Spring

Spring!  

Welcome old friend!

Green grass and warm weather... welcome back.  

Both kids are glasses wearers now.  Lou has joined the glasses team!

My sweet team of teachers won the camping themed dress up and room decorating contest at school for the Spring book fair.  We rock!

Bee is running track again. 

She likes the sprints.  

Lou and daddy are back to playing baseball.  

Bee is a soccer referee for the school. 

Sister has a job!  That's her time card she's signing in on.  And there's our new under construction high school in the background!  It opens in the fall.  

Busy spring. 

summer of baseball (and other sports)

Hubby and I determined early on that this was the summer of baseball for our family. 

Here we are enjoying the local farm team.  

Lou finished up one season where he played on two teams, our regular spring team and the 'Nationals' league as well.  Then we went right into summer all-stars.  It was more baseball than I ever expected to experience, and all in just the short months of the summer. 

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It was a hot one too. 

There was a bit of gear involved in All-Stars. (Which explains why it's so expensive to play!)

We didn't have a super successful season if you're counting wins.  But the boys had fun and learned some new skills.  

At some point we snuck in a basketball camp. 

And I snuck in some shirt making... 

My sweet neighbor made these flip flop clips for me and Bee. 

What's a sister to do during all this baseball?  Eat form the concession stand. 

Make friends.  Read.  

Watch a little ball.  Maybe. 

Here are my two favorite player.  Lou and the cutest coach out there. 

Eventually, Bee embraced the baseball lifestyle.  

My sister sent me a picture of her little ball player in a hand-me-down onsie from Lou and I sent her this picture back.  

It seems like no time that he went from that onsie to this ball outfit.  Oh time, slow down. 

Welcome Summer!

The last few weeks of school are always a blur of sports and awards programs and field trips and end of year meetings, activities and events and general business.  Add to that that our house was for sale briefly- 10 days, that's all it took to sell.  We however spent a full month of active house hunting.   We accidentally had four sports going.  Bee ran track and played soccer, Lou played soccer and played baseball. We won't make that mistake again, it was the trifecta of ridiculous scheduling. 

This was out first year for track.  Bee ran the 100, 200, and 4x100 relay. I now know what all that means. 

I did get to spend a day with Lou and his buddies on the third grade field trip.  

I don't normally get to go on field trips with him, but we're in the same grade this year so it worked out perfectly.   This is the first year I was in charge of planning the field trips, so I was pretty nervous and excited about the trip. 

It's always a nice day when we go to New Harmony artisan days.  It's a bit of a drive, but worth it.

Bee and Lou were both blessed with amazing teachers this year.  It's always special that hubby and I know their teachers as colleagues, but this year I consider them both friends as well.  It was a special year for both of them. 

Talk about being blessed!  I have a great team to serve with.  Here's the awesome third grade team of teachers at field day.  

There they are, the 22 friends I spent the year with.  My team crushed the competition.   Moore's Unicorns!  

I told my class that if they doubled their AR goal I would reward them with a sweet treat,  Two tables worth of kids did!  After school one day we walked over to Wedny's for a frosty.  Lucky Lou got to join us (he tripled his goal- so it was well earned).  

 The last day of school the kids and I decided that we should get up extra early and go out for breakfast before school.  Dear Hubby thought we were nuts and decided not to get up any easier than necessary.   Lou was up by 5:15m dressed and ready while I finished up on the elliptical.  We went to school with stuffed bellies that last day! 

I try to start sending things home with my students early in the week so their parents don't end up with kitten tables that look like this.  I don't think there's any avoiding it.  Here's the contents of their backpacks. I left this pile for two days. We ate in the living room, and no one complained! 

We got out a day or two before many other schools in the area so first day of summer break we headed for the water park.  We rode all the rides (over and over again) while most kids were still in school! The staff at our school was assigned summer reading (Love Does by Bob Goff) and I was already hearing from other teachers how great the book was, so the kids played in the wave pool and I found a shady spot and got reading. This book has been on our bookshelf at home for about two years and I can't believe I've waited this long.  Hubby is reading it too.  It's a super read!

Welcome summer!  We are ready for you!

wrestling, not so much

Lou tried wrestling this year.  This is the only photographic proof, as he wrestled only these two matches and decided he'd just cheer on the team from the sidelines for the rest of the season.  Hubby has started a wrestling program at our school and is coaching.  Lou was very unsure of doing it as there is the business of the singlet and the headgear, but mostly the fact that all those crazy fans are watching just you and another dude.  And those fans are CRAZY!  We are a new program in a serious wrestling town.  We were in a little over our heads. 

One match he was pinned in about a minute and the other match he held his own until the very end of the last round.  He did enjoy practice and watching his friends at meets, so who knows, he might do it again next year.  He did not go the weigh-in for the all city meet as he had no intention of participating, but when it came time we learned he would have been uncontested in his weightless and would have taken first place for the city by default!  I thought he be disappointed and we prepared to give a speech about not deserving a trophy we didn't earn anyway, but he was totally cool with it.  

while I'm posting

I'm up way too early and can't get back to sleep.  The kids and I have been going through old photo albums this week looking for a few funny pictures of my sister to use at her wedding shower  for a game, and it's made me go back to my blog and look at old photos there too.  Bee and I looked together  too the other day for over an hour.  It made me think this morning about my blog and needing to be a little better about documenting things here, because the kids will be able to look back on it.  I used to write about all the little details of our day and funny stories from the kids and all the little conversations that I've sort of forgotten about.  Then I got busy with school and such... and haven't. 


So on that note, I totally forgot to mention that Bee played soccer this year.   (she's in the blue shorts below)

(Bee is bottom left)

She gained some skill since last year and her team even won a few games this year!

It's so fun playing on our school league, she knows all the players on both teams and I know most of the moms on the sidelines!  It's enjoyable for all of us.  

Two of the moms on our team took a bunch of photos throughout the season and shared them freely.  I loved it because I didn't have to take my camera and go through tons of pictures at the end of the day.  I just hopped on facebook after a game and chose the ones I liked!

Unfortunately, Lou's soccer team did not have photographer moms and I have zero pictures of him or his team.  He even had to miss picture day because of a baseball game and we don't even have that picture this year.  Two sports in one season for him was too much for us!

Some of her teammates were students in my class this year so that was fun too.