The week

Brit spent Sunday and Monday recouping from the play.  On Tuesday morning, I dropped her off at Karen and Keilee's.  They're doing a creative writing co-op in their home and thought Brit might enjoy it as well.  This week, they went to the Cook's museum before their writing, art and stop animation group project.  She had a pretty darn good time :)

I picked her up at 12:30 and the two of us headed to Berkeley Bob's in Cullman to meet with the Teen Scene group.  While the kiddos played various games, most of the adults sat in on an essential oils conversation.  Honestly, I think I'm going to succumb when I have the money and buy the kit.  I've heard so many good things about Young Living oils and really think we would benefit from it.    

 

Brit went home with the Crawfords.  Here is Esther's post about their adventures.  My kid is the blonde chick ;)

Dakota checked out a new site, Game Star Mechanics that I found while reading Karen's blog.  Thanks, K!

  

He's also been teaching himself the Dr. Who theme song on the keyboard.  He has been working on this for months.  I just asked Heather if she could help him since I am of NO use when it comes to reading music.  She sent me some tips that we're going to work with but this is what he's come up with on his own.

*Blogger won't let me upload the video :(

Yesterday we had an appointment that took...hours.  I'm glad Dakota brought his DS and a pad of paper and a pen.  Tic tac toe really passes the time.

Today was beautiful!  Sunny and near 70*.  Brit and I went for a walk/jog and she spent a lot of time flipping around the front yard.  Dakota and I took the radiometer out on the porch and had lots of good conversation. 

We worked on cleaning out D's closet.  His closet...it's the magical realm that holds an insane amount of science kits, toys, boxed sets of...stuff, art supplies, games, etc.  Oh, and even some clothes!  We bagged up three bags to take to donate and two were garbage.  In the last couple weeks, I've loaded up 7 or 8 bags of things to donate.  Half of those were my clothes.  Baby steps to declutter but I sure do like seeing progress.

Every morning, I've been working on Dakota's birthday presents.  More on that later!

Last night, Brit and I went out to with Sarah and Tori.  I had NO idea that on Thursday nights, Guadalajara Grill has karaoke night!  As well as some dance party, yo.  Brit had SO much fun!  She got up and danced with Sarah and Tori.  The girls sang a song.  Brit wanted to, but the song she picked, wasn't available.  It was Let Her Go by Passenger...pretty darn famous song, people.  Anyway, lots of fun was had by all.  I sure do love my girls.

I think that's about it.  We watched Monster's University.  It was SO cute!  I wanted them to make a second one, not a prequel but it gets my stamp of approval.

The Little Mermaid Jr.

I can't say enough good things about this play.  The only bad is that it's over!  College Street Players have always held their performances in the Fine Arts Building, which consists of a tiny stage and limited seating.  For this show, they were able to use Hartselle High School's auditorium which is HUGE and has lots of comfy seating!  It was wonderful!  They had the space to incorporate bigger sets and props.  Three different newspapers came out for marketing purposes and my girl was quoted in the Hartselle Enquirer.  
 

Esther came up with some awesome ideas for Brit and Chan's makeup.  

Applying Brit's scales

 

 

Charming

Dad and Rosie came up to watch the Saturday matinee with me and Dakota.

The entire cast did a fantastic job!  This is easily our favorite show with CSP.

Just as a side note:  This is Britney's 20th play!  That's amazing, baby girl!  Congratulations :)

Grace Unplugged

Okay, this kind of cracked me up so I wanted to share :)  Back in August of 2012, Brit, Dakota and I were extras in the movie Grace Unplugged.  We found out about it the day before and headed to Birmingham for a VERY LONG day!  We didn't get home until 3 am.  It was a really cool experience and we were so anxious to see if we made it in the movie.  We were filmed in three scenes and were CERTAIN we'd be visible at least once.  It was released last year, but we just never made it to the theater.  Bobby picked the DVD up the other day and the kids and I watched it night before last. 

First, some pics from the day.

Jamie Grace

James Denton

 

 

AJ Michalka

We carefully watched each scene we were filmed in and nothing...until the VERY end.  You can see the side of mine and Brit's heads.  Hahaha!

The very far left in the first pew.

See?  :)

 Brit scoured the extra and deleted scenes and found herself one more time:)

I totally consider us movie stars.  The end.  :)

Snow Round 2 *DING*

We were guaranteed another round of snow!  This time, even more snow.  Woot!  We waited and waited on Wednesday for it to show up but it just rained like crazy.  Around 4:00, the rain turned to sleet and by 4:30, it started to drop these HUGE flakes.  The best part was, it immediately started sticking.  I put a big bowl outside to collect snow for us so we could make snow cream.

Right before dark, Dakota decided he wanted to go out and play.  Brit was less than interested.  She really doesn't like being cold. 

 Snowball fight!

Then we started building a snowman.

Brit joined us!

B & D with our snowman, Clydesberg

Then we came inside, made hot chocolate and ate snow cream.  Yum!  Around 9:00, I decided to go for a walk.  It was SO beautiful out!  Snow in the moonlight is magical. 

I've also never given much thought to owning a 4 wheeler, but DANG I wanted one that night!  It seems as though 60% of Decatur either has a 4 wheeler or Razor.  They were having such a great time speeding along, doing doughnuts.  Gah...jealousy took over a little.

I came home pretty much long enough to check on the kids and then I was going back out.  I asked if they wanted to join me, and to my surprise, they did!  They bundled up and off we went.

 We didn't need a 4 wheeler to slide around in the road :)

Dakota wanted to start a snowball from our house and roll it to the end of our road to see how big it got.  We took turns rolling and got about three houses down when it got SUPER heavy.  I lost my footing and smacked my knees HARD on the road.  The giant snowball was no more.  Sigh.  And ouch!  That hurt!  I'm nicely bruised now.

Street Angels

We had such a great time!  Yay snow!  :)

The next morning, I got up around 7:00 and headed out to snap some pictures.

The mail didn't come for THREE days!

It warmed up quickly and the snow in the trees fell so fast, it looked like it was snowing again.  We still have some on the ground, but it's nearly all gone now.