The Nutcracker Weekend

This week my daughter had her first official sleepover. Her Birthday was in October and normally I would throw a big themed party but this year I made it simple and decided to bring fruit cups and balloons to her school for her and her classmates and then have a weekend full of activities with her long time best friend ... I know....four years is a long time when you are five.

 The theme of the weekend was the Nutcracker. We purchased tickets for the Saturday show and had the sleepover the night before. It was a night full of matching clothes, pedi's, mani's, baking cookies and decorating them with obnoxious amounts of sugar. 

 I mean, really....the amount of sugar was alarming. I find that I've turned into one of those mothers that doesn't allow sweets often (almost never). I'm constantly reading labels and obsessing over what I feed my children and what I realized this night is that they miss out on a little bit of fun because of it. Food dye is one of the things I just refuse to feed my kids but look at them here....I let go of my obsessions for one night and look at how much fun they had.

My son of course joined in on the fun....he even helped them build their princess tent.

My dog had fun biting every ones ankles all night long. He was a little naughty.

My job as a parent is to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted and respectful kids. It's incredibly important to me to have well balanced kids so I try to mix it up with them and get crazy. One of the ways we do this is dance it out.  Not the rock back and forth boring dance. I'm talking about the bounce-around-like-a-crazy-lunatic-dancing. Shouting your favorite songs from the top of your lungs getting half the words wrong kinda fun.  My kids love it!

We are an extremely busy family with what feels like 9000 responsibilities to fulfill. Half the time I feel like I need to hire a secretary just to handle their calendars, much less my own. I try my best to keep everyone disciplined, yet happy and content. Sometimes that makes me bat crap crazy in the process, so this is a fun way to release all of the craziness from the week while bonding and connecting with them. Which makes them realize you can be fun too in the midst of rigid schedules and probably too much lecturing.

The most fun we had all evening was watching our girls dance their little hearts out to Gangnam Style. The moms stepped in for a bit but I must say our girls had a lot more skill then we did.

 Op, Op....Opan Gangnam Style.

Eh, Eh, Eh, Eh, Eh.  Come on, I know you want to watch it on You Tube now.