Katerina's Jazz Recital

On Saturday, Katerina had her jazz recital. The class was beginner jazz and they danced to O-Zone's "Mai Ai Hee (Dragostea Din Tei)". On the video, Katerina is the first one entering off the left side of the stage (my left).



If you want to see a larger version, here is the link to YouTube: Katerina's Jazz Recital.

Here are some pictures, too:

Happy Pi Day!

In honour of the symbol "pi" π (3.14159265...), I've made a pie. It is a strawberry-blackberry pie. It's still cooling so we haven't eaten it yet. Soon, though. Yum!

Cake Wreck

Gosh! It's dusty in here! It's been 6 months since my last post. Eek. Well, here it goes.

Cake Wrecks is a blog dedicated to 'interesting' professional cakes. We had our own experience recently. Isabella's 6th birthday was last month. Normally, I order my cakes from Save-On-Foods just down the street from us. I've always had great cakes. Not so this time. The cake we ordered looked like the icing exploded all over it. The manager did give us the cake for half off and the cake did taste good.

Here is what we ordered:




Here is what we received. Notice how "Isabella" is spelled "Isalella" and the "6th" is written as "th6":




Even with the Cake Wreck the party was a success. Here are few pictures from that day:

Joshua Says . . .

At a weekend birthday party:

Joshua - "Can you make me another sandwich, please? I'm still hungry."

Me - "Are you sure? Cake is going to be served soon."

Joshua - "Yep. A hockey player's gotta eat, you know."

Back to school

Today is the day! Joshua and Katerina start Grade 3 and Isabella is starting Grade 1. She's a big kid now!

Summer ballet wrap-up

The girls had their summer recital and it was a blast! Isabella was in girly glory because her costume had a tutu.



Katerina had two performances, jazz and ballet. This was her first time taking a jazz class and she loved it. I only have a picture of her jazz costume, though.




She liked jazz so much she wanted to take a jazz class. Unfortunately, her school only offers the classes on the weekends, which conflict with hockey. However, I was able to find some classes that fit in our schedule at another school. She will be taking a jazz class (no performance) and a lyrical class (performance).

With the addition of these classes, she will be dancing almost 3 hours per week. Plus, Isabella and Katerina had auditioned and been accepted to dance in the Edmonton Festival Ballet company. They put on a Christmas show every year for the public. The production is "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and they will rehearse 1 hour per week from the middle of September to the end of November. The show will run December 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. So, for a couple of months, Katerina will be dancing 4 hours per week. She really wants to do this, though.

All three kids are in their final week of day camp at the YMCA, this week. They are having an enormous amount of fun this summer and that's what makes it all worth it. The next two weeks, the twins will have hockey skills camp, 1.5 hours per day, but the rest of the time they will have a bit of down time before school starts (September 2).

Busy, busy, busy

These past few weeks have been so busy. The kids have some specialty camps and I have been consumed with them. A couple of weeks ago, the twins were at the Edmonton Oilers Hockey School. My, but they had fun!

At 8:30 am, I dropped Isabella off at the YMCA for her day camp, then I drove out to St. Albert (about 40 minutes, one way) to the hockey school. It started at 9:45 am. After settling the twins in for the day, I went home and did my errands. Then, I picked Isabella up at 4:30 pm and went back out to St. Albert for the twins. Their wrap-up time was 5:45 pm. By the time we got home, it was close to 7 pm.

They had a blast, though. They were on the ice twice a day, and they lived and breathed hockey for 7 days. Their coaches were players from the University league and from the Oil Kings. Two Oilers came by on two separate days and signed autographs and jerseys. The Oilers that visited them were Steve McIntyre and Zack Stortini. Here's a picture of Joshua and Stortini:



After that wrapped up, the girls went into the summer ballet program. They are still in it with the wrap up performance on Saturday. I drop Joshua off at the YMCA day camp at 8:00 am and then head over to the ballet school. Isabella has 1 1/4 hours of ballet, and Katerina has 3 1/2 hours of ballet and jazz. By the time we get home, it is almost 1:30 pm. Then, we pick up Joshua at 4:30 pm.

Next week is the last week of day camps at the YMCA, and then they will start back to school on September 2nd. They have had a great summer so far and they have already told me they want to do the same again next year. LOL