Dance Recital

Sienna had her 2nd dance recital!! She did so great and had so much fun being on the big stage. 2 weeks before the recital I was convinced she wasn't going to do it. She's going through an extremely clingy phase and refused to even dance at her weekly practice. For the next 2 weeks, Justin and I did our best to talk it up, showed her last years recital video, and had others help encourage her. I even talked to her teacher and we came up with a plan to get her on the stage. 

The night of the rehearsal came. Lucky for us we were allowed to sit with them backstage before they danced. When it was her turn to line up, she started to panic and cling to me but I was able to hand her over to her teacher and we were good to go! Once she was on the stage, she got the recital high and never wanted to leave it. Come actual recital night she hardly said goodbye to me when I dropped her off. 

We were able to take videos and pictures on rehearsal night. We also got to sit in the front row which gave a great view and she could see us to wave. On recital night we were in almost the back row. Sitting so far back made her look TINY on stage. I wish I would have taken a picture just for that perspective of it. When she got on the stage recital night she started waving/yelling Hi Mommy! Hi Daddy!! while looking for us. It was pretty cute. In addition to her 2 dances, she also did the finale, where everyone walks on stage and takes a bow. She stood up there shaking her hips, clapping and dancing the whole time. I didn't think we'd be able to get her off the stage. 

My cuties.

Being their crazy selves. 

After the recital with Papa and her rose.

Here's the 2 videos from rehearsal night.

[10th??] Annual Memorial Day BBQ

We've been doing the Eid/Jovle annual Memorial Day Bbq for quite awhile now. No one can exactly remember how long it's been but someone thought this might be the 10th one! Either way it's been a great tradition that we started and it always so much fun. Every year it grows as more kids are added to the group. In honor of Cran's Mom we did some fun kid pictures. One by age and one by height.

Age Pictures

Mallory (8), Leslie (7), Ellie (5), Mikayla (4), Sienna (3), Josie (3), Ariana (3), Molly (2), Kensi (1), Christopher (10 months) (Baby Ben 1 month, not pictured)

Height Picture - not even close to the ages!!

I thought I tried really hard to take more than just kid pictures but I apparently only took one. Oops! Next year I'll do better.

Cooking Club XVII

Cran & Brent hosted the latest cooking club. Yes, Brent is back! Lucky for us he has Saturday nights off again. Cran has a friend who is from Korea, so they decided to plan a Korean themed menu with her help. She even gave us authentic seaweed sent from her family for our soup! They thought they'd be funny and send us the menu in Korean characters. Good thing for the Internet so we could translate. 

The menu was very unique. We started with an appetizer and soup course.
Korean Pancakes Duo
Miso Soup

Everything in this course was delicious. One of the pancakes was very spicy with lots of peppers. It was more of a traditional pancake base. The other had more of an egg base and we added in veggies and sausage. The soup (fresh seaweed included) was the best Miso soup I've tried. I'm not a big tofu fan but I was able to stomach it in this. 

For the main course we had:
Bulgogi over Rice Provides
Crispy Sweet Potatoes in Caramel Sauce

The Bulgogi was awesome. Such a good flavor in the meat. We all decided the red lettuce was a bit bitter for the dish and would be better with regular lettuce. The sweet potatoes were very caramely and paired great with the bitter lettuce.

For dessert we had:
Red Bean Cake
Korean Coffee

We were all a little skeptical of this cake to start with. Who puts red beans in a cake? I will say the red bean paste you buy is sweetened. I tasted it raw and it was alright. This picture makes it look good right? The top of it actually was edible. But then you get to the inside...

Sticky, ewwy, gooey mess. It was awful. (I made it, I can say that) There was a little mishaps with the mixer and some of the ingredients flying all over the room. I'm not sure that was the reason for the texture. We don't know if it's supposed to be like that or if it's cause we had to make it dairy free. Either way, we won't be making it again. But always fun to try! The coffee made up for the dessert. It was wonderful especially for being instant. 

Treading Water...

I'm here. It's been so long since I've blogged I don't even know where to start. We've had a very full couple of months. Life seems to just be flying by. Most weeks I feel like we're just treading water trying to keep our heads above so we can survive. Not to say that it's bad. We've had many fun events that I'd love to get up here. We celebrated Easter, Mother's Day, and a few birthdays, visited my Mom and Ron in Arizona, saw the WI family, went to FL, ate a great Korean themed cooking club, had our annual Memorial Day BBQ, dealt with sick kids, got another Stitch Fix, and most recently had a garage sale which sold off all the baby stuff! (I love purging and a clean house) So we're alive and doing well. To my 3 loyal fans - I hope to get more up soon. Don't give up on me. :)

I'll leave you with this.