Our Little Gymnast

Sophia had her very first gymnastics exhibition today. She loves it so much. I ask her all the time what she loves more? Dance or Gymnastics. From day one, she has said gymnastics. She has a great teacher and it's a great outlet for all of her physical energy. These pictures were taken during her class this week. I chose to video her today instead of taking pictures during her show. But it was generally the same thing.

This is her class warming up.

Julianne is always a good supporter. She keeps me company. Don't worry her time will come.

Doing front rolls.

And doing "flamingos" and "kicking soccer balls" on the beam.

(Mrs. Nola is very creative in her teaching methods.)

And here she is today, after the meet, with the ribbon she got for participating.

And even Grandma and Grandpa came to support her.

First Day of School!!!

 She did it ladies and gentlemen! She went to Kindergarten today. Did Mom cry? Nope. Not one little tear. This girly is ready. I didn't worry about her making friends, or missing me, or misbehaving. Not at all. She is so independant and mature for her age, that I sent her off this morning full of confidence that my baby will succeed and love school. She gets to wear snazzy uniforms which makes getting ready a cinch. I got up and made her favorite breakfast...pancakes with strawberries on top. She was sporting her backpack that she picked out and out the door we went walking to school.

This is her teacher, Mrs. Felhberg

And off to class she goes. See that big smile. That's my girl!

Sisters

Man, I love these three! But more than that, I love when they love each other. It's probably because these moments are so rare in our home. Usually Julianne is following me around and the other two go from best friends to worst enemies every five minutes. But when I see them getting along I feel an urge to run get my camera to capture the moment. Those are the moments I want to remember, not the screaming ones. 

As a good friend told me not to long ago, we all have sweets and sours in our days. Let's all try to focus and remember the sweets a little more.

Oh and that is also in the Ten Virtues by Pres. Hinckley under Optimism.

These girls just can't get enough of the chickens. In fact, I'm starting to feel sorry for the poor birds.  At first, Gabriela was the only one who would handle them and that wasn't so bad, but now the other two have gotten the nerve and are genuine chicken chasers. We got two other little chickens that weren't in any of the previous pictures, but one is distinctly smaller than the rest and bless his heart, spends most of her time being toted around like a baby doll.

Gabriela's new name is the "chicken whisperer," because she can catch them better than anyone else we know and she has a way of getting them to fall asleep in her lap.  This is her with her chicken we've named Sassy. This bird is FAST!!! It takes us twenty minutes just to catch her and she's always the last to go in to the box at night. Miguel did a full blown dive into the grass trying to catch her last night. I resorted to trying to throw a coat on her, with no luck. Miguel finally caught her with his lightning fast moves. Her name is very fitting.

My mom used to tell me that when she was little she had chickens and that she used to teach school to the chickens. I always wondered how she did that, but now I'm getting a clearer picture. My girls tote these birds around like babies. The other day I went out and they had them wrapped up in blankets in the yards and they birds would actually stay put and even go to sleep. That's one thing I've learned in this process. Chickens can go to sleep at the drop of a hat. They love the fact that we've been letting them run around the yard when we're outside.

Miguel and I have been busy building a nice coop for these little birds. We can't wait to get them out of the garage. I'm sure they will be just as happy as we will be to get out of the blue box too.

Here's my handy man using his engineering skills.

And one last chicken picture for good measure.

It's always fun when (Great)Grandma comes!

Some of my family came out to Utah from Georgia this week. We've got our first and only missionary going out on his mission. My family is pretty small. There are only 4 grandkids on my dad's side and only one of them is a boy, so it's kind of a big deal for us. He's going to serve here in the great state of Utah too. I think his mom is secretly scared he's going to stay out here like I did, and never come home.

But it was really fun to see family. We met up with them at temple square one evening. Don't really have any good pictures of everyone. I was too busy chasing kids to pull out the camera, but the kids had a good time exploring the visitors center and seeing the temple up close.

We did  get to steal my grandmother away for a day and a half and the girls just loved her to death. They just left out the Great part of her name and simply called her Grandma Dorothy. She got to play puzzles, make pb&j sandwiches, go to dance class and gymnastics with us. She got a good dose of "a day in the life of the Ruizes." They kiddos (and myself) were all sad when we dropped her off in SLC. We love you GreatGrandma Dorothy!!!

CHICKENS

Well, we finally did it! We got CHICKENS!!!

We've been thinking about this for quite some time, but never got the guts to plunge in. Something got our ducks earlier this week, in the middle of the night, and in the morning they were gone. All of a sudden our backyard seemed very lonely. So after talking with me sister in law, who has a ton of chickens, we decided to do it. I keep saying we...it is more like me. But I was dead set on Polish chickens becuase I just love their hair dos and they are so sweet and easy to love. They would be great for the kids, so I finally did it. I went and bought four babies up in SLC. The girls each got to pick one out and I chose one also. We can't wait to build our chicken tractor, more on that later, and start having eggs next year.

This is what they look like when they are fully grown. Pretty awesome, huh!

what's goin' on

We are loving summer around here, but it is keeping up super busy. We are constantly coming up with things to fill our days, before the cold weather comes. And we all know it's coming.  Some of our girls favorite things to do is to climb the fruit trees and PLUCKING anything in sight. This means flowers, fruit, leaves, anything that can be pulled off they will get it. Makes me crazy, but they love nothing more than to do it.

They love doing tricks on the rope swing, or maybe I should call it the trapeeze. Gabriela's learned to hang upside down with no hands and also to pull herself up to use it as a regular swing.

Julianne loves to follow the ducks around the yard and insists she wants to catch one. Gabriela and I have done our best to grant her wish, but were unsuccesful. We just aren't fast enough.

Here are our wildflowers we planted as seeds back in the spring. They turned out great, but I think I chose the wrong spot for them. I put them in a planter off the back pation area and it's just too tempting for the kids and they are kind of taking over. But has been fun to see what pops up and blooms.

Now this is truly a wild flower. I noticed this little number when I was cutting the grass on Saturday.