Daddy Daughter Dance

Mikaiya had her first Daddy/Daughter dance on February 24. It was so cute! Mommy got into it more than daddy or daughter...what a suprise! She got all dressed up in a pretty red dress, a new pair of black little girl "heels" and a sparkly necklace with her hair all curled. Here is our pretty big girl all ready to go to the dance with her daddy. She looks so grown up!


And daddy surprised his pretty little girl with her first rose! She was so excited...check out the look on her face!

And my favorite...my little angel and her handsome daddy. They are so sweet!

Overall, a great time was had by both! Glad they could enjoy their evening out together!!

Mikaiya's First Dance Team Dance

Mikaiya got to participate with the Sun Prairie High School dance team at a dance clinic on February 11. She was super excited about it...mostly because she was doing it with her BFF's Ellie and Kaitlyn. She had a blast and did so well! Here she is posing for photos before going to dance:
And here she is with Kaitlyn (far left) and Ellie (middle) right before heading out to dance. I'm pretty sure they're all standing on the same step...yep, Mikaiya is THAT tall! Notice the HUGE floor behind them...they performed at the varsity high school basketball game! Pretty good for Kindergartners!

And of course we cannot leave out little B! She wanted to participate too. Here she is showing off her "dance" moves :)
I have video, but I cannot get it to upload. I will try again later. If you want to see it, let me know and I can mail it to you from my phone!

January...as usual, not much!

January tends to be our slowest month of the year. You will see in pics that once again, that was the case. We were very sad to lose our sweet Bella kitty in January. But, we also brought a new kitten into our lives. His name is Niko and he is very sweet. He was about 8 weeks when we brought him home on January 7. He fit right in with our household and everyone adores him...well, except Nyssa who totally despises him. We are hoping she will come around eventually, but are not convinced. Niko reminds us a lot of Shaggy. He has a very low key personality and he LOVES to snuggle. The girls love him too!!

Enjoy the few pics we do have this month!

Click here for pics!

November and December Pics

Okay, I thought I already posted these, but when I arrived today, they weren't here. Here are the November and December photos. Sorry for the delay!

Click here for November

Click here for December

In Memory of Bella...

This new year brought with it some heartache for our family. We found out on December 27 that our 11 year old kitty Bella had liver cancer. She was still doing well at the time, but had lost quite a bit of weight. Within a matter of days, she took a turn for the worst and went down hill very fast. After trying several different things, we had to send her back home on January 3. She was telling us it was time, and no matter how hard it was to do, we know we did what was right for her. She spent her last night here with us snuggled up in our bed under the covers sleeping between us...one of her favorite things to do was to sleep under the covers. Jeff and I were both there with her when the time came to send her back. It was quiet and peaceful and she was wrapped in her very favorite blanket with her two favorite people snuggling her and talking to her. She will be very missed. There are so many fond memories of her. She went from being a ferral kitten who was absolutely terrified of humans to spending the better part of her days with us. She slept on my pillow at night and sat on her daddy's lap during the work day. She was such a part of our family. We will miss her!!

Rest in peace Bella. You will always hold a special place in our hearts!!

October - Hayward, Nana and Pop and Halloween

We had a fun October! We started off the month with a visit to Hayward to see the fall foliage. We were a little late for peak up there, but the drive was beautiful. And late for peak means there were LOTS of leaves on the ground. Braenna was terrified, Mikaiya however had a blast jumping and playing in the leaves!

We also had a new milestone with Braenna. She finally got over her fear of the Ranger! She has been terrified of anything "loud" for quite some time, so this was a great thing for her to get over. Hopefully it sticks into next year!

October also brings the fun of Halloween. This year was our first Halloween in our new neighborhood. The girls went to the Halloween party at our gym on the Saturday before Halloween. Here is our little angel and Strawberry shortcake:

We carved pumpkins and the girls also painted pumpkins this year. They had a lot of fun and lucky for us, the weather cooperated and we were able to keep the paint mess outside!

We also had the fun of Nana and Pop coming to visit. It was a little chilly, but we wanted to give them a little bit of a taste of Madison, so we went downtown and visited Monona Terrace...it was COLD!! But, we still got a picture!! We also saw the capitol and ate at a good old fashioned WI restaurant where we introduced them to cheese curds! Yum!!

They also got to stay for Halloween. Nana walked with us and the girls while Pop helped with candy duty at the house...Pop was quite busy with the over 150 trick or treater's we had!! Quite the change from our old neighborhood where we were literally begging the kids to take our candy!!

Here are the rest of our October photos: Click here for photos!

Apple Picking

Now that we are back in the north again, we get the joy of apple picking in the fall! This was the first time the girls got to go and they really enjoyed it! This is my favorite picture from the day...my girls waiting to go picking and just being silly!
Braenna was super proud of the first apple she picked...we had to help her a little bit with the technique after this one!

Mikaiya jumped right in too! She was a pro from the start!

I love this picture...my artsy one! This is Mikaiya, Emily and Braenna all venturing out into the apple trees. I just think it's cute and fun since they are all in age order and disappearing into the trees.

We even got a nice family picture!

And of course, a cute one of the three kids (who were all eating an apple!):

Aunt Teresa and Aunt Cece also joined us. It was a lot of fun and the apples were delicious! I was amazed how fast we were able to go through 20 pounds of apples, but they were so good that we all ate them like crazy!! This is definitely going to become a yearly tradition!