6 Months of Bliss...er Craziness!

Oh how I love Russell, he has been such a good baby. He has had to deal with a lot from a mom who is super busy, to a dad who likes to throw him in the air like he's a rag doll, to two crazy sisters who like to sit on him and dress him up like a girl. He puts up with a lot. 

He is one sweet boy and I can't believe he is already 6 months old today! Unfortunately, he has not been feeling well since Thursday so the only picture I can get of him looking halfway normal is when he is sleeping. It's good he is because he hardly slept last night or the night before, good thing neither mom nor dad have to work in the mornings or else we would all be really miserable!

I'll have to get better pictures of doing his latest achievements like, eating solids, sitting up (almost), rolling over and inching around on his stomach. He's a mover that's for sure! 

On another note the month of January was quite hectic and we are finally able to look back at all the things that we did. I had already mentioned Leslie and Jason's wedding and posted those pictures but that was only the beginning. I had another wedding to photograph the following Saturday, Andrew's cousin Sherisse Hawkes newly married to Garrett Wozniak. They were married in the Rexburg Temple and it was cold but a beautiful day. 

I had taken their engagement photos so I knew that the wedding would be easy, she is a very easy going bride and very photogenic! He is all smiles and it was a change to do a more "fun" wedding compared to the more "romantic" one the weekend before. It just broadens my creative spectrum. 

January was also my month to do preschool for the little group we have. Lily and Leah love going to this preschool and were especially happy when it was at our house each week. We learned M N O and P, so lots of fun stuff. For P (just this last Wednesday) we went to the Pizza Parlor in town to have our very own Preschool Pizza Party. Fortunately the manager of 511 Main is the YW president that I work with in the ward so we had the hookups to have a tour and make our very own "P" Pizza. The kids ate it up....literally!  

We finished up preschool there and made parrots and had show and tell where each child had brought a P thing to share. Leah brought her Pink Princess Pillow and Lily brought her Pink Piggy bank. However it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Lily somehow managed to slice the skin to the left of her left eye on the corner of one of those metal chairs. A quick trip to the Ashton clinic to find that stitches were not needed, a steri strip to help reduce scarring and a cherry Valentine's sucker made our day crazy yet manageable. I was secretly hoping we had finally passed the hurdle of stitches in the Schauerhamer family but I guess we'll leave that for another day. 

These other pictures are of our O day where they practiced their fine motor skills and put Cheerios on raw spaghetti noodles that were stuck in Play Doh, sounds funny I know but the kids loved it!

I don't think I mentioned this before but I have started a dance class for 3-9 year old girls in the Ashton area. I teach three classes on Wednesdays, the Tiny Tots-Pre K (Leah and Lily are both in this class) from 2-2:50, the Darling Dolls-K-1st grade from 3:30 to 4:30 and the Lovely Ladies-2nd-3rd graders from 4:30 to 5:30. I have 20 girls total and so far we have covered three weeks of Ballet and are now starting into Jazz, after three weeks of that we'll do three weeks of gymnastics then have a break for two weeks while we go to AZ in March and then start up again learning the routines for a recital the end of May. So far so good really, I can tell they are enjoying it and so are their moms. I took these pictures on Wednesday of the Darling Dolls class. I'll be getting pictures of my girls later since I no longer have preschool on Wednesday mornings to worry about. 

Last weekend Andrew had signed us up to join a Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers conference they were having in Post Falls Idaho. We left on a Thursday, drove 7 hours and got there in time to go swimming just before dinner. The girls love swimming so it was almost worth the drive just for that. Andrew attended meetings while the girls, Russell and I did a lot of relaxing and swimming. On Saturday the key note speaker was Stacey Dragila the 2000 Olympic Gold medalist in pole vaulting. I remember watching her on TV and was so impressed by her. The reason she was there talking to a bunch of farmers and ranchers was because she had grown up on a ranch and had done a lot of rodeos back in the day. She was soo nice and had brought her medal to pass around for everyone to see. LOVED THAT! Afterwards we chatted for a good ten minutes about kids and things then I got some pictures of the girls with her. They won't appreciate it until later in life but it was definitely a highlight for me, it's not every day you get to meet a Gold medalist and get to wear it around your neck!  Pretty darn cool I'd say!

Speaking of Olympics I wish just being a mom was Olympic sport because that would just be awesome, maybe I'd place in the busiest mom category. :)