Friday, April 23, 2010

Courtside with the Tennis Team

I don't think I ever posted on my blog about Caleb making the varsity tennis team at his high school. He has spent a very busy month and a half practicing or competing every day after school for 2-6 hours, so life has been kind of a blur for him!
He is the number six player which means he gets to compete at all the matches for his team. It has been a fun season and his tennis skills have improved immensely. I finally got to go see a match yesterday and really enjoyed seeing how much he has grown.

Congratulations Caleb! You never cease to amaze me with everything you are able to do!

Prom Preview...aka "Mormon Prom"

Shelby's off to her first Prom tonight. In our area, they have a Mormon Prom for all the kids in the three stakes that make up our area. So it was kind of like a dress rehearsal for the Prom next weekend. Shelby looked beautiful. Try as we might, we couldn't get her thick hair to stay up, even with lots of hairspray and bobby pins, so she settled for this look and I think its gorgeous! The dress was stunning and I can't wait to see her next weekend when her date has a tux on!

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Battle of the Books

Why, oh why, did they not have this competition when I was in school? As a known bookworm, I would have LOVED it! Imagine absorbing every detail of 25 books and then racing to answer questions about them..... Joshua's team (yellow team) was victorious and barely beat out the blue team for the school championship!
Victory is so sweet!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Another Fun Night on the Lacrosse Field......




Gators 4----Blackhawks 2


Joshua scored a goal!



Perfect ending to a perfect night.

Swimsuit Season

Yep, it's that time of year again! As an adult, I have come to dread the annual search for a swimsuit, but I never imagined it would be so difficult finding a child's swimsuit that was modest. Actually, I can find lots of one piece suits for Savannah, but she is so long-torsoed that it is hard to find one that doesn't give her a wedgie! I prefer a tankini because it fits her length and allows her to go to the bathroom more easily, however, it is hard to find a tankini that covers her belly. When I found this cute suit at Sam's Club for $11, I hoped it would provide adequate coverage.....but no luck! I ended up buying some swimsuit material from the fabric store for $1.50 and making a little ruffle to go around the bottom. While it is not an exact match, I think it adds style and charm to an already cute swimsuit and provides the coverage that makes mom happy! Savannah loves it because any kind of ruffle makes it more girly!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Spring Break and the "Not-so-Happy" Campers!

In an attempt to redeem myself for the lack of Easter pictures, I give you the Easter-Sunday-between-conference-sessions-walk! It was a gorgeous day and perfect for capturing the feeling of spring in our neighborhood! The kids love this wagon....it is decorated for every holiday and it is so much fun to see what they will do next.
Like father, like son. Oh, and we did haircuts on the deck while we listened to Saturday session of conference. Don't they look great! I have come a long way since I first started cutting my boys' hair 17 years ago.
We put in some quality time at the local amusement park, making sure to make good use of our season passes right from the start! Savannah is on the verge of being big enough to ride the big roller coasters, so we may be bidding kiddie land goodbye before the summer is through!In the meantime, she is still a mama's girl and loves to do the thrill rides that she is big enough for with mom holding on tight!We went to a bouncing party at Pump it Up with our Swim team friends. It has been a long cold winter and it was fun to see some friends we haven't seen in a while and get ready for the summer!We spent an afternoon cooling off in the fountains at the mall. The weather for the first half of the week was incredible! We were in the high 80s so cooling off was mandatory!
Dad had Thursday and Friday off, so we went up to the mountains to go camping. Unfortunately our trip coincided with a major front moving through the area which pounded us with rain and cooler temps! We had just enough time to get our tent set up before the rain and ended up diving for cover in the tent. Because we were in bear country, there is no eating in the tent, and since we had no umbrellas, no one wanted to venture out in the rain. So we went to bed with no dinner (by some stroke of genius, I had allowed the kids to get whatever they wanted at Dairy Queen on the way up to camp, so the ice cream we had at 4:00 pm counted as dinner for the night!) and attempted to wait the storm out. We ended up catching dripping water all night and when the front finally moved through, we had 30 degree temperatures and 3 soaking wet sleeping bags!
After a miserable night, we crawled out of the tent and quickly realized that our jeans and sweatshirts were no match for a gusty 30 degree day! After waiting for the tent to dry and cooking our dinners that we were supposed to have the night before, we decided to call an end to the camping trip and go home a day early.....but not before Shelby leaned in a little too close to the fire and singed the ends of her hair......which was soon after followed by Shelby dropping a log on the fire and flames coming up and burning her eyebrows and eyelashes! Yes, she learned a little lesson about playing with fire! ;)
Since it had warmed up a bit while we were loading the care, we decided to do a family hike to the waterfall, where we found several deer in differing states of decomposition. Savannah was a little concerned that the mountain lions or bears that got the deer would get us, but we really were making too much noise for any animals to be interested in our crazy crew! And here we are, bringing up the rear on the hike back up, realizing how incredibly out of shape we are! Looks like my 30 minutes/day on the treadmill or cross trainer at the gym is really not cutting it!
All in all, the scenery was amazing and you can't beat the family time that comes with camping, even if lots of it involved complaining! Sometimes having someone to share your misery with is bonding in and of itself!
And now it's back to school for everyone while mom takes a long and much needed rest! (Okay, okay, I'm dreaming!)

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Happy Easter!

It is official.....I am a loser mom. I'm not even exactly sure when it happened, but it has happened nonetheless. This morning we celebrated Easter in our household--you know, the kind involving the Easter Bunny, eggs, baskets, etc. This is a tradition that was started in my family growing up that grew out of my parent's desire to help us distinguish between the Sabbath Day and to try to keep it holy. Baskets and egg hunts were always done the Saturday before Easter. When I started having my own kids, I debated about which way to do things. Let me say, after much pondering, I do not think that Easter baskets on Sunday are inherently bad; nor do I think they prevent you from keeping the Sabbath Day holy. My decision to continue the Saturday celebration was born out of absolute necessity.....there was no way I could add Easter baskets into the mix of an already busy Sunday morning and still get our family to church on time! Later, as I served in Primary (our church's children's organization) I decided that no child needed to consume large amounts of candy and then be sent to church! So the Saturday Easter celebration has stuck.

Anyway, back to my failure as a mother.....

Each of the kids got a basket with a pair of flip flops (Savannah got some new tennies because she has plenty of flip flops), some shorts, and some small candy and coins in plastic easter eggs. They spent the morning searching for their baskets because the Easter Bunny likes to hide them somewhere in our house and the kids have to search for them! Samuel was the last one to find his this year. Tonight the plastic eggs are all washed and packed away, the baskets are back in their bin in the attic and all that is left to show for the holiday is a small amount of candy in a plastic sandwich bag on my kitchen counter. What I do not have to show is PICTURES! I did not take one picture of my children enjoying their Easter! WHAT WAS I THINKING?!!! Add to that the fact that for the second year in a row, I have not colored Easter Eggs with my children. The only eggs that they had around were plastic. In my early years of motherhood, I swore I would NEVER do this! I met so many young children who had never even heard of coloring eggs and I couldn't believe parents wouldn't do it. I mean really, every child should have the chance to color Easter Eggs, right?!! And now, I am that mom.....you know, the one who is too busy to care. The one who doesn't want to deal with the mess it makes. The one who is tired of throwing away hardboiled Easter eggs because she can't figure out one more way to get the kids to eat them!

I am vowing now to be better next year, for Savannah's sake. She probably doesn't remember coloring eggs and with her penchant for creativity, she would love it! I will redeem myself from the Easter of loser mom-hood and dye eggs in the backyard on my picnic table. I WILL DO IT!!!

Tommorow we will be celebrating Easter quietly; remembering Jesus and his sacrifice as we watch conference on our computer. We will have the missionaries over for a pre-conference breakfast of waffles, bacon and sausage, and juice. We will be greatful for the technology that allows us to remain comfortably in our home and hear what the prophet and apostles have to say. Perhaps I will even remember to take a few pictures to commemorate the Easter that wasn't!