Six

Dear Charlotte,
You are downstairs with your Daddy and big brother watching Alice in Wonderland right now as I am upstairs getting ready for your party tomorrow. You are six today. I know I say it in each of these letters, but that seems impossible to me. I think back to the night you started to come into this world, and I can remember it so clearly, like it was yesterday. Of course I loved you instantly. My heart felt like it would explode with all of the joy and love and happiness you gave me.

You are my only girl, sweet one. Our only daughter. I am so thankful that God gave me the gift of having a daughter...and having you as that daughter. You are so full of emotion and you certainly know how to express it. You are just like your mama in that way. You are beautiful, energetic, encouraging, complimentary, emotional, passionate, and affectionate. You truly are wonderfully made. I wish you could feel all of the love that I feel for you. That you could know how much joy and pride and love you give me.

I pray that you know how dearly God loves you. That he cherishes you more than you can even comprehend and that he will direct your paths if you seek Him. I am so grateful that he has entrusted you to me to raise up to be a woman of faith.

I cherish you, Char. You are one of my most precious, beloved gifts.

"Heaven played every trumpet and blew every horn on the wonderful, marvelous night you were born."

I love you,
Mommy

Made for the Stage

Last week Char had Art and Drama Camp at Plano Children's Theater. This was the first time she ever did any sort of acting camp or performance, but I knew she'd be great. And she was! She had a great time at camp, and we were so proud of what a star she was on stage!

 

The theme for the week was Wizard of Oz and each participant got to choose which character they would portray. The kids actually wrote the script themselves, so they got to decide how much they were in the play. Because of that, the story wasn't exactly the same, but very similar. Charlotte chose Glinda the Good Witch and the Tin Man. Glinda was only in the play for one or two scenes and the pictures I had didn't turn out, but Tin Man was in it a ton with a lot of lines. She wore her flower girl dress from Aunt Courtney's wedding (it was a little snug!) with a tiara for Glinda and this cute grey dress with teal/aqua rhinestones for Tin Man...

Here she says, "Help me" and they call one of the munchkins to come oil her (see, the script is a little different)...

Here, they are cowering before the lion...

And here I think the Tin Man and Lion are asking the munchkin to take them to the Wicked Witch to save Dorothy (Char is the one that saved her:))...

I had to clip the video because it was too long to save, but here's a short part of the play...

Taking a bow...

(Notice she put her tiara back on for the finale. That girl loves to be a princess!)

Here, Char is introducing herself and telling how many shows she's been in (this was her first)...

They also learned a little dance and performed it after the play...

I was so proud of her! She projected so well and knew all of her lines (one of the only ones!), and she had a lot of them! She's definitely a natural...

She's already asked several times about her new friends Logan (the scarecrow) and Ella (the lion), so hopefully we can find a way to see them again some day!

To Nana's House we Go!

After Nana met us at the caverns, Hunter and Char headed to Corpus with her. Mom sent me lots of pictures throughout the week so I could see all the fun they were having. They had a blast with Nana and Rich, but we sure missed them!

 

They had Whataburger for dinner on the way to the beach house...

Their first full day, Nana took them to see Minions...

Everyone gave it two thumbs up!

They had lots of fun around the house with Rich and Nana...

And Char had fun with the new next door neighbors who have 3 girls (one named Charlotte!)

They only went to the beach one day, and it was too windy to use their boogie boards, so they just played in the sand most of the time...

Mom sent me a sweet video of Char playing happily in the sand.

Apparently, Char found this old picture of me in the closet and thought it was so funny...

 

One night Rich made ribs for dinner and both kids LOVED them...

Hunter asked why I never made them...I guess I'll have to add that to the rotation!

They all took the boat out one day...

I think they're too cute in their vests and boat hats!

 

I'm so glad to have them back home!!

Inner Space Caverns

Last Sunday after church we headed to Georgetown to meet Nana so she could take the 2 bigs for a week at the beach. We stopped at Inner Space Caverns before meeting her...

I had been to several caverns growing up, but I'm not sure if this was one of them.

Waiting for our tour to start...

Grey was sort of grumpy on the way down (and REALLY grumpy on the way back). He fell asleep right before we got to the caverns, so James and I had to carry him through the majority of it. Not the best timing. He finally woke up about 2/3 of the way through.

The pictures inside the caverns aren't great because it's so dark in there...

I loved it, and so did Hunter (for most of the tour...he got a little tired of it after about 45 minutes). Char, on the other hand, lasted about 15 minutes before telling me she was bored. I kept telling her to listen to all of the fun facts! That didn't seem to do the trick, though.

 

It was definitely a cool experience, but I'm thinking we probably should've waited until the kids were a little older for them to really enjoy it. Maybe we'll try again in 5 years or so!

Great Wolf Lodge

We went to Great Wolf Lodge a couple of weeks ago for a short, little getaway. The kids were so excited! I loved the wolf ears they passed out, but Grey was not feeling it...

Right after check in, we jumped in our suits and headed down for water fun!

It's hard to get photos at a water park, so I just followed Grey around for a little bit and got a different version of the same picture over and over;)

He loved running around, but wouldn't dare go on any slides or climb on any of the water shooters...

That night Grey had a hard time going to sleep. He still sleeps in a crib, so when he's in a regular bed, he jumps around and tries to climb off all night. It took about an hour to get him to calm down and go to sleep. Hopefully he'll outgrow that before we go to Disney World in November!

I only got one picture the next day because we were too busy swimming and sliding.

It was a fun little getaway, but I couldn't get the smell of chlorine out of my nose for DAYS. Can't believe summer is halfway over!!