Family vacation

Hello again everyone! My goodness, the worst part about vacation is coming back to reality... between the laundry and finding homes for all of the new things we bought on our trip I feel as though I may need a vacation to get caught back up!

Our trip was awesome though, we headed down to Orlando and had 4 blissful days of family time with my mom and dad and the 4 of us. We played mini golf (which Sam thought was MINNIE golf and was FURIOUS to find out there was no disney characters in sight when we arrived), did some pool time, ate at some wonderful restaurants (including Salt Rock Grill in Redington Beach which is by far Rob's favorite restaurant on Earth), and got to just spend time reconnecting as a family. After those 4 days, my sister, her boyfriend, and his daughter came down and joined us... along with 200 of our closest friends from the dance studio :)

We as a studio were invited to perform in Disney World... how awesome is that? So we opened it up to all of our competitive dancers and 54 agreed to go, along with family and friends. It really was amazing to see our girls work hard enough to perform in front of people from literally all over the world.

It wasn't all work though, we had tons of time in the parks, and it was really great to see the kids enjoying their time in the most magical place on Earth. Although the magic was a bit hazy due to the heat index of 115... oh well, that's what water is for (although it cost $3 per bottle).

My kids got the chance to meet tons of characters, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, Donald, Handy Manny, JoJo and Goliath, Buzz and Woody, and Sam's personal favorites, Lightning McQueen (which sounds more like Li-ning Mtween when Sam says it) and TowMater. Maicey was a bit nervous around them... I can't say I blame her :)

To round the trip out we headed over to Palm Coast to spend the last 3 days of our vacation hanging with some family in the beach and pool. One of my favorites moments happened in our time their...

My cousin, who we refer to as just that, Cousin, has a 9 month old little girl, Violet... so we come up with this brilliant plan to take some super cute pictures of the 3 kids together. So she buys them all matching outfits (that were ADORABLE), and we truck them down to the beach. Sam is apparently deathly affraid of the ocean (which we didn't know until that moment) he thought that a dolphin was going to jump out of the ocean and on to the beach, Maicey was being naughty (I know you're probably surprised at that one), and Violet ate literally a mouth full of sand... and that was after one picture. By the time we were done with the pictures, Cousin and I were so tired we just gave up and spent the rest of the day by the pool... oh well, better luck next time! The pictures really are cute, I'll post them as soon as I get them.

Then came the flight home... I can honestly tell you I would have rather been thrown in a pool of sharks then encounter this flight again. To start it all off, we were in the gate waiting to board and sam very calmly says, I don't feel- BARF! All over everything. Not to give you too many details, but nacho doritos don't lose their color on the way back up... so we finally get you all changed and then we board the plane. Maicey apparently wanted to stay in Florida, because she screamed the ENTIRE way home... not kidding, the whole way... Gotta love children!

Well, the purpose of family vacation is to grow closer to your family. I think we succeeded :)

Sorry for the break

I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've updated you all! We're on the most marvelous vacation ever with my family! I will definitely update you more later, but in a nutshell we've spent the past 10 days in DISNEY WORLD with a 1 and a 3 year old in the heat of 110 degrees with the heat index... anyone feeling overwhelmed, I am!!! So, I'll update you on all of the details when I arrive back home on Thursday, but truly it has been a great vacation with my wonderful family!

My job~ wait let me rephrase that... my passion that I get paid for

As a little kid, I always wanted to be a dancer... a famous one in fact, but when I was young, my dance teacher needed help with a class of little kids and I fell in love with teaching. I taught a ton of classes through high school and at that point decided that I was certain I wanted to run a dance studio forever. My family was awesome enough to dive into that adventure with me and so it began, Above the Barre Dance Academy was born. I'll give you the short version of how we got to today...



We looked for a building, found one we loved, lost it due to noise restraints, TRY AGAIN~ so we did, and found another location and loved it just as much, ordered ten thousand dollars in floors (YIKES), picked out paint colors, got our scheduling together, sent out advertisements, got delayed in our open date by 2 months, FINALLY opened and started teaching. Since then we've grown to almost 300 students, 90 of which are competitive and traveling all over the country and I spend somewhere between 30 and 70 hours a week making sure that it all runs smoothly. People always say to me, "man it must be nice to write your own schedule", to which I respond, "Yes, I get to pick which 60 hours a week I work!!!" My wonderful family still helps out every day... Dad cleans and does all of our maitenance, Mom does all of our night time desk management plus all of the financial things, and my sister still teachs 3 nights a week. It's truly a family affair!



It was a long process, A VERY LONG PROCESS, but we made it. After tears, sweat, and lots of laughter it has become my passion that I get paid for... my students brighten my day (most of the time), and I get to pass on my love of the art every day.

There's not very many people in the world that get to go to a job every morning that they love... I'm certainly one of the lucky ones!

Ladies and Gemelan, It's Time for WRESTLE MANIA!!!

So, since Sam's been alive, it's been a father son Monday night tradition to watch Wrestle Mania... not my first choice, but let's be serious if I'm at work I really get no say. So, as last night was Monday, I came home to Sam (in his underware) announcing (in a VERY low voice), "Ladies and Gemalan, It's time for WRESTLE MAN-I-A! I about peed my pants I was laughing so hard.

This morning however, when I heard him announce it yet again, I come to find that he was wrestling Miss Princess Maicey on the porch. She came in with her little tattle tail walk screaming her brains out. When I asked Sam what happened to her, he replied with, "I poked her head with my tooth", I don't know about you, but I call that biting! So little Miss Princess has a big ole red mark in the middle of her forehead. I guess she'll eventually learn to stay away from Sam when he's in wrestle mode...

My children

I have the most beautiful children in the world... I guess I'm a little bias, but seriously they're cute.

Sam Michael just turned 3 and my goodness he's funny. He lights up a room with his smile and makes me laugh so hard sometimes I can't breathe. He LOVES to play soccer and baseball in the yard with Daddy and loves to sing and dance with me too. He just had his first dance recital, and I kid you not, he stood on stage and never moved a muscle, but he looked adorable doing it!

Maicey Kay is almost 17 months old and is the Princess of the family for sure. She can give looks that could kill (I have no clue where she gets that!) but when she wants something from you she'll cuddle until it happens :) She loves to dance around the house while Sam sings ridiculous songs and just wants to be with him playing. She's really precious and although Daddy hates it, she's beautiful too!

If you ask anyone that I knew when I was young, they'll tell you they always knew I'd be a mom. It's literally the best job in the world, and the most challenging. Although this happened a few months back, I wanted to share the most challenging parenting day I've been through so far... Hopefully you'll get a good laugh at it!

So my best friend, Jenny gave my children their Easter baskets one Wednesday afternoon at our weekly lunch date at Chili's. After an eventful lunch of spilled pop, yelling children, and multiple occasions of food being flung on the floor, I drag both very sleepy children to the car with their Easter baskets in tow. I put them both in their carseats and set the Easter baskets on the floor in front of Sam. As I'm driving, the backseat gets very quiet and I figure they'd both fallen asleep... boy was I wrong. When I pulled into my driveway and went to get my kids out of the car I swear it looked like a chocolate fountain had exploded in my car. The kids had eaten EVERY hershey's kiss out of the baskets- Maicey didn't even bother to unwrap hers... there was foil and chocolate from their heads to their toes and all over the car.

So I proceed to get them out and strip them naked and let them run around the house while I am cleaning the car out before my husband kills me. I'm so angry that as I storm back into my house, I pull the screen door open and the dang thing flies off my house~ I'm not kidding, the whole door was in my hand. Little sweet Maicey is standing there with 3 screws in her hand just smiling away at me... how does a 15 month old baby manage that?!?! No one can still figure that out. So here's my favorite part of the story... while all of this is going on, I forget that I have a furniture repair man coming to my house to fix my brand new couch. There's a knock on the door and I go let in the man. My then 2 year old son walks up to him and loud and clear as day says, "Hey you're a chocolate guy!!!" I swear to the good Lord I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. My wonderful father who spends a lot of time with my kids, was teaching him that the reason that President Obama looked different then him was only because his skin was a different color, sort of like ice cream is a different color... that totally back fired...

So needless to say, by the time they went down for a nap that afternoon I was ready to cry and completely give up on parenting, but as always, you stand tall, take a breath and move on, loving your kids more every day.

They truly are the light of my life and I love them more every single day.

Here We Go...

Okay, so I've finally caught the blogging bug... I got hooked on my sister's blog, but she updates hers like maybe once a decade, so I'm going to try to out shine her when it comes to blogging :)

A little back ground information... I grew up in a beautiful family with the most supportive parents in the world. They brought me into the world only 13 months after my sister was born (I know you're thinking, why in God's name would anyone do that, believe me, we all asked it too!), and she is my very best friend in the world. We grew up falling in love with the art of dance and performed all over the country as we grew. I knew from the time I was ten years old I wanted to own my own studio when I grew up. So I made a plan and followed through...

I went off to college, met my future husband, changed majors, opened my dance studio, received my Bachelor's degree in 3 years, got married, and found out I was pregnant with my first child all by the time I was 22 :) I wouldn't have done it any other way, but man that was a long few years!

Now my studio is booming, my children are growing, and I am just looking for an opportunity to slow down and take a breath...