Our Little Annie

Anyone that knows Makenzie knows that she's not "shy" in any way. :) In fact, she never has been. She has always been very open, precocious, and a tad dramatic. hahaha Which can be challenging as a parent, but when focused in the right direction bring a lot of fun and happiness to her and everyone around her. She also loves to sing and act and is comfortable being herself around whoever she is with and not worry about "being cool". This may just be something she gets to keep. I had always assumed it would go away as she grew closer into being a teenager, but I can see that she still keeps it with her. Sometimes her friends make fun of certain things and she'll laugh along with it or she'll tell them that it bugs her and ask them to stop- which they do amazingly enough.

When we lived in Los Angeles when she was much littler she was able to do acting for movies, commercials, tv, etc. and she had a lot of fun with that. We posted one of her commercials here on the blog a few years ago. The link is here. She was so cute and little I could squeeze her. :) She was also in "Beauty and the Beast Jr." at her elementary school and I got to help a lot with that, link about it here. We have had such crazy drifting lives that she hasn't been able to do much acting since LA for the most part and she has missed it like crazy.

Anyway, this year she is in a new school that is 6-8th grade and she wanted to audition for the play "Annie" that they are hosting. She figured since she was new and that she was only in 6th grade she wasn't very likely to get the role of Annie, but still wanted to be apart of it. I took some pictures of her before her audition because she looked so dang cute. Here they are below.

Adorable right?! :)

A few days after the audition she came bounding in the house so excited to tell me that she was in the play and that she was going to be a hobo in it. I danced around with her and congratulated her. She kept laughing really hard and finally the little booger admitted to getting the role of Annie! I screamed and picked her up and spun her around the room until we were dizzy. We jumped up and down and screamed for at least 5 minutes and fell down laughing. Then we spent an hour calling family and friends to tell them. She told me that when she saw they posted the Annie list she looked at the extras and didn't find her name and almost turned away feeling sad that she wasn't in it and then decided to just see who was Annie in case it was her friend Sam. When she looked at the top of the list and saw "Annie: Makenzie Hippen" she said her brain when blank from shock and thought to herself, "Makenzie... Makenzie... that sounds really familiar" and then it clicked and she wanted to scream, but there were a bunch of 8th grade girls freaking out around her that a 6th grader had grabbed the role so she smiled to herself and quietly ducked out walking backward out of the crowd. (That is exactly how she described it and I can picture the whole thing- I told you she's dramatic- hahaha)

She has been working her tail off. Everyday she has rehearsals for 2-3 hours and Saturdays are 4 hours. She walks around the house singing the songs and her sisters join in. It's the darn cutest thing to hear little Penelope singing "Tomorrow" in her little 2 year old voice word for word perfectly! Kendyl has become famous by association at her school and is always being asked to sing songs from Annie on the bus. One of the best parts for Makenzie is that one of her favorite friends, in a grade older, got the role of Miss Hannigan! They get to yell at each other, Sam gets to pretend to slap her and call her a drunk, and Makenzie gets to pretend stomp on her foot. They LOVE it! :) Here's a cute picture of them last year before a singing duet they did. Aren't they the cutest little buddies.

Her play is in a few months and we can't wait! All this hard work is bound to pay off. We'll post pictures, videos etc. when it's done. We love this Makenzie and the bright fun light she adds to our family and the wonderful example she is to her younger sisters.

More Brown Bag Art

More amazing bags drawn by one amazing guy! :)

It's fun to watch the holiday changes: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, with a bunch of random fun in between. Our markers ran out of ink so he switched to colored pencil and I think prefers that now. :) I love waking up and walking out into the kitchen to see him busily drawing away. Our girls tell us that everyone waits to see what they bring everyday and that they are offered money for them, but they wont sell them. :) I love how the drawings come from stuff that happens in our lives sometimes and by looking at them I remember funny little stories in our family. I also love that the girls carry around and are reminded of their daddy's love every day. He's the best! Sometimes Kendyl or I draw them too so if you see one that doesn't look the same style or quality you can guess that it was one of us and not Seth.

You can't see how beautiful each drawing is when they are all compiled together like this so I'll show a few little examples below. I think I may just start a blog of purely his lunch bag drawings everyday..... hmmmm

Penelope's Preschool

So for a few weeks I did a preschool with Penelope in our home, and taking little field trips with her.

Like to the park...

and the pet store where I almost caved into getting her a bunny...

Trips to the library for story time. See how she dressed herself in snow boots and an umbrella when it wasn't even close to raining or snowing. hahah She actually had that umbrella up all during story time inside that day.... :)

Learning about changing leaves and collecting as many as could fit in our pockets...

Or staying home painting...

And here's Pip coloring something I drew for her. She loves to do her work sitting on the table. I think it's starting a bad habit. I'm not sure where she learned it from?...

haha- I found Kendyl doing her school work later that day on a different table and had to take a picture.

After a month or so of doing preschool here with just us we found a few more friends to join with from church and now she goes to school twice a week with them. :) Us moms trade off teaching one week out of the month and then the other weeks we get to have sweet freedom. :)

Here's Pippy so proud on her first day of school heading out to her buddy Jane's house.

What a ham!

Kendyl is such a sweet sister. She made Pip's lunch bag for her school- just like their daddy makes them for the bigger girls every morning. hahaha Notice it's a drawing of Penelope walking her pet spider with her nose? :)

Here's the fun friends on a field trip at the zoo!

Poor Pip misses her aquarium that we use to go to a few times a week. She wanted to stand in front of this for a really long time and just watch the fishes.

This was too cute not to take a picture of. I took this picture a few weeks ago and Natalie has since had her little baby. :)

Today was my first time teaching. We learned about the letter c and the sounds it makes. As part of an activity we were "cookers" as one of them called it and we made cupcakes. They did every step. I was so impressed.

Here's our cute little bakers.

In the end they were all worried about eating cupcakes without it being someone's bday so we put candles in them, sang "Happy Birthday" to us, made a wish, blew them out, and ate them up. :) We also made little Cat in the Hats and read the book together during preschool. It was so funny because they were so stressed out while I was reading the book because of all the mess that the cat was making in the book. Near the end when the mom was coming home in the book one of the boys covered his face and another began crying. It was so awesome and cute. :) Hope I didn't cause any trauma. haha

We're pretty happy about this little preschool arrangement. I get to teach another day this week and it will still be on the letter c. We are going to read the Hungry Caterpillar book and make big fun caterpillars and I think we'll make it into a circus too with games and face painting etc. It's fun to go all out for this when I'm only in charge twice a month. :)