Tori gets a tooth pulled

Tori had one of her bottom permanent teeth come in between two teeth so it killed the roots of one of her canines and she lost it a few years too soon.  Not a big deal, but the canine on the other side was then pushing her teeth off-center, so she had to get her other canine tooth pulled by the dentist.  She was very nervous about it.  She hasn't had a cavity, yet, so this was the first time for her to have anything done at the dentist beyond getting her teeth cleaned.  She was really brave and did great!  These are some pictures of her "special" pulled tooth.  The tooth fairy also brought her a little extra because she did such a good job at the dentist. :)

Tori's first piano recital

 

Tori had her very first piano recital.  Above is the video.  There were a lot of students, so each student got up and played their two songs and we were suppose to save our applause until after they were done with both songs.  I was so proud of Tori.  She has worked very hard this past year and did awesome with her pieces.  She wasn't even too nervous.  I'm sure glad she enjoys playing. 

 James and Ellie even survived the whole recital. ;)

 James and Ellie want to follow in her footsteps.  Our piano at home is a digital piano, so it has a few pieces saved on it and James and Ellie love pretending that they are playing the music.  James really gets quite into it.

 

Strawberry picking

We stumbled upon this fun place to pick strawberries only about 15 minutes from our house.  I didn't realize how early the strawberry season is here, we just barely made the end of the time to pick.  We still found a ton of berries and the kids really had a blast.  We had to pull them away because they wanted to pick more, but we had tons of strawberries.  We made strawberry jam and strawberry ice cream when we got home.  I'm getting hungry just typing about it. :)

Soccer and Camping

James did a Kiddie Kickers soccer class at the Y this spring.  He had a lot of fun and loved kicking goals.

His favorite day was the last practice when they celebrated with a bounce house and trophies.  I think James would do just about anything if he got a trophy for it (he is very proud of his sport trophies). 

We also decided to take the kids camping before life gets crazy with the new baby.  We found a beautiful sport not too far away and just spent one night sleeping in our tents.  One night was about all my pregnant self could handle.  This was the first time we had to use two tents for camping since we no longer fit in one.  The kids thought it was pretty cool to have a girl's tent and a boy's tent.  We only took these two pictures because John's phone died shortly after we arrived and I forgot the camera.  The pictures are of a fun and beautiful hike that we did through the woods around our campsite.  It was a bit longer than we planned, but the kids were pretty tough. :)

Our cute Ellie belly :)

t ball and a few other pictures/videos

These are just a few random pictures that I thought were cute that we had taken.  Above James is in his very loved Halloween costume.  He loves being Batman - poor boy is going to be so sad when he outgrows it (which will probably be soon).  Below is our crazy little acrobat James.  I was just working in the kitchen and looked over and saw him in this position. Oh to be 3.

Below is how we keep three kids happy at the hardware store.  It looks like we should start a mowing business.

Below is a video of what the kids like to do outside in our driveway lately.  James and Ellie like to take turns hitting the ball off the T.  I love how Ellie runs as far away from the T and James as she can when it's her turn (you can tell she's been hit by the bat by accident before when he was swinging).

Below, Ellie is making funny faces as she tries some of our drinks.  I think if I remember right the first might be lemonade and the one with the funnier face is root beer.

We were eating dinner out and there was some fun music playing and we looked over and James was just randomly doing this robot dance.  We all just laughed.  It wasn't quite as funny when we had him do it again for the video, but he's still super cute.