Springtime Adventures!

Spring 2014

I always start these posts thinking that I have just a few pictures from our phones that I need to be sure to add.  By the time I finish looking at them all, a couple of photos has become a couple dozen.  Quite often, these posts end up being some of my favorites.  Of course, the big moments and holidays spent with friends and family are really special, but just as special are the everyday moments spent doing everyday things. These times often get lost as time goes by and the big moments seem to become the big memories.  But all these everyday moments are the foundation of our family and the memories we make together. These are lots of negative things about having our smart phones with us each and every moment, but I love that it allows us to document some of our daily life - I'm quickly realizing these moments pass in the blink of an eye...

This year, the vegetable and herb garden became a gravel pit for the kids.  The gravel is wonderful because the kids don't track piles of sand into the house when they're finished.  They've enjoyed it:

They've also enjoyed hanging out on the back patio in their cute mini Adirondack chairs from Momom and Popop:

Jack ran out to pout in the gravel pit one day.  I don't remember now what he was mad about, but he's just about to lose his pants.  He'll love me for this one when he gets older:

Sometimes, it was still a bit chilly outside so we played inside. Jack as quite the collection of Ninja Turtles and loves to have them battle the turtle villains.  Sometimes, the turtles switch it up and battle his cars.  This photo was taken one morning when Jack and Daddy were playing.  Leo, Raph, Mikey and Donny with April and Casey fighting Shredder on the Shellraiser.  Love it.

Jack got both of these masks in birthday party favor bags.  This picture just makes me smile.

We also played a little dress up.  Here's Princess Livi:

You'll never guess Jack's costume of choice!

This wasn't really even dress up, but it was too cute not to add.  My little gangster guy!

I turned around in the car one day and saw this cuteness:

And another time, I managed to catch this little argument on video.  They were arguing over the high-quality song "Who Let the Dogs Out" and whether they said "Who, Who, Who," or "Woof, Woof, Woof."  Miss Livi didn't ever back down and I love how she manages to get the last word.  I have a feeling that is just a sign of things to come:

When the weather was nice, we enjoyed spending time outside.  Livi was big enough to think that she could start climbing on everything in the playground, but small enough for this to freak her Mommy out.  She's an independent one! 

We bought this bike trailer from one of our neighbors and took it for a spin around the neighborhood the day we brought it home.  It has been in the garage since then.  Hopefully we'll get back out and ride some more when the sweltering heat of the summer subsides a little.

While Grandma was visiting her friend Sheila in England, Grandpa stopped by for a night on his way to the Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City:

One weekend, we stopped by Arts in the Square in downtown Frisco.  It wasn't a bad way to spend a few hours, but overall, I wasn't too impressed.  There were a quite a few local art booths and a couple of food trucks, but not exactly what I expected.  It was a beautiful day to enjoy outside, though.

We stopped for snow cones.  Livi wasn't feeling great, so we had trouble getting her to  smile for the camera.  Poor girl!

Jack, on the other hand, was thoroughly enjoying his snowcone:

They had roped off a section of the pavement for some chalk art.  Jack found one that he loved.  You'll never guess what it was.  Heroes in a half shell!

One Saturday, Tommy had an autocross race, so the kids and I headed to the Spring Carnival at Kids R Kids.  This may have been Livi's first time in a bounce house and she loved it!  I started to get nervous when a few big kids climbed in and started bouncing her all over the place, but she had a great time!  I had to pull her kicking and screaming on to the next activity.

Like they usually do, they had a petting zoo.  Usually, Jack doesn't really want to have much to do with the animals, but this time, he actually enjoyed petting and brushing the lambs.

Maybe is adventurous little sister is rubbing off on him!

Next we headed to the Fun Bus.  Jack used to get to go on the fun bus weekly, but I think this was Livi's first time and she jumped in head first, like she does on everything:

There was also a painting station.  It was pretty windy, and Jack's art blew up in his face a number of times, so his shirt got a little painted too.  The paint came out, but this shirt wasn't long for the world anyway.  A few weeks after this picture, Jack brought this shirt to me with a big hole in it that he'd tried to tape with scotch tape.  When I asked him how it happened, he said he just found it.  When pressed a little further, he admitted that maybe he'd tried to cut his shirt with his scissors - but he fixed it with tape.  Mommy explained why that didn't really fixed the shirt and Mr. Jack lost scissor privileges for a week.  Silly guy!

Livi enjoyed her art time, too!

One of the last things we did was get our faces painted.  Livi chose a princess crown:

Jack, of course, asked if they could make him a Ninja Turtle, so they did their best to give him a Leonardo mask:

It came out so well that two of his buddies, Jordan and Brayden, also decided that they needed to be Ninja Turtles.  Such a trendsetter!!

Raw Meat!

Spring 2014

Springtime also marked the beginning of season #3 of outdoor soccer for Jack and his second season with the Sidekicks. All of the kids from the first Sidekicks season returned except 2 and we added a couple of new boys.  The skill level at this age is so different - some kids really get it and some aren't quite there yet. Our team falls somewhere in the middle.  There were some games where a couple of kids from the other team ran circles around our team and there were other games that were actually pretty evenly matched.  It is fun to get to watch all of the boys over the course of multiple seasons and see how they improve and develop an understanding for the game.

About 2/3 of the way through the season, something clicked for Jack. He stopped being as scared of other kids trying to take the ball away from him and started being aggressive - taking the ball from the other team and protecting it from being taken when he had it.  I was never known for being aggressive.  In fact, my coach in middle school would make me yell "Raw Meat!" and growl before each game.  It was fun seeing him start to understand this aspect of the game and enjoy the competition.  We took the camera to one of the games towards the end of the season and Tommy got some great action shots.  Here are Jack and Cole playing around before the game started: 

I love the focus on his face as he dribbles down the field:

He won't always be able to do this, but right now it's working pretty well for him to use his arms to shield the ball from others: 

I think this is my favorite shot of my little fighter: 

Tommy loves this one - it was taken right after Jack shot the ball into the goal.  Jack is doing his excited fist pump and the kid from the light blue team is covering his face and looking distraught that Jack scored.  And we don't even keep score yet!

Soccer also seemed to really click for the first time with Aiden this season.  He scored his very first goal towards the end of the season, and went on to score three more that game! 

Carver is the smallest boy on the team, but when decides he wants to play, he's a really good little player:

After the last game, Coach Lynsey handed out trophies and everyone enjoyed some soccer cupcakes:

Go Sidekicks!!

They took team pictures at the FC Dallas stadium this season and I thought they were really cute.  I love how big everyone is smiling in this picture.  From left to right - Jack, Antonio, Aiden, Cole, Tristan, Jayden, Carver and Coach Lynsey:

And my cute boy all by himself!

Making Memories with Grandma and Grandpa

March 2014

 

As I mentioned in my last post, from Austin, we headed to Boerne to spend a couple of days with Grandma and Grandpa.  It was late on Sunday night when we arrived, but that didn't stop Grandpa and Jack from getting themselves some ice cream for dessert:



Unfortunately, we only had one full day in Boerne before we had to head back to Frisco, but it was really nice not to have any big plans and just spend the day hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa.  We pulled a lot of my old games out of the game cabinet, including the old favorites Hungry Hippos and Ants in the Pants.  We did go on one outing. I'm almost embarrassed to say that I had never taken my kids to the public library.  We read every night and they love their books, but we've never actually been to the library.  Well, Grandma volunteers at the Boerne Public Library, so she knew she had to change that!

They had a great time at the library.  I forget the maximum number of books you could check out, but I think we had to put a few back to be at that limit. It took a little while to pick out the perfect ones - and we had to stop and read a few along the way:

There was also a little area with letter magnets and these gear magnets - we spent quite a while there too, spelling our names and making the gears move.

Grandma also let them each pick out a movie.  Grandpa and Jack shared some of Grandma's famous chocolate chip cookies over one of them.  They really bonded over their desserts!

We headed back to Dallas on Tuesday around noon. I wish we could've stayed longer, but we had a really nice trip. The drive home was pretty uneventful - we stopped for some snacks at Buc-ees and watched Frozen a couple of times.  Jack loves to sing along, especially to "Let It Go" and "Do You Want to Build a Snowman."  Did you know that they play "Let It Go" in 4 different languages at the end of the DVD? Yep, they do - English, Spanish, Italian, and Malaysian.  Jack tried to sing along to every one.  I tried to take a video with my phone, but I soon realized that it wasn't so smart to try to video the backseat while driving 75 MPH on 1-35.  It was pretty cute.  Sweet boy.