, with professional coaches and choreographers, their music is professionally done and their uniforms cost big time money, being a Rec team, our coaches are all voluntary so they don't get paid, our studio is small, we don't have proper cheer mats and uniforms and music is only as good as we pay for but we have done amazing taking all that into account.
Why I am telling you this is to give you the background of how different Rec and All Star are, so we were competing against a team which was classed a Rec team but they trained in an All Star Gym but it's all fair, that's just the way it is ...
So their team came out first and I had not seen their team before and once I saw their routine I thought ... yeah we don't have a chance !!! Then our girls came out and while they were competing I was thinking but our stunts are better and they don't have a tumbler so guess what ??? I am sure you can guess.
At prize giving when they called second place and we heard it was them and not us, well I almost with the other parents lost our voices we screamed so loud, it was such an amazingly proud moment and our girls deserved it so much. What is more our coaches which are just the best, deserved it too with all they put into the sport, money can't buy the love our coaches give our girls, such a proud moment.
Anyway here is their routine. If you can't see it nicely in here, then double click it and view it in Youtube, you might not see the entire routine or full screen unless you do that.
HOPING YOU ARE SCROLLING UP AND DOWN ... NOT TO MISS ANYTHING.
This is my absolute favorite :-)
You can imagine she is copying all her sisters poses !!!
What happened my little girl grew up !!!
She is too cute, have to say ... everyone always said Jade was the photogenic one but I think it's going to be Amber more with that huge smile, thankfully they both love the camera :-)
Love this one of Jade but she just looks so much older than 9 to me.
HOPING YOU ARE SCROLLING UP AND DOWN ... NOT TO MISS ANYTHING.
Jade had to do a rather large project on an American icon and she chose Elizabeth Blackwell which was the first female American doctor :-) She says when she grows up she wants to be a doctor or a veterinarian what are the chances it will stay those choices ... oh yeah and she wants to be a mom :-) let's hope that comes last !!!
Anyway here is a picture of her in her getup for the living history museum presentation.
The Shooting Stars had this Spirit Stick they passed out at certain times during the season, this was after cheering a basketball game and a practice so she is very untidy but she got the Spirit Stick this day.
