Tiny dancers

I recorded the entire recital, but Austin captured some great still photos on his phone.  I have such lovely, graceful girls.  On recital days, when they're onstage.  Lovely and graceful is harder to come by when you're still eating breakfast and late for school!  :)

 This is what you get when you ask Grace for a "nice" smile.

I really like it :)

 Look at her up on those tippy toes!

It's every little girl's dream to wear tutu's and dance.

This one's a little blurry, but it's one of my favorites because of that accidental lighting effect.  Good job Austin!

Her hair is so long and thick that it's always been difficult to get it into a nice bun, but we found these amazing "bun forms" at Ulta, and her hair always looks so smooth and perfect and elegant now.

And for the finale she had to pull out all the pins in the bun form and wear her hair down, but look how beautiful it is, so long and wavy!  I have such lovely girls!

One of Ember's closest friends, Maddy Nelson.

It got a little breezy and Ben decided he was freezing.  I wonder how many kids throughout the history of cotton t-shirts have ruined their shirts this way, tucking their knees up inside up to their chin?  I admit it... I did it too as a kid.  Sorry Mom.

To celebrate a job well done we took the kids out to eat, then enjoyed a fun night driving around looking at Christmas lights again.  We found a house that's in the newspaper every year, because Santa always visits the Saturday night before Christmas!  In fact, Austin remembers visiting this house when he was a child, and the owner thought maybe he looked familiar.  Fun!  So we saw Santa, and didn't even have to wait in any lines at the mall, the kids got to remind Santa that we'll be out of town, and they each got TWO candy canes.  It was a fantastic day.