Olive's Preschool Graduation

First Day of Preschool

Our preschool graduate! Look at how adorable she is! 

Olive was very excited for her program and we were too. She had been working on it for a long time and would walk around the house singing the songs. For a few days leading up to her program she kept reminding me what day and time the program would be and then add...we cant' be late! It was cute how excited she was for the program.

There she is ready to start.

See Olive rocking her shades during the pledge? 

As you might know about Olive, she loves to sing and she learns the words to songs very easily so she knew all the songs.

They sang a cute song with their teddy bears and Olive was very excited to bring one. She spent so much time deciding which of her many stuffed animals she was going to bring. She took it very seriously. She decided on Teddy, her green knit teddy bear I made her for her 2nd birthday. 

After the regular program the kids that were going to kindergarten stayed for a little graduation ceremony. 

All lined up to walk down the aisle. The kids walked down one by one to the country song Let Them Be Little. Ms Jani really knows how to play with your heart strings!

See her there on the second row? She as pretty excited!

Ms Jani took a minute and talked about each child. For Olive she said " Olive is our little charmer....at least she's my charmer. She is very enthusiastic and gets really excited to tell you things" Obviously you can see that Olive took this time very seriously as she stood for her turn. 

They read a story about going to kindergarten.

Towards the end Olive was getting a little bored. 

Our graduate with her diploma.

Milo decided he need a turn with her graduation cap. 

Olive with some of her friends....Trinity,

and Brynn.

We got Ms Jani some flowers and a book called Tallulah'sTutu to reminder her of Olive. 

Thanks to all the love and support she got from everyone who came to her program. Here is Olive with her grandmas. 

We were so proud of her! (Even if she was done with taking pictures!)

We thought a stop for ice cream was in order to celebrate her graduation.

Now she's off to kindergarten!

Olive's Dance Performance

Olive had requested to take dance with her friend Bo this year. I think she mostly liked class. But when they started learning their dance and got their costumes for the performance she was very, very excited. It was fun to see her love it so much. When I was driving her to her first of two recitals I asked her what she was excited about and she told me with such sincerity "I'm kinda nervous!" It was so cute. 

She did a jazz dance to "Dig a Little Deeper" from Princess and the Frog and did a ballet dance to a Sleeping Beauty song. She loved every minute of performing and had a lot of confidence on the stage. I was surprised at how she owned it. She had worked so hard on that dance and it was really amazing to see her actually up there and rocking it. We were really proud to say the least, and I might have cried a little bit at seeing how big and grown up she was. 

Before the performance I wanted to get some pictures of her but it was nearly impossible because she was hyper and had so much energy she literally could not hold still. She was jumping and couldn't stop moving. It was pretty fun to see her so excited. 

Like I said she did a fantastic job. She was so thrilled to get flowers afterwards. It really did make her feel so special. 

Olive made lots of friends in her dance class and loved to tell me all about them. Here she is with the girl who got it all started, Bo.

A very telling story about Ms Olive and her little personality is that while she was backstage they had some high school aged girls keeping them entertained and playing with them during the performance. As I went to pick her up all the girls ran to give her hugs and a few of them wanted to take pictures with her because they thought she was so cute and funny. She had never met them before but they became friends in just an hour. One of the girls told me that when she met Olive, Olive walked up to her and said "Hi, I'm Olive and my name has a silent e in it". Classic.

Olive was so loved with all the support she got. 

Between her recitals Olive and I had a little dinner date. She was loving the chocolate covered strawberries. She also brought her flowers in to the restaurant and was telling everyone she saw that she got them because she was such a good dancer at her recital. Needless to say, they were all charmed. 

Since it was a fun date we decided to get a big, huge piece of chocolate cake. Olive was really mad at me when I told her we were going to share it. She tried to scarff it all up herself. 

Scott had more flowers waiting for her at home and we put them all into a vase. She was quite proud and felt very special. They sat in her room forever and even when they were all dead and wilted she was so sad to get rid of the flowers from her "formance".

First Week of Summer

We had one week of absolutely nothing between when school ended and when swim lesson started. And boy did we take advantage of it! First we took a trip to the zoo:

 

We love going with friends but sometimes it is really fun to do things with just us. Of course that meant riding the carousel 3 times. Olive likes to tell me that giraffes are her favorite animal. There is something so amazing about giraffes. I think they were her favorite this time because the baby was out. Olive is obsessed with baby animals.

I don't think we have ever seen the jaguar awake but boy was he this day. See those figures in the shadow? Those are my kids and he was pacing back and forth right in front of them. It was pretty creepy.

We rolled down hills after cheering on my brother and his wife at their softball game.

We painted our nails.

We went with lots of our friends to this super fun pool and played for hours.

We slept in every morning and we very lazy about getting ready. My kids didn't eat breakfast until around 10. I really feel like I should take advantage of it this summer since Olive will have to be at school at 8:30 next year, which seems impossible. 

We went and played at the canyons. Milo LOVED chasing his boats down the streams.

He also liked playing with this little fountain. 

Then he had a tantrum about pushing the stroller. Oh the things he has tantrums about. It's so unpredictable.

Olive had a ball at a birthday party for a friend from school because Rapunzel came. 

Then to cap off a pretty stellar week we went on a family date night to the drive in. Milo never fell asleep so that part was kinda crazy, but other than that it was awesome.

He loved playing in the sleeping bags before the show started.

Olive, as always, was making friends with everyone there. It's just her nature.

As you can see was a pretty fabulous week of summer fun. 

Olive and Milo....

Sometimes I think that my two kids are such polar opposites and in lots of ways their personalities are so different. We've been saying for awhile now that they definitely look alike. I thought it might be fun to look back at when Olive was the same age as Milo and see how similar they actually are and frankly I've been surprised. These kids are related. 

One funny thing that Milo has just started doing is making this "cheese" face when we take pictures. I had kinda forgotten that Olive did that too. Their faces are identical right? 

Ummm....doesn't Olive look like a Milo? It's crazy. They have the same cheeks, nose and hair.

Another example where they are eating. 

This picture of Olive so reminds me of a face that Milo makes. But I don't think his hair would get all curly in the humidity. 

Yet another example of these little matching kids. Apparently we have a pretty strong "look".  More to come on Milo sitting on this cart and playing with those speakers. 

Need I say more?

I included this picture because it has been many of our evenings lately. Olive loves to pull or push Milo and he loves that she is doing it. I feel like I get small glimpses of their developing friendship.

Olive Teaches School