One Year Old!

One year old & wiser too! Happy Birthday Char bug!

I can't believe that I'm waking up today thinking about what was happening a year ago to my body. The very fact that our bodies can deliver children is utterly amazing! 

But this year is going to be awesome because I get to be with this fun ball of sass!

I can't wait for more birthdays and parties for Ms. Charli!

Obviously we have had a blast this last month! I have loved these monthly posts on Charli. I hope that I will continue to do them.

Dressing Up is funner than I think its ever been. On Sunday mornings Kelly will always call me into her room to pick what she's going to wear. Thats a good husband who doesn't even try to dress her! 

Our very first sucker from Halloween was delicious!

Nap Time & Bed Time. Lately we tend to wake up in the middle of the night. A couple times I got to sit and rock her back to sleep and just enjoy my cuddles. Very rarely will she fall asleep when I am holding her so I loved being able to enjoy my baby in the middle of the night. In fact we just fell asleep in the door jumper again!

Kisses & Chocolate Faces!!!

We sleep with our bum in the air & up on our knees. This is a recent thing. I find it very funny.

 We like to sit up in our crib and yell. We love bath time and we love shopping with mom!

 We have to hold everything in the cart!

Clothes: We are still in the 12-18 month range but some 9 month stuff we still wear. Love the onesie extenders!
Diaper Size: Size 4's! She wears the same size of diapers as her 3 year old cousins do.
Food: We eat and eat and then we're bored we eat some more... Yes, I'm describing Charli & not myself ;) We don't have as many bottles anymore!
Words: "Hi There" "Mom" "Dad" "Oh" "Mala" (Nala) ... We love gibbering. I love trying to get her to talk. She doesn't perform on command but its fun to see her get a vocabulary.
Silly Faces: I feel like she is the most animated baby! You can get a smile, a squishy grin to smacking lips all in about 10 seconds.
Songs: We love music! It is such a calming factor and I think it always will be!
Books: We can read books all day and everyday! Night time is always hard because we have to read Dada by Jimmy Fallon, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Oh, The Places You'll Go!
Sleeping & Naps: We are great in this department there have been a few days she has to go down for a 2nd nap because she is super cranky!
Teeth: The bottom two are coming in. I noticed this weekend that the top left is coming in now!

We still love sucking our thumb. It zones us out. We aren't always a fan of sitting in church but after spending an hour in nursery this week! We didn't do as bad! Yay!

We love laughing! Asking where dad is! Wiggling and screaming! Playing the Piano at Grandma Malone's house. We also love rolling away when getting our bum changed! We love to clap and blow kisses! Sometimes if your lucky she will actually kiss you!

We don't always love playing with toys because we would rather steal the TV remote and pull out all the DVD's. We definitely will be baby proofing soon! We are on the go with crawling now. We love to pull up on our knees and trying to figure out how to stand.

This past weekend Nala was playing and turned around and bonked heads with Charli. It left quite the goose egg on Charli and its been a little bruised since. It won't be the first occurrence with those two girls. Last night Nala was trying to sleep close to Charli  &  Charli didn't like that she was sleeping. She would yell Mala and then slap her. Nala would lick her hand and then try and go back to sleep and Charli would just keep doing it. Eventually Nala got sick of it and went upstairs to sleep.


We are a happy go lucky kid & we hope she stays that way!

All in all I love this little girl! 

 Love you bug!

Shut Up & Dance With Me!

Recital Weeks came and went quickly! This year we celebrated 55 years of Dance Image Way! 

It was a fun time being able to watch lots of little girls show off what they learned this year. All of the costumes, music and choreography was adorable in both recitals! 

Our Competition girls did awesome! I love when Recital time comes because I can just sit back and watch all the teams do the dances that we once thought would never turn out look amazing. I also feel sad watching these girls dance as well because there is always sadness that comes with knowing some will be leaving to college, drill team or cheer, other sports and millions of other things these girls are so talented with. 

It also scares me when the year ends because that means the new ideas have to start coming for next year. But this year for some reason I just wanted to hold on to all these girls for another 2 years! I am so glad that I can be apart of something that lets me share my passion for dance! But there is something I love more than just teaching, counting and begging for facials.. I love seeing these girls grow up. I love seeing them become strong, confident girls. That to me is worth more than any award, smile or perfect leaps.

After Recital Selfie!

It wouldn't be cool unless we had videos of us being goofs.

We normally do Memory Monday during the year where girls can wear there old costumes to class. 

This year we totally spaced doing it so they could wear it to Rehearsal. Well Alexa & me jumped in on the fun and wore our senior year solo costumes. Did we have to jump up and down just to put them on? Yes!

At the end of the Senior Recitals each girl on stage had a confetti canon. Of course that was a lot of on the stage so the only reasonable thing to do is to make confetti angels.

That video was taken exactly a week before Charli was born!

Just a little warm up for Alumni class.

A little Pitch Perfect..

Flashback Friday

Cheers to this year and the wonderful routines, girls and staff at Dance Image! 

60 years here we come..

081 Lunch Reunion!

From Left to Right: Vanessa, Kenzie, Me, Keli, Krista

Today I got to meet up with some of the best people I ever met and got to call roommates and friends! It was great to catch up and talk about what everyone has done in the last 3 years.

We met at City Creek and ate at Kneaders. It was a yummy lunch because of the eclair and I love their chicken salad sandwich.

Vanessa just returned home from a LDS mission to Cape Verde. Kenzie just got engaged to a guy we went to school with he was a cheerleader my first year at Snow. Keli has been married for 3 years and just finished building a house in Tooele. Krista has two daughters and is married she will be going through the temple to be sealed soon!

It was awesome catching up and laughing about the retarded things we did as roommates. As great as everyone lives are now it really makes it hard to not wish that we could go back and live together again. They were some of the best roommates and I enjoy that we still make an effort to see each other so often.

We decided at the end of our two hour lunch that we are going to make a point to get together every Conference Weekend. I can't wait until spring now.. to be able to see these ladies again.

"Friends pick us up when we fall down, and if they can't pick 

us up then they lie down and listen for awhile!"

I saw this quote and instantly thought of these 4 girls. There were so many times where we sat and just talked about the things we were going through, the dreams we had for the future, the things we did in the past. I learned more from those sessions than I think I learned in college but I definitely did leave Ephraim knowing what a true friend is and how to act like a true friend.

I love O81 and miss that apartment but I am glad that I still get to cherish the ladies that made that apartment something I will forever miss!

We are HALFWAY!

I was little excited about being halfway through this pregnancy. Probably because everyone marks it as such a milestone.

We had an appointment the morning before (July 2nd) we left to the Virden Reunion. I was exactly 20 weeks, the doctor was a little behind since he had just got back from a c-section. Kelly didn't want to miss work since he was going to be taking a week & a half off. My mom came to the appointment with me, I will admit out of the appointments I have had at Circle of Life that day was crazy. There were so many more pregnant people it made me start to have a phobia. My mom agreed.

After getting the lovely glucose drink from the nurse and telling me I would be doing it in 8 weeks & that my next appointment will be with the Tech. We finally were able to start an ultrasound. Lets just say Baby Nelson was a complete stinker. Sitting indian style with hands resting on its forehead. My doctor poked and prodded for it to move for a good position well... lets rewind a little bit.

At 16 weeks (May 28th) they had told me what we were having, Kelly & I both left the appointment a little relived but at the same time not sure if they really could 100% tell. So for this 20 week appointment we were hoping to get a definite.. and well after one of the longest ultrasounds we had since the stinker wouldn't move or was asleep we are proud to announce that Baby Nelson is .....

Little Miss Nelson!

I apologize it has taken me almost a whole month to finally announce it. 

Yes, this little girl has her first pair of shoes & yes I have a pair that will match it!

I had them take a guess at one of our last practices at the studio. I figured these girls saw our ridiculous skit to announce I was pregnant that they would be able to find out before Summer starts what this little bean was.

My young women also guessed on the poster of what they thought I was having... it was fun to watch people not know what to do.

Especially the few who signed completely down the middle.. cheaters!

My dance girls found out after our recitals and they all thought it was a boy. I wouldn't budge and give them any hints; which to them made them think it was a boy.

Alexa & I went to Zurchers and got some balloons. It gave them a little inkling that something was happening.

(PS. Don't mind the fact that Jack Sparrow is helping announce and the fact I am dressed as a pirate...We were pirates for our Alumni tap this year.) 

These girls were so excited to know it was a girl & they instantly started combining all of their names together as ideas for Kelly & I.

Kelly was super sick the day of the recital & it was just the beginning of a long week for us.

But, he came to the last performance and sat next to my mom. 

Halfway through the recital he leaned over to my mom and said; "I just had a realization I am going to be going to dance recitals for another 18 years!!" 

My mom just laughed.

So here is our cheer to another girl in the house, dance recitals, dress up parties, drama & everything else this little girl will bring into our lives.

The Last Dance

Where am I suppose to start?!

This dance year has been so fun, challenging & wonderful. Its so nice to see the hard work pay off and the improvement at the end of the year from each girl. Its also funny to sit back and just see them dance because they love too!

Yesterday was our Senior Recital at Roy High. Both recitals were great, I love seeing these girls go out with such confidence and when they walk off the stage they know that they did it perfectly.

The theme of the recitals this year was Broadway! We of course had our production number the Boys of Broadway. Newsies, West Side Story & Chimney Sweeps. As long as those productions take to clean, teach and come up with its so nice to see the end where everything just works! Lisa works her tail off to get those to be so fabulous!

Our taps were from broadway shows as well. Sadly, our competition routines weren't because we had to do what the competitions needed & we had picked songs a long long time ago.

Speaking of music I am hoping to find something as good as we did this year, on to the next year in a week.. go figure.

Alumni class finished last night as well we did great with our four dances. We had our Army Hip Hop, Edge of 17 (jazz), Say Something (lyrical) and our Pirate tap!
I love being able to still be challenged by these dances and be able to still dance with such amazing girls. Some monday nights our practices go so long & we sometimes wonder if we will ever really get the steps in Tap but I honestly think we rocked it!

I am so happy that I get to be around such awesome people! Teachers, students, friends, owners etc. Dance Image really is the place to be.

Its not really the Last Dance but Dance Image Studios Competition Team 2014 has officially proved that they have the POWER!

Love you girls so much!