Jeanne's School of Dance presents...World of Dance

Once again, we have come to the girls dance recital. I dread and love this time every year. It is so much work and ends up being such a long day, but I absolutely love to watch my girls dance and see the growth they've made in the past year. Here's some evidence we enjoyed the day:

Katelyn in her Can-can costume on our way to the show

Megan in her Can-can costume ready for the opening number

Adam needed to join in the dance pose fun :)

Megan in the front right with the Mini Starz doing "Bouncin' Around the World"

Beautiful Katelyn in the middle in her lyrical number

Great pointed toes Katelyn! This is her "Kung Fu Fighting" jazz dance

Megan starting off her tumbling routine

Katelyn in tumbling

Megan in Surfin' USA

This one was Katelyn's favorite dance. It's tap to "Walk Like an Egyptian"

Katelyn gets glasses

Katelyn had been complaining of headaches after school for a while. I started asking more questions and realized she couldn't see the white board at school. Time to visit the eye doctor and get glasses! She looks so grown up in them. And she loves them and loves that she can see!

Happy Easter!

This year, I decided to spend Easter with my family in Las Vegas. Chris couldn't come because of work and church requirements. We missed him! I managed to get one Easter traditional picture of the kids in their church outfits. It's not the best picture. We were all having a hard time cooperating, but the kids and the outfits are still cute!

The kids had fun with Grandma Chesnik's Easter egg hunt! It was nice to get out of town for a couple of days and enjoy some relaxing time with my parents.

Chesnik's visit for their Spring Break

We love it when we get visitors! The Josh & Kristin and their kids decided to use their Spring Break visiting us. My girls were in school and we missed them during the day activities, but we still had plenty of fun together. Here's some pictures of our zoo day:

Adam and Jakob up in the giraffe observation deck.

Jalie and Adam looking at the monkeys. 

All the cute kids at the Komodo dragon exhibit

Beautiful day!

Thanks Chesnik's for visiting with us!

Megan's 6th Birthday

Happy, Happy Birthday to my kind, active, loving, snuggly 6 year old Megan! Of course the day started off with breakfast in bed...with the famous choice of donuts.

Megan had a friend birthday party this year and invited these cute friends to the Stuffington Bear Factory.

We were given a tour of the factory and learned how they make their bears. Then we got to be in the party room and color and have lunch.

After lunch and some cupcakes, Megan got to put her hand print on the wall.

All of the kids got to pick a bear and give it a ribbon as part of the tour. Because Megan was the birthday girl, she got to pick clothes for her bear.

Later in day, we invited our family over for a BBQ and birthday party.

Somehow we missed getting a picture of Megan blowing out her candles, but here is the birthday cake she chose this year. It is marbled vanilla and chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. She wanted to write her own name in frosting and she did a great job!

And Megan's day would not be complete if she didn't do some tumbling in the family room. We love you Miss Tumbling Active Megan!

Adam is 3!

We are so excited our little man is 3! He's so fun to have in our family. Of course we started out the day with our traditional breakfast in bed. He chose Dunkin Donut munchkins.

Then we had a family birthday party for him that evening. His favorite thing right now is Thomas and trains. So we put cupcakes on a train set for his birthday cake. 

 Looks like he had a good birthday this year!

Bonus Disneyland Trip

Bonus! Chris' parents got an amazing deal on a couple condos in Newport Beach if they would just listen to a little speech about time-shares. Lucky for us, we got to share in the goodness and also lucky that Disneyland isn't too far away from the condos. So, off we went on a super quick fun weekend in Disneyland! Chris didn't have any time off, so we left Friday after work and got into Newport at almost 11pm. Then the next morning we got up bright and early to get into the park. We didn't tell the kids that we were going to Disneyland, so it was a big happy surprise for them. The weather is COLD in January, but that didn't stop us from having a great time. There are 275 pictures of just one day because we had so much fun playing with our new camera!

Wish I could squeeze more in this collage, but just be grateful I didn't use all 275 pictures!

The next day, we attended church in a Newport Beach ward. After church we had to get back to AZ so Chris could go back to work on Monday. Wish we could have stayed longer, but I'll take all I can get of The Happiest Place on Earth.

Christmas!

I love Christmas. I love the smells, the food, the family, the tree, the lights. OK, so I don't love all the craziness of getting to Christmas and all the work to get the gifts done, but I love giving gifts to my family, especially my kids.

Favorite memories from this year:

1. Visiting my family in Vegas for a few days to exchange gifts. This year is a "Partridge year" for Christmas. We trade each year between my family and Chris' family so we can be even. I took the opportunity to travel with the kids for a couple of days to say Merry Christmas to my family before Christmas.

2. Enchilada Christmas Eve dinner. It's a tradition in Chris' family to eat them on Christmas Eve. Chris' grandma makes the best enchiladas ever!

3. Sibling and cousin gift exchange. Because there are so many people and ever increasing little people, it's so nice to draw a name and buy a gift for just that person. Plus I find that I think of that person a little more through the holiday season and enjoy doing something for them. This year all of Chris' family came in town. I love it when we are all together! I think most everyone is represented with these 2 pictures.

Sorry for the terrible red eye in this picture, my photo program wouldn't take them all out for some reason.

4. Spending time with my little family and see them get excited about Christmas. This year was the year of the pillow pet. Santa also brought a bike for Katelyn, a scooter for Megan, and a train set for Adam. I can't find those pictures! They must all be on the video camera.

5. Family picture time! Don't we all love our picture taken (insert sarcasm here)? Well, it was a necessity this year since all the Partridge's were together and there were 3 new little people not represented in a family picture. Also, all the other kiddos are getting so grown up! The experience might have felt like a mess. Well, at least for me. Adam was having a horrible day. But the pictures turned out great!

Here's the whole family!

Keeping the kids busy while waiting to get everything set up

Adam with his cousin Bradley. Bradley was the only one who could get Adam to be happy.

Beautiful Katelyn

I really don't like pictures of myself, but everyone else was represented...I was feeling left out. 

Chris and my climbing Megan.

Da Girls. This was the easiest picture to take! There are not very many little girls so there were less distractions.

6. Big Mahalo to Scott and Cheryl for bringing the most exciting gift of the year. Each family now has a super amazing camera! I still need to learn how to use it to its full potential, but even for me just "pointing and clicking" still makes an amazing picture. The picture of the whole family was taken by our photographer. The rest of the pictures above in the family set were taken by our amazing new cameras. Wow the difference when you have the best tools!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

...and busy, and crazy, and fun, etc, etc, etc. Here's our pre-Christmas run down.

We had a Ward (congregation) Christmas breakfast. The girls were sadly at a dance rehearsal and didn't get to sit on Santa's lap this year.

We had a neighborhood dance show. It was COLD and WET this year! Sorry the pictures are so bad. I accidentally left my camera in Las Vegas at Thanksgiving. These are taken by my phone.

Megan is dancing to a Phineas and Ferb Christmas song. She is second from the right. Trust me. She's there.

Katelyn is third from the right. Again, just going to have to trust me.

Megan had a Kindergarten Holiday concert. She did a great job! Everyone made reindeer shirts from their footprint and hand prints. I smiled and laughed through the whole show!

The girls had their annual Jeanne's School of Dance Christmas show.

Phew! And somewhere in there, we got all the shopping done to head into the big day!