More soccer pictures, I guess it’s official that I’m a soccer mom- without the mini van of course. It’s been fun to watch Jacob and Caleb play soccer over the past few weeks. It’s really been neat to see how much they’ve improved, and even how much more they’re enjoying it. This past week Caleb was playing goalie and made some great saves. Jut look at that massive group of kids- I was impressed he was able to stop the ball with that big of a force behind it! When Jacob went out with his group to get stretched and warmed up, Matthew decided that it was his turn too. The next thing we knew, Matthew was sitting out with the group doing the stretches with them. It was pretty funny. I sent Jeff out to take a picture while I sat on the sideline and watched. Matthew really does think he’s just one of the big kids. It was fun to watch Jacob’s practice and especially the game at the end. His age group is all boys from 5-9 so there are some boys that are much older and much bigger. It was kind of funny because for the game, the coach ended up putting the three smallest/youngest against the three oldest/biggest. Jacob actually surprised me though, because he went right out and took the ball and took it down to the goal. He’s getting a lot more aggressive about going after the ball. You can see in the picture that he’s got the ball while he’s surrounded by much older boys. I enjoy the program, especially that it’s meant to be for fun and isn’t as competitive as other soccer clubs. The coaches are a lot of fun, we especially enjoy Julie who also happens to be in our ward. It's been such a fun experience for the whole family. Jacob’s really enjoyed having his friend Julian play with him too. These two were in preschool together and they’ll be in kindergarten together too.
Jeff and I had our first date night together in a long, long time! We were excited to be able to go out, and the kids were excited to go to their friends to play.
Originally we were planning on going to Harry Potter, Jeff had even got discounted tickets. However, when we got to the theatre we found out that we couldn’t use the tickets because the movie was still too new. We didn’t want to pay the regular price, so we figured we’d hang onto the tickets and do something else that night.
We ended up going miniature golfing, and had a fun time. It’s a nice little course, not too far from our house, and actually not too busy. It’s fun to be able to spend time together, just the two of you. It’s fun to be laid-back and carefree for a little while. Jeff and I both had a hole in one on the 8th hole. I ended up with the winning score after 18-holes, Jeff had to check the scorecard of course and then questioned my score-keeping…I told him that maybe he should carry the card & pencil around the next time and do it himself. ;)
We stopped by to pick up a water ice to share for dessert, and then we dropped by Redbox to pick up a movie for that night. I actually convinced Jeff to watch ‘Twilight’ with me, and much to my surprise, he enjoyed it and thought it was a good movie. That’s about as close to a chick-flick as I can get Jeff!
After those couple stops, we made it back to our friends’ house to pick up the kiddies. Of course they were having a blast and didn’t want to come home, so we stayed and visited for a little while. I’m just glad to be able to have a night out together every now and then. It’s definitely something to look forward to!
Just a few random pictures from July. We've been enjoying the outdoors, the gym, the library, the pool, and especially warm weather & friends!
Daddy & the boys. They love it when Jeff is home.
Caleb's family portrait. He drew Daddy 'grumpy' and decided not to draw himself in the picture.
This is how I found the boys the other morning. Jacob decided to hop in with Matthew to keep him company. Caleb wanted to pose in the picture. Sweet brothers.
My grandma sent this little outfit for Matthew. I thought he looked cute in the baby blue.
We bought more than enough sparklers, so we've been trying to use them up. The boys love them. It's fun to watch their expressions, especially Matthew's.
I finished another baby quilt. It was fun to use girl colors this time.
On Wednesday we finally made our first trip out to the beach this year. I can’t believe it’s taken us so long. Of course, we’ve been gone a lot of the summer and the weather over the past month hasn’t exactly been cooperative, but once we were out enjoying the warm sand and water I couldn’t believe it had taken us so long. We love it and we’ve missed it! We went with a big group of friends for a playgroup.Some people might think we’re crazy, a few moms with 20+ kids; but it works out great. The kids love playing together and usually keep themselves entertained. (Plus if we stake out a spot early enough, we get the area to ourselves since no one else wants to come and sit next to such a big group.)
We left about 9am, packed enough food to stay all afternoon and didn’t end up leaving the beach until about 3:30pm. The day was perfect, warm enough that the cool water felt pretty good. Fortunately we also came away without sunburns- minus the silly odd-shaped spot on my back that I somehow missed with sunscreen.
Jacob and Caleb had a blast playing the sand, building castles, digging pits, playing in the water and bodysurfing.Matthew mostly liked playing in the sand, destroying sand castles, sitting in the big dug-out holes, and even getting into the water a little bit at the end. Of course, he also thought it was fun to run down the beach which meant I had to chase him a few times, but for the most part he was pretty good.
(Most of the moms in the group, we're missing a couple)
Even though we stayed for a good amount of the day, it was still hard to convince the boys that it was time to go home. The drive home was nice. Caleb and Matthew pretty much conked out for most of it. Jacob was my little buddy and we visited the whole way home. We were all excited to see Daddy when he got home, and hope he’ll be able to join us next time. Hopefully it won’t be too long before next time!
Our 4th of July celebration was great this year. It's always fun to celebrate, but this was the first time in a couple years that we actually didn't get rained on at any point during the day. In the morning we met up with friends at the park for a BBQ. It's always fun to have a good excuse to get the families together for an afternoon. The kids love running around the park together too. One of my favorite parts about this year was the softball game. I haven't played in a long time and I've missed it; it was such a blast. We didn't end up leaving until late in the afternoon, and then headed home for some quiet time. Later on that evening we left to go see the fireworks. We stopped by our friends house first to do some little fireworks with our kids- they loved watching them, and lighting an endless amount of sparklers. Afterward we went to see if we could still catch the downtown fireworks. This was the first time over the past few years that we didn't go right downtown. We found a nice little area not too far from our home. It's not quite the same watching from a distance, I miss hearing the noise, but it was sure nice to pick up afterward and be home in 15 minutes instead of the normal hour & a half. It was such a nice way to spend the 4th of July. It sure makes us grateful for liberty, a wonderful country, and wonderful friends.
I came across this a couple years back and saved it under my 'schedules/chores' folder. I happened across it again today and once again got a good laugh from it. Any of these sound familiar?
THE MANY VARITIES of CLEANING WOMEN
The Midnight Madness Method Ladies, this is no sale. Midnight Madness refers to the late nights some women endure so they can wake up to a clean house. Unfortunately, she tends to sleep in late, wake up to a mad rush, run the kids to school in pajamas, and come home in time to wake up the toddler (who stayed up late, too). The day doesn’t really start until about 10 A.M., and there’s no time for her to catch her breath (or a quick nap) until the kids are in bed…at which time she spends the rest of her energy putting the house to bed.
The Saturday Super Cleaner Saturday is a special day, and not just because it’s the day before Sunday. In a Saturday Super Cleaner’s household, it’s the day that each family member wakes up to a list of chores that must be completed before playing can begin. This scenario can quickly become a nightmare (Windex on the cat, Ajax sprinkled down the hall, etc.), but she lives through it week after week with the distant hope that the children will grow up and she’ll be the proud recipient of praise when a lucky spouse realizes what a tidy treasure he or she has found!
The Anti-Cleaner The Anti-cleaner doesn’t live on any sort of schedule—not for eating, or sleeping, and definitely not for cleaning! She’ll admit messes do happen, so when she’s motivated by the sheer necessity of spilt Kool-Aid, she grabs a mop and cleans up to a two-foot radius of the spill. This way, she gets to the entire kitchen floor about once a month.
The Hormonal Housewife The Hormonal Housewife needs to be in a certain emotional state of mind to get some real cleaning done. Luckily, this happens on a monthly basis. She allows the boiling lava of her frustration to erupt into a fit of dusting, vacuuming, and scrubbing. The family members quickly recognize the “don’t bother me; I’m cleaning” look and are obliged to hide in the dark corners of the storage room for a while. Just give her a little elbow room and a lot of chocolate and she’ll be back to normal about the time the house starts to shine like the top of the Empire State Building.
The Company Crisis Commander A ringing doorbell is the most common reason the Company Crisis Commander is called to action. She turns into a drill sergeant and barks orders, “Stacks of books go in the cupboard, dishes in the oven, and Sammy’s science project (or was it his lunch?) in the dishwasher!” Meanwhile, the unsuspecting guest waits on the front porch up to five minutes before being ushered into a very tidy front room by a very sweaty family member.
Holly Hobby Yes, Holly Hobby is still around. She can’t think of much else to do with her spare time. Look at her calendar! Monday: laundry. Tuesday: garbage. Wednesday: dust. Thank heaven for Sunday or she’d never take a day off! This woman might be found enjoying an evening polishing china or reorganizing a closet. When you ask if she’s done anything fun lately, she might mention washing walls or taking the car to the carwash.
The Toddler Tornado Type If you are lucky as to have passed through the toddler stage at your house, you can skip this section or read through and reminisce.The mother of a Toddler Tornado has no choice. She'll sweep and mop the kitchen to find crumbs less than five minutes later.
She'll vacuum the back seat of the car to find it crushed-cracker-encrusted by the time you arrive at the airport ot pick up Grandma (who happens to be the Meticulous Machine type). Somehow, these Moms can't simply walk through their home without noticing ten items that need to be picked up, wiped off, or washed.
The Meticulous Machine The Meticulous Machine scrubs, scours, and sterilizes on a schedule! No dish is left in the sink longer than an hour, no clutter is left on the floor, and there are cleaning chores assigned to every day, week, and season. There is no such thing as spring cleaning in this household because the blessed event goes on year-round! You might recognize her by the twitch in her left eye as she watches a child tramp mud through the house.
On Thursday, Jeff found out that his vacation day had been switched and he had the day off. It was a last minute thing, but we had gotten some discounted tickets to Hershey Park, so we figured it would be a perfect day to go. It’s a little bit of a drive, but we’re always up for a good drive together.
The boys loved it and had such a good time. HersheyPark is set up that it is both an amusement park and a water park. We started with a couple rides for the kids. It’s fun that they can all go on the rides together now. Matthew wasn’t big enough the last time we were at an amusement park, but he loved the rides this time! We slowly made our way over to the water park. The water park isn’t huge, but we had fun playing with the kids in the kiddie area, and taking a couple turns around the lazy river together as a family. Jeff and Jacob went on a water ride while Matthew & Caleb and I played in the wave pool.
About that time it started to get a little overcast and windy, so we decided to head over to the amusement park. The first ride we did was the big slide. Jacob rode down with Matthew on his lap, and I rode down with Caleb. They were short on bags, so the only way to be able to all go down together was to share the bags. Caleb wasn’t too happy about that, as you can easily see on his face. He had wanted to ride by himself. We still had a fun ride.
I think we moved over to the amusement park just in time, because not too long after that we had a down-pour. Thankfully, eastern downpours are pretty famous for being somewhat short. The kids rode a particular ride about 8 times in a row, and then it cleared up. We decided that would be a good time to change from swimsuits back into regular clothes since we were pretty sure we wouldn't be doing any more water activities.It even made it nice because many people left at that time, or were waiting it out indoors so we were able to hit a few rides without any lines. Caleb got his own personal ride on the train. I thought it looked so funny seeing this big train ride with one little kid sitting on it, but Caleb was in heaven. Jacob and Jeff were also able to go right up to the front on the roller coasters. I was impressed with how much Jacob loved the big rides! Jeff said that some of the roller coasters were intense for him!
We went on all sorts of rides, and then made our way to the chocolate factory tour. It was nice to have a sit down ride for the whole family and we all loved seeing how all the chocolate is made. (Being there made me think of you Grandma Tanner…Wish I could have passed some of that yummy Hershey’s chocolate on to you!) Definitely made us hungry, it’s a good thing they give out free candy bars at the end of the tour. Matthew was still wearing his candy bar on his face afterwards, so the rain that had started to drizzle down again came in handy for cleaning everyone up.
Even though it was starting to rain again, the boys were adamant that they wanted to ride more rides. Even Matthew who was so tired, kept pointing to the rides and asking to go on them. So we went back into the park and let them go on a few more. We did the carousel as a family and then let the boys ride a bunch of the little kiddie rides, which were pretty much the only ones still open at that point. Actually the rides were a pretty good place to be right then because most of them were covered from the rain.
We finally decided to head home at 8:30pm when we couldn’t soak up any more of the rain. We stopped for some dinner on the drive home, and all the boys were so tired from their busy day that they were asleep within 20 minutes of getting on the highway. Which meant that Jeff and I had a nice conversation on the way home. Although it was wet, it was a nice, very much enjoyed vacation day.
This past week Caleb was playing goalie and made some great saves. Jut look at that massive group of kids- I was impressed he was able to stop the ball with that big of a force behind it!
When Jacob went out with his group to get stretched and warmed up, Matthew decided that it was his turn too. The next thing we knew, Matthew was sitting out with the group doing the stretches with them. It was pretty funny. I sent Jeff out to take a picture while I sat on the sideline and watched. Matthew really does think he’s just one of the big kids.
It was fun to watch Jacob’s practice and especially the game at the end. His age group is all boys from 5-9 so there are some boys that are much older and much bigger. It was kind of funny because for the game, the coach ended up putting the three smallest/youngest against the three oldest/biggest. Jacob actually surprised me though, because he went right out and took the ball and took it down to the goal. He’s getting a lot more aggressive about going after the ball. You can see in the picture that he’s got the ball while he’s surrounded by much older boys.
I enjoy the program, especially that it’s meant to be for fun and isn’t as competitive as other soccer clubs. The coaches are a lot of fun, we especially enjoy Julie who also happens to be in our ward. It's been such a fun experience for the whole family.
