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We got back from Gatlinburg with only a couple hours to spare before Molly headed off to her first performance of the Nutcracker with the Columbia Chamber Ballet. Here she is in her costume for the Children's March (along with her makeup artist and littlest fan).

Dancing in the Children's March.

Molly's other scene is the Battle scene, in which she is one of the little mice.

Leah loved the performance (when Molly was on stage and when she wasn't). She was glued to it, and occasionally hopped out of her chair to mimic the dancers on stage.

Aunt EA was nice enough to hang with Leah during the performance while Chad was in back filming. Leah did occasionally take a break from watching the dancers to wave to Molly on the sidelines.

Hooray for the first performance!

One down, six more to go! If you'd like to see Molly perform, here is her schedule. I know she'd love to see you! And if you can't make one, check out the video of her first Nutcracker performance.

Saturday was picture day for soccer. We decided to get a very minimal set (just 1 team picture) of the official pictures, and just take some of our own. This was Chad's favorite.

This was Chad standing behind the photographer when Molly was having her official picture taken.

Team Dynamo (minus 1)

And then we had a game to play!

While we like to show Molly engaged in the action, the reality is that she spends a lot more time socializing/playing with other kids. We spend a lot of time telling her to go to the ball instead of talking. This game she spent a lot of time hanging out with Emily.

As you may have seen, Molly's first soccer game did not go well. The second one went much better. Here's a highlight reel of some of the best moments. Molly did great. She went into the game every time the coach told her to, and participated the entire time. After spending much of the last game on the sideline, that was a huge improvement.

It's time for soccer again. This year, Molly's not just doing clinics. She's on a team with practices and games. These are some shots from her first practice.

She's ready to go!

Excuse me, Ava.

Molly and Simon are having fun trying to chase Coach Joe to get the ball away from him.

Molly had her first gymnastics show this past weekend. They invited parents of preschoolers to come see what they've learned. They rotated through several stations. Here's Molly at the vault station. Next was the floor station, which Chad caught on video.

Here she is swinging from the bar in order to kick the cylinder over.

She called this a bottom jump, in which she jumps high on the trampoline, then lands in a sitting position, then back to standing.

All the kids got certificates and medals. Molly was absolutely thrilled to get her medal. She kept saying, "I've never had a medal like this before!" In fact, she wore it all day and had to be convinced to take it off for bed.

Molly had her first gymnastics show this past weekend. A blog post on this is coming, but for now here's a short video of one of the stations from the show.

We had soccer practice again (twice in one week, actually), and Molly did great. This week she started making it through the whole hour participating the entire time. If you missed it, Chad posted a video sampling of the practice.

One of the favorite games - knocking down cones with the soccer ball.

Because Molly did so well, she and Daddy got an after practice treat. A blue snowball was a perfect choice on this hot day.

Here's a sampling of one of Molly's soccer practices. 5 kids were there, but Molly and Elijah were the only two who played the whole time, which is why there are fewer kids in most of the shots.

Molly had her first soccer practice this weekend. Now that she's 3, she's old enough to join the Jr. Striker Program.

Coach Mark did a great job with the kids.

One of the first lessons was to stand up quickly when you fall down, though I think the kids enjoyed the falling down more than standing up.

Molly even learned a couple of tricks. She learned to switch feet on the ball, as well as to kick the ball behind herself before turning around (as pictured here).

Here's Molly racing down the field. Go Molly go!

Molly did surprisingly well dribbling the ball. At the beginning, all the kids just kicked their ball and ran after it. Then Coach Mark told them to use small kicks and Molly got the hang of it really quickly.

Molly had a great time at her first soccer practice, and is looking forward to next week when we'll be outside (this week was in the soccer dome). Between playing tennis last week and soccer this week, she's becoming quite an athlete.