'Tis the Season

We are smack dab in the middle of soccer season around this household.  Do I have pictures? No. Should I? Probably.  If you've seen one soccer picture, you've seen them all is what I say. That, and I am guaranteed to forget my camera or take blurry pictures anyway. :-)

Britton is playing with 2 teams this season which means twice as many practices and games. yippee, skippee.  He loves it and is enjoying the opportunity the soccer club gave him to "play up" meaning he is playing with the kids a year older than him to both develop and challenge him. Korinne is the other soccer player in the house and if I could describe her it would be like this--"non-aggressive".  After fall soccer I knew that Korinne just wasn't that into soccer, but when we signed up for the fall they made us sign up for both fall and spring so here we are, soccer-ing once again.  Korinne loves the idea of soccer much more then she likes the game itself.  She will talk about a soccer practice for days and get dressed 2 hours before only to run away from the ball or politely step aside so someone else can get it. Knowing this will make what happened at her game this last Saturday all the more incredible.  We were in the second half of the game and Korinne had spent her time getting out of the way, talking, smiling and waving.  She had a good friend on the other team and never gave up an opportunity to stop and chat.  All of the sudden the ball went right to Korinne who was alone and standing right in front of the goal.  She had nothing else to do but kick it towards the goal so she pulled her leg back and kicked the ball so hard it went right in the goal and got caught in the net.  It took them about 2 or 3 minutes to get it out of the net afterwards.  The parents were so surprised that Korinne was the one that scored the goal they all cheered extra loud.  She was absolutely thrilled. I'm so glad she had an opportunity to score a goal in what will most assuredly be her last soccer season.

We've been working with Jameson on developing a very important skill.

He doesn't have it down yet, but this was one moment where he actually held his own bottle. I'm excited to help him develop this talent. :-)

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Green Thumb

As your kids grow up it is fun to see them discover their own interests.  An added bonus is when they are interested in something that you have absolutely no interest in thereby creating some sort of balance in the house.  Case in point-- People who are interested in plants and gardening are said to have "green thumbs".  I have often said that I truly have a black thumb when it comes to growing things.  I can kill even the heartiest plants (it's a skill, I know).  I never remember to water plants and I have no interest in learning anything about them. I only let fake plants in the house and outside I want don't want anything in the yard that actually requires attention.  I'm sure you can remember the great garden disaster of 2010.  I tried to plant a garden and well, nothing happened.  My Dad laughed so hard when he saw my "garden" tears formed in his eyes. It was pretty bad.  The next year we put sod over our garden spot and I've been a die hard fan of Bountiful Baskets ever since.

A few months ago at Britton's pack meeting all of the kids were able to plant a seed in a cup of soil and take it home.  Britton and Jenna both planted seeds and took them home.  I forgot all about it a nano-second after walking in the door that night.  Imagine my surprise when 2 months later Jenna's plant is still going strong.

She moved it to a window in the house where it would get the best sunlight and then remembered to water it faithfully.  When we were gone for an entire week over spring break one of the first things she did when we got home was run in and give her little seed some water. As you can tell from this next picture Britton takes after his mother in this department. 

Jenna enjoyed working in the yard with her grandparents last weekend and this week when I told her we should weed the front yard after school on Friday she had it all done before I had the chance to go out and get it started.  Not only did she weed the front yard, she started working on the back and then asked if she could have her own garden spot and plant some vegetables and flowers.

Yessssssss!

I officially release myself from all yard responsibilities!  Adam and Jenna went and bought a few garden seeds and flowers yesterday and I'm going to sit back and let Jenna do her thing.

Jenna's enthusiasm extends to other things, too.  Several weeks ago Jenna's rushed through the door after school all excited about the fact that it was time for spring pictures.  I must admit that my reaction did not match hers.  I find spring pictures completely pointless and a waste of money.  They used to just take every child's picture whether you wanted them to or not and then sent them home and asked you to pay an exorbitant amount of money if you wanted to keep any of them.  Basically they were banking on the fact you would be guilted into buying pictures of your child.  Last year they finally changed the policy and would only take pictures if you first paid for the pictures.  This was welcome news to me but didn't change the fact that Jenna loves spring pictures.  Britton and Korinne are fine not having their pictures taken again, but the minute Jenna finds out about spring pictures she starts planning what she is going to wear and how she is going to have her hair, and what jewelry she should wear and well, I don't have the heart to tell her she can't have any taken. So I just try and find the cheapest thing to buy and let her have her fun.  The excitement this year was that they were letting them brings props to be in their pictures so Jenna took her violin.

She loves how they turned out so I figured I would at least post it on the blog before it goes into the picture drawer for the next 20  years.

I will end this post on a personal note.  For all of you who have ever asked me, "Are you still the Primary President?" during the past 5 years I can finally tell you that no, I am no longer the Primary President in my ward.  After 5 years, 2 wards, over 60 sharing times and 5 primary sacrament meeting programs I was released today.  My kids don't ever remember a time that I wasn't in Primary since Britton was only 5 years old when I first got called. (Actually, I did have a 3 month break when we moved into a new ward so I guess that counts for something.)  I'm not going to lie, I'm feeling pretty good today.

 On to new challenges. . .

New Room

Guess who has a bedroom again?

Last Saturday Adam was helping to deep clean a few areas and decided that the kids aren't really using the toy room anymore so it was probably time to just disband it.  We packed up all of the toys Jameson will use in a few years, got rid of a bunch of stuff and put the remaining stuff in individual bedrooms.  This left a vacant room so it seemed only logical that Korinne should have it. Korinne was super excited to get a bedroom even though she has been very happy in the hallway.  She cracks me up.  When Korinne announced to Jenna that she now had a bedroom all Jenna said was, "Yeah, but are you going to use it?" Good question. That still remains to be seen.  I have no idea what she tells her friends at school about her sleeping situation, but I can only imagine that a few people might wonder about us just a little bit.

Korinne has had a few mini-mom moments that I captured on film this week.  There are days when she is less than cooperative about reading to me after school so one day this week when I could see my attempts to have her sit and read were going nowhere I said, "Why don't you read to Jameson?" She liked this idea and put him on her lap and started reading. 

Jameson was great to go along with it all.  I have a feeling I might be using his help quite a bit in the future.

Korinne is the one child in our family who still offers to change Jameson's diapers.  Look how happy Jameson is to have her do it.

It's nice to capture a few spontaneous moments such as these.  I should try and do it more often.  There was a time when we wondered if Korinne would be OK not being the baby of the family anymore, but it has really been a non-issue for her. She loves having a baby brother.

This morning Jameson had gotten some toys across his face and he wasn't even crying about it, he was just hanging out, happy as can be.

Where's the crying? Where's the frustration that he has something in his face and has absolutely no power to get rid of it?  When I lifted the toys up this is what I got.

I guess there is a lesson to be learned form this.  If you have something in your life that really SHOULD be bothering you, maybe it's OK to just not let it bother you and then just be happy when it is finally taken away.

Deep thoughts, Jameson.  Thanks for that one, Buddy.

Down and Derby

'Twas Britton's final pinewood derby this week.  He had his first soccer game of the season on the same night, but we left at halftime (much to his coach's chagrin) and made it to the derby on time (sans cub scout uniform, but we made it).

Here is Britton checking out the competition.

I got a laugh out of the cubmaster's display rack.  Each car had it's own felt pedestal.  

The cars were weighed and checked in 2 days before the competition and were kept by the cub master during the interim. It had all the makings of an intense competition, but ended up just being fun for everyone. We had a good group of boys this year and they all took both winning and losing in stride.

Korinne made a car, too.  She was not about to be left out when Adam and Britton were working on Britton's car.

She got to race her car a few times at the end which made her very happy.

It will be our last pinewood derby for 8 years and I think a great time was had by all.

Spring Hunting

And we're back.  Did you miss us? Yeah, it's been awhile since our last post but we were out of town for spring break and arrived home to find out our Internet wasn't working.  We had to wait a few days for someone to come to the house and fix the problem.  Just a reminder that we have no idea how we all survived and functioned before the Internet.  I guess it is one thing to live in a world that doesn't have the Internet, it is entirely different when you live in a world where everything is on the Internet and you can't get to it.

First of all I took Jameson in for his 3 month pictures

Tongue out, check!

Look at those eyelashes!  When I grow up I want to have eyelashes like Jameson.

 One side of his mouth goes up first sometimes when he smiles. 

He also has one eyebrow that will go up higher then the other at the beginning of a smile.

For spring break this year we headed south to visit Adam's family.  Adam has 3 sisters, 1 brother, 2 Grandmothers, and his parents in the same town so there is never a shortage of people to visit. We were there for a week and never had a dull moment.

Jameson was very dutiful and smiled on demand. Love that kid.

 

Korinne had a big week.  She lost her front tooth!

She is starting to look so grown up to me these days.

Here is Adam's "smoulder" look. (Think Flynn in "Tangled")

Sorry ladies, he's taken.

The weather was pretty good while we were there.  Some days were better then others, but it was nice to get out our short sleeve shirts from the back our our closets.

Our good friends and neighbors were also in town for the week at a condo with a pool so we crashed their party and took the kids swimming on 2 of the days we were there.

Thanks Josh and Carrie!

Jameson got to meet a lot of cousins and was really good for the trip.  Here he is with his cousin Dallin who is within 2 months in age.

On the way home we stopped at my parents for a night so we could participate in a few Easter Egg hunts.  My sister Heather's family also came into town so the kids were able to spend time with more cousins.

All lined up youngest to oldest for the hunt at Grandma's.

Thank goodness for Grandma's willingness to dye eggs with the kids or my kids would have been deprived of the experience for yet another year.

The next day was Grandma's Ann big Easter Egg hunt for the great-grands.  The weather was great, but it snowed the day before so the kids had to find the eggs in the snow.

I have 34 cousins on that side of the family so even with only a small portion of these cousins in attendance, it still makes for a lot of great-grands.  It's the only time of year we all still get together.

Here is our family with Grandma Ann

The hunt took place on what would have been my Grandpa's 98th birthday and the first one he has missed.

After the party it was time to go home. We were gone for a week and packed a lot of stuff in, but eventually you've got to jump back into the daily routine.

Yes, it's back to life, back to reality. . .