The Finale!

I'm writing this as I watch the show so I won't be able to discuss the winner until the end.

Before getting to the naming the winner, they talked what happened throughout the season and had the dancers back to dance a bit more. The dances seemed longer than in past seasons and it was fun to watch them dance again. Sometimes, it's kind of painful to watch the people who weren't that good to begin with but this season, so many people were good that it was nice to see them back (except for Lacey and Mike, that was odd). Petra and Dimitry redid their waltz to "You Raise Me Up" by Josh Grobin and actually had Josh Grobin there to sing it. It was a surprise to Petra that he was there and it was really cute to see her reaction. Chris Jericho did a Bruno impersonation that was hilarious! I recommend looking it up. Romeo and Chelsie did an amazing dance and I'm still sad at when he was booted off.

Another fun thing about the results show is when they put together little clips. This time, they did a little clip of various things the judges said throughout the season. It was hilarious! I also recommend looking that one up.

On to the finalists' dances. The contestants were allowed to choose their favorite dance to redo and try to get a better score. They stress that our votes still count for half of their combines score, it's just a way to give them more judges' points. Here are my thoughts on these dances.

Chelsea and Mark: They danced their Viennese waltz to the Harry Potter music. The music wasn't as grand without the full orchestra but the dance was great. I can't believe they ended up in third place.

Kirstie and Maks: Chose their first dance. She is noticeably smaller in that dress and the dance itself felt really polished and sharp.

Hines and Kym: Their samba he did for his mom was so fun once again. I'm amazed at what his hips can do, he seems more like one of the pros. I just smile big through it all.

And the winner: Hines and Kym! They had my vote and apparently the votes of all Steelers fans.

Dancing....WithTheStars!

The Finals! We are down to the last three couples and I think they were the right three to be in the finals. For the first round of dances, they had the judges' pick. This is where the judges chose what kind of dance each couple would do based on what would best showcase their abilities. The second round was the freestyle. This is one they do every season and it's always so fun to see what people will do. The couples can pretty much do whatever they want to do. Usually it's really high energy and fun. They often say that the winners of the freestyle win the competition.

Chelsea and Mark

-Samba: They keep putting Chelsea in golds and I just don't feel it. She did really well but I didn't love the dance.

-Freestyle: It was pretty much what was expected in that it was fun and high energy. I liked the latin beat and loved the light-up shoes and gloves.

Kirstie and Maks

-Samba: I think it's funny she did the same dance as Chelsea and I liked it better. It just seemed more fun and light and bouncy (in a good way).

-Freestyle: It seemed to kind of tell a celebratory journey. I felt like the clothes she had under her boring dress could have had more of a punch. Maks is amazing for the lifts they did and her cartwheel was good (better than the one I did at the park today).

Hines and Kym

-Quickstep: So much fun I just kind of got wrapped up in it and carried along. I especially liked the charleston moves throughout.

-Freestyle: Different, but in a good way (the infamous Marie Osmond freestyle was different in a bad way). When it started, I was wary but it picked up and got better. Their lifts were amazing, especially after her neck injury last week. The drummers were fun and worked for him.

Funky Tree Friday

It's back! Not that there have been a lack of funky trees, I've just been flaky. So in an effort to be better, here is today's funky tree.

Although the term tree is used loosely. What with all the rain we get around here (we're at almost 30 inches so far this year and things have been dry) things grow in all kinds of places. Here is one at the top of a power pole. I guess at least it gets first dibs on things like sunshine and rain.

Easter Part 3

Now on to actual Easter day. We started out with an Easter basket hunt. This is something we did in my family when I was growing up and this is the first year we've done it with Anna. How it works is the Easter Bunny takes the baskets and hides them somewhere in the house while leaving notes to try looking in various places. Seeing as Anna can't read, we had little pictures of where to go. She loved it and was kind of disappointed when it was over and she came to the basket.

Here she is sitting on the floor with her basket. Maybe it's the short hair but this picture makes me think of my brother Aaron's girls.

Once she got her candy, she unwrapped every piece of it. Not that she ate it all at once, I guess she just wanted to see what was inside.

A standard Easter morning breakfast: candy and a token muffin.

Next came our Easter Egg hunt. Jason kind of hid them around the rocks in a part of the yard. She had no problems finding them.

After she got them all, she wasn't ready to be done. So, she grabbed her eggs and 'hid' them herself. Mostly that involved throwing them around the yard.

Here is a video of Anna hiding her own eggs.


Then it came time to find them all. Jason decided he was going to race her to the eggs. As you can see, she was mostly laughing too hard to keep up with him.

Still not ready to be done, Anna and Jason hid the eggs again in the house (at this point the mosquitoes were coming out so we didn't really want to be outside anymore). Jason decided to try actually hiding them. Once she realized she would have to put forth effort to get the eggs, she actually looked for them and found them all again.

All in all, a fun Easter. You can't say we didn't get our fill of hunting for eggs.

Dancing....WithTheStars!

This is the part of the show that is hard because I like all of the people and don't want to see any of them go. I'm sad Romeo and Chelsie left. Of course I can't complain too much because I didn't vote but oh well.

Ralph and Karina

-Argentine Tango: It was ok but didn't speak to me, maybe it was the music I didn't totally love.

-Salsa: Oh my. The costumes were crazy, the dance was crazy. It was a bit too Studio 54 for me.

Kirstie and Maks

-Viennese Waltz: Beautiful, light and lyrical. I especially liked her dress and how it flowed.

-Paso Doble: She was all intense and driven, recipe for a good paso doble.

Chelsea and Mark

-Argentine Tango: While I loved the music, I have to agree with the two judges that said the feet weren't precise enough. Again, it was ok but didn't have the punch from some of my favorite past Argentine tangos.

-Rumba: It started out strange with a sheet wrapped over her head but it got better. I really liked the rock music and the dance was good too.

Hines and Kym - This week, Kym had a scary injury where she fell on her neck while rehearsing a lift. Ironically, as she was lying on the floor, not able to feel her hands, she was worried about losing the time to rehearse. I'm not totally sure what was wrong but she ended up dancing and they did great.

-Argntine Tango: Wow. It was intense and I loved it. Totally missing what the other ones had.

-Salsa: High energy and fun. He has the best smile and was beaming the whole time.

Winner Takes all Cha-Cha: This was a crazy dance contest where they had like a play-off bracket with two heats of couples against each other and the winners going on to another round. The winner gets 15 bonus points. Apparently it's in reaction to people getting upset when really good dancers don't have the fan support and leave too early. The routines were all really short and fun. Amazingly the judges completely agreed at each round.

Easter Part 2

Also on Friday, we dyed Easter Eggs. This was the first year Anna did them all by herself. She really liked it.
As usual, Jason was all about the white crayon. His biggest complaint, of course, is that he can't see what he's doing with it.

Before long, Anna ditched the spoon and went strait to her hands to pull the eggs out of the cups.

It led to some interesting finger colors. By the time we were done, they were totally brown.

Showing off her blue egg. Unfortunately, the egg wasn't completely dry when she did this because the color rubbed off on her lips like this:

We had fun and I learned that the gel food coloring doesn't do too well with egg dyeing. The colors weren't great, didn't mix well and ended up splotchy. I guess it's worth spending the money to buy the kits (or not spending it, I bought a kit for 10 cents at Walmart the other day).

Easter Part 1

I would have had this up sooner but we lost our camera for a while. We had looked everywhere we could think of where it might be. Then today while Jason and I were talking about it, Anna said it was under her bed and promptly went and got it. Apparently she hadn't heard us talking about it before.

We had a great Easter that lasted pretty much all weekend. It started on Thursday at Keiki Steps. The teachers and some of the parents brought plastic eggs and we had an Easter egg hunt. Anna was discerning about the eggs she would pick up. The ones from the parents had candy in them but the eggs from teachers had fake money. Once she realized this, she only wanted the eggs from parents. First, she targeted shiny eggs and once they were gone, I had to point out other eggs with candy in them. She even picked some up, shook them and put them back on the ground if they didn't rattle.

Waiting for our turn to go in. We weren't actually able to use the basket but at least it gave her something to play with while waiting.

The next part of our Easter was a community Eater egg hunt on Friday. Moms at Keiki Steps who had gone the year before said it was crazy but I wanted to try it anyway. The organizers kept parents off the field this time so I thought it would be workable. It was still crazy. They had the little kids in the batting cages so they didn't get run over and they could keep the parents out. We braved the crowds and pushed our way in when it was our turn.

Anna was a little wary when she was waiting for all the kids to get in but calmed down once she saw me outside the cage.

Once they got started, she seemed less interested in the eggs just on the ground but got the ones that were "hidden" on the planters. We only ended up with four eggs but she seemed ok with that.

Yundon

Playing on a frog sculpture at one of the resorts over near Kona.

These days, Anna pronounces her ls like ys. I first noticed it when we were in California and she said her real house was in Yundon. It was really cute when we pulled up to my sister Kristen's house and Anna said, "look, Yundon!"

The other day at Keiki Steps, her friend Andi had a toy from home named Lulu. Naturally, Anna pronounced it Yuyu. After Andi tried to correct her, Anna said, "that's what I said, Yuyu." We had to explain to Andi that that was how Anna pronounced Lulu.

My Favorite Mom-isms

I don't know if I've mentioned this here or not but my mom is a HILARIOUS woman. So to honor her for Mother's Day, I thought I would put up some of my favorite quotes from her. And since I see my sisters (and sister in laws) as the center of all wisdom in the universe with regards to child rearing, there are a few quotes from them too.

- (shove) I'm nice! (to my brother as he was saying how nice his mother in law is)

- hehehe This is so inappropriate! hehehe (during a laughing fit in the temple)

- I just skip those parts (when recommending a book with steamy sex scenes in it, or when I'm reading said book and she hadn't warned me before I started it)

- I think we've prayed enough today (to my dad, he had just gotten off of his mission and was still in missionary mode of praying frequently)

-It sounds like you (her defense for mis-quoting us in one of her many magazine articles.)

- I called you so I wouldn't kill my kids (my sister to my mom on discovering her twins had smeared a whole tub of margarine all over the dining room, including the new carpet)

- Yeah, but you didn't understand any of it (when we realized that many of our favorite childhood movies are not actually appropriate for children - like Gigi or 1776)

- Having a baby is like having your heart outside of your body and walking around (my sister on motherhood)

- I don't want them to be comfortable, I want them to suffer. Really, really suffer (in discussing the three degrees of glory and where people like mass murderers will go)

- Oh I can't stand that woman! (My sister was talking about someone she was having a hard time with and Dad and Grandpa were both trying to point out her perspective. Mom came in, asked who we were talking about and this was her first reaction.)

- A mouse tattoo? That's kind of a different demographic. And how many people who get tattoos want mice anyway? (Her reaction to hearing a commercial for a bank and their promotion for a 'free mouse pad too' if you open an account with them.)

- Now you know how much I love you (to me when I first had Anna)

So what are your favorite Mom Abbott quotes?

Dancing....WithTheStars!

Before I start on this week, I want to say something about last week. It cracked me up that they had Hanson on the show. It was funny hearing their song now that their voices have dropped.

The extra judge this week was fun. By now, I feel like I can almost predict what they judges are going to say about any given dance and have been able to guess their scores after their comments. So it's nice to have a new judge to mix things up a bit.

Team dances: I like the team dances. It's fun to see the people working together and the dances turned out fun.

Chelsea and Mark: They do some fun and funky and different things on the dance floor and have all season. I think it works well for them because it matches their personalities. That and they do it really well.

Kendra and Louis: She just looks uncomfortable while dancing. I think I'm done with her on the show.

Kirstie and Maks: He finally got to her. It was kind of sad that she lost the dance in the end there because it was going so well. And I love her shoes.

Ralph and Karina: Ralph is a great dancer and the quickstep is one of my favorite dances. They did awesome and I loved it.

Hines and Kym: Why Kym can't just wear a dress is beyond me. Does she really need that whole open side to her outfit? That being said, I liked how their dance was a very traditional tango. Very fun.

Romeo and Chelsie: For some reason, Romeo reminded me of Will Smith in his costume. I thought his Samba was fun but it felt a little wooden or sedate or something like that. It just didn't seem quite right.

Update: Did I call it or did I call it? This week's Macy's Stars of Dance performance is an amazing ballet dancer. Here is the segment from the results show. At the beginning is the background on the girl and the performance begins at 1:40.