Laurelin's first solo

This last Friday Laurelin performed her first solo at Desert Gypsy Dance Company's annual MiniFest. It was raining quite a lot for nearly the whole show, the stage was a puddle and the wind was pretty chilly. Halima (the troupe director for DGDC) told her she didn't have to dance if she was too cold and didn't want to, but she still wanted to go on. And she did a great job! The crowd was very supportive and clapped and cheered her on. She was so pumped afterwards-just hopping up and down and saying she wanted to do another performance hee hee hee. Honestly I was pretty darn excited myself. In the video you can see her skipping and jumping after she got off the stage, it's so cute! Thank you to all of you who came to support her!

It's been a while since we wrote on the blog, so I'm going to play some catch up.
Storytime with Rus is a pretty entertaining affair. The kids love it-he has all kinds of funny voices for the characters, and the puppets have been known to join in as well. He frequently adds in funny comments to what is happening in the story, and the kids will often request, "Babbo-do add ins!" Gwen however sometimes just wants the story read straight. The other night Rus was reading a story and all the kids were asking for add ins. Gwen had picked out the book, though, and wanted it read how it was written. When he came to a part that said something about a "fancy feast", he said "That's a kind of cat food!" Gwen reprimanded him, "No add ins, Babbo!". He replied, "That wasn't an add in, it was an observation." Not to be deterred she said, "No observations either!"
School started again last Monday, so far so good more or less. Holly is staying with us for a while which we are all enjoying. She went down to spend a few days with Kerry and Mike and when she returned the kids all cheered and Gwen said, "Holly, I can't live without you!!"
Saturday we were able to visit a local rattery here in Salt Lake. It was really neat! She had beatiful friendly ratties. She is planning on having some litters ready for adoption near the end of October and we are going to have each of the kids get their own rats. It's about time they had their own pets.
A few weeks ago we were able to go the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum with Rus' mom, and then that Saturday we went kayaking with both his parents. It was great to spend some time with just us and Grandma and Grandpa.