First Dance

A bit of excitement at our house this weekend - the first of likely many dances in our future.  If they all go as well as this one I'm all for it.  Even though Sawyer is just in Pre-K she was invited to attend the Daddy/Daughter dance.  I know, I know...very young to be going, but she was so excited!  She was one of only 4 Pre-K girls that attended so it's mostly for the older girls, but Sawyer stayed till the very end, with Mark saying they were one of the last ones off the dance floor.  Some Pre-K girls know how to party.

Here is our girl getting ready to leave

She got to choose between this purple corduroy dress and the pink one she wore for Thanksgiving and went with this choice.  She also asked for me to braid her hair which is a big deal because I'm never allowed to do anything to her hair.

 And one quick one with Mark before they left.  He got all dressed up for her...the first of many Daddy/Daughter dances in his future too.

Mark has some great videos from the dance.  Between that, and the hour long download I got after the dance of all happenings, I feel like I have a good sense of what went on.  They did a dance where each grade got called out special, and they had a dessert/drink station where Sawyer enjoyed several treats - including the chocolates, which she liked so much she decided to have two!  They also played many of her favorite songs - some Katy Perry, One Direction, and her favorite that night was Alicia Keys, "This Girl is on Fire".  All good by her.  They also had lasers and lights that she chased and ran through.  All in all, I'm not sure a dance could have been a bigger hit because the girl came home with stars in her eyes.  We did finally get her to sleep around 10:30 pm.  And my favorite picture Mark took - girl has some moves.

In the meantime, I thought Isla might have been sad she wasn't able to go, but girl didn't care at all.  I had planned us an activity regardless, which we finished quick before heading off to bed.  I had anticipated Mark and Sawyer only staying for an hour so I was trying to get Isla in bed before they got home...and then I got an hour to myself since they stayed for the whole dance!!  So anyway, Isla and I got the leftover Xmas cutout dough out of the freezer and made some Valentine's cookies.  She loved to do use the heart cookie cutter, and for every one would say "wiggle wiggle wiggle" to get it out.

She helped roll, cut, and put on the cookie sheet.  It was amazing to cook with someone who didn't eat the raw flour we rolled the dough in, and almost didn't take the scraps I gave her at the end.

It was off to bed after this so we could get up and out of the house early.  We had plans to hit up the jump house place and the arcade in protest of winter, which we're all really tired of.  It seems like we have snow every 3-4 days, followed by a crazy deep freeze.  So we got snow twice this week and are not settling into the deep freeze of below zero temps. Awesome.  Anyway, the jump house and arcade were pretty crowded so a lot of people had similar ideas.  We almost didn't make it because I think we're all coming down with a bit of a cold.  Mark and I both can't stop sneezing, everyone's a bit congested, and Marge has the runniest nose of all.  She took some very long naps today (in comparison to almost none yesterday) and that seemed to help her immensely, so hoping it's just a small blip and we'll be good to go soon.

We'll have some work this week to get ready for Valentine's Day.  Sawyer has to make 20 cards between her classmates and teachers.  Which reminds me, I went in to her class and volunteered on Friday.  It was really fun to see her in school and meet some of the kids we've heard about.  Her friend Mikey was dressed in a suit for school, which is apparently pretty normal attire for him.  What 5 yr old doesn't wear his black pin stripe, dress shirt, and cowboy boots.  I was put on the painting table and might not be asked back.  A few kids got paint on their clothes (despite having smocks) and a few kids ended up with dyed green hands.  It wasn't finger painting, but turned out that way, and no one told me despite it being washable paint that the green wasn't quite so easy to wash off.  Oops.  I think I was a bit of a novelty so lots of kids made their way to my table during the hour, so I spent a lot of time washing hands, floors, and even one face.  

And so as not to leave out Margie - here's a pic of my girl from the store.  I've started trying to take her grocery shopping with me each week because she gets out of the house so seldom lately.  She is normally so quiet but she's finally started to talk more lately so we "bop bop bop'd" through the store.  We got lots of good smiles talking to each other that way.  We think she may have said dada, but not in reference to Mark. She continues to get more and more brave moving around.  She now crawls/wall walks herself into the hall and to the stairs, or into the kitchen, and will often see us across a room and make her way over.