Dry Ice

My parents sent me some Omaha Steaks for my birthday and father's day. After the actual food, the second best thing about receiving a box of steak is the dry ice!

Generations

The kids are having a lot of fun spending time with their grandparents and Oma, who came down for Sunday's baptism.

The girls

Keira, Kassidy, Katharine and Anna.

Cousins

Katharine's cousin Anna arrived today with Iria's mom, visiting America for the first time. She speaks German, but is already picking up some American phrases.

3 Recitals and a Baby

This weekend we attended 3 recitals over two days- Katharine performed three times, and Lukas once.

Here is Katharine dressed up for her ballet performance- "The Piper".

Keira and Lennon stayed home with a sitter, but Kassidy made it to all of the shows. She was great, and stayed quiet through all of the clamor. Maybe the next time she is fussy I'll just turn down the lights and blast my music :)

Here is Katharine's outfit from her "Fame" number. This was her favorite dress.

Here is Katharine before her final number- "Chicago". She was looking so grown up sitting there in front of me.

Charlotte attended the show to cheer her on.

Katharine did awesome in all of her dances- and did I also mention that she can sing and draw?Okay, time to stop boasting...

Katharine backstage.

Iria makes some final adjustments on Lukas's costume for his "Mr. Touchdown" number.

Gwen showed up for Lukas's performance.

Lukas rocked it- yeah, the sometimes very shy Lukas was dancing up a storm in front of a few hundred people- and Gwen was his biggest cheerleader in the audience.

Katharine received a trophy for completing her 5th year of dance school. I think that it is the first trophy that our kids have ever had the opportunity to bring home...

The one weird thing about the shows is that they had about 6 security guys scanning the audience for picture taking. A note on the door said that you would be "promptly escorted out of the auditorium" if you were caught taking pictures. I can understand them not wanting flashes going off, but all of the guys standing around felt like a bit of overkill.

So anyways, I just had to get a picture of the guys who were trying to hunt down the people taking pictures :)

Those security guys could have been put to better use chasing down Gwen, but even they might not have been able to catch her.

All in all, a fun weekend. And you can get some nice light for pictures when your show lets out at 8:30 PM.

Lastly, Katharine set up this display in her room after all of the shows were over. There are her flowers from Friday night, her award, and her "recital doll" (I always give her a doll after her recitals every year). Of course, the "Wicked" show is still very popular around the house.

Safari

Today we went to the Fort Worth Zoo for the Gearbox company picnic. We met up with the Martels in the morning to walk the zoo before it got too hot. The temperature climbed to 100 degrees, but we still had a lot of fun despite being exhausted.

Memorial Day'orama

We spent our Memorial Day afternoon at the Martels, along with Jeramy and the Murphy's. The kids had their usual blend of fun: eating, sprinklers and swinging topped off with an after dinner show.

I didn't plan on taking a lot of pictures, but here are a few:

And oh yeah- we had a tarantula hanging out on Brian's outdoor kitchen counter for the whole time.

Happy Memorial Day!