And FINALLY the day came when those tutus that filled my every waking hour were put to good use :)

Monday the 13th was their first performance and it worked out that Flower Child's dad was able to attend and the Boy was out of school so he could too! Usually these types of fun things happen when he's at his mom's house so he misses out. He was REALLY excited to get to go to this one!

The girls looked ADORABLE!!

This was Flower Child's first RUN on stage lol. Her first part was Mercury (the planet) and she runs on stage, speeds through her lines (because she's the fastest spinning planet) and runs back off. A total of 22.5 seconds I think ;)

OH BOY was this play science-y. There was so much science jammed into this HOUR LONG PLAY that it was practically OOZING with nerdness. lol It's a GATE play and so I guess I should have expected it but OH MAMA was it JAM PACKED WITH THE SCIENCE.

Then for her second part she was a Venette. Which is the back up singer for Venus who sings about how hot she is ;) LOL Oh how my camera sucks at the action shots >:-/

The final dance number a sweet forever later ...

And the group shop of all the players :) Note the SWEET space ship to the right ;)

Their budget, it's limited lol


After an all to short minimum day, I had the kids all sit down and do some fun Valentine's stuff :)

While I worked on the teacher's gifts, they worked on some cards for each other.

I found this super cute set at Walmart of 24 foam cards with foam stickers to decorate with. They had so much fun decorating cards and filling them out with what they love about each other :)

Teen decided she wanted to make some goodies to take to her friends so she busted out her brownie/mini cupcake maker and used this AWESOME recipe I found on Pinterest. They tasted JUST LIKE the box mix only WAY better!

And then because my plans for a perfectly lovely Valentines Dinner didn't exactly work out, we had pizza with Valentines plates ;)

We were together though, and that's what counts :)

After the kids went off to bed I brought down a few things I got for them.

We don't do a LOT for Valentines Day, but I did get them a little something. I found these adorable mail boxes at Target in the dollar aisle and had totally planned on decorating them but time was against me. Something to do for next year! I got them each a card, pencil, sucker, candy, and then they had each others cards to read too :)

I had planned on making something for breakfast too buuuuuut ... well you know ;)

So I picked up some raspberry and orange scones and strawberries and they were pretty excited about it :)

Then they got to go through their mailboxes and were so cute reading all of the little love notes :)

My girlies on the way out the door :)

That night we had Flower Child's evening performance! I was just barely able to get this picture since my camera hates movement of any kind.

DH made it JUST in the nick of time. He'd been working about a month straight with no day off, had just come off of 3 days straight of 20 hours EACH. He was headed home and he could have gone straight home and taken a shower, had dinner or just gone to bed - but he went straight from his 3 hour drive home to his step daughters play, and was happy to be there :)

If that's not love, I don't know what is.


Flower Child and her bestie :)

The players

The next day was tough. It started with a LOT of attitude from a few of the kids that didn't end til they were pushed out of the car to school, and didn't improve much through the day.

The hubs has been dealing with some pretty horrible conditions with his work and they were BEYOND stressing him out. Which of course, stresses ME out. And he was off again for another few days to work.

He knew things were getting to me and messaged me throughout the day to see how *I* was doing. I usually try to be strong and not let him know how much this all gets to me, but he can tell.

So he sent me these :) Not for Valentine's Day, but just because I was having a REALLY bad day. Love that man of mine :)