Another year blows by

Time is moving to fast. I blink my eyes and it seems like months have passed by in a blur. So I am going to try and catch my breath a bit and recollect a bit of what has been going on.

We celebrated my baby turning 4. Hard to believe it but she is. Unfortunately her birthday also happens to fall in April which is smack dab in the middle of baseball season and soccer season. Makes for planning a birthday party for her a little difficult. We celebrated with a small family birthday dinner like we always do. I mentioned it in a previous post. Finally, a month later we finally found a free time where we could have her "friend" party.

She picked none other than Chuck E. Cheese. It's not my favorite place but she really loved it and having her friends there to play with. She met Chuckie himself and seemed a bit impressed.

Then she went into the ticket wind tunnel with Zach to help her. She liked that, but she loves anything that her big brother Zach does with her. It was a fun time for her and her friends and that's what really matters.


So after celebrating Anna's birthday a month late, it literally was a blink of an eye until we celebrated my big boy turning 12. I can't believe I have a 12 year old. Seems like yesterday he was still a small baby. He also had a small family party and got his desired and highly coveted PS3. Instead of our normal chocolate cake, he made his own dessert. He spent the day at Grandmama's and Pappy's house and decided that he wanted Peanut Butter Rice Crispy treats. So not only did he turn 12 on me, he made his own "cake" so to speak. See what I mean by growing up so fast. And they were good too. I think I'll let him keep on making those. But I was keeping with the lack of birthday planning and forgot to take my camera out. So I didn't get my picture of my birthday boy on his actual birthday.

Two weeks later we celebrated Kate turning 6 years old. She turned 6 the day before we headed out to Omaha for the College World Series tournament Zach's team was playing in. So naturally we had another small family birthday dinner to celebrate.


And yes, the chocolate cake was there. Although Kate had been at grandmama's house and helped to frost it. I've never seen such a brightly colored cake before. She went to town with it. She enjoyed her pink DS she got and got to use it plenty over the summer. But in keeping with this awful habit I started with Anna this year, her friend party was about 5 weeks late.

She decided she wanted her first ever slumber party. So she picked a few friends from her summer camp and invited them over. It was a small group to begin with but it ended up being just three girls at the party. All the other kids were sleeping over at friends houses or grandmama's. So we went to the movies Friday night and swimming Sat. morning before all the fun finally ended. She loved it and wants to have another slumber party soon. Anna is begging to be included in the next one though. And again, I never took out my camera. Truly, I'm lacking in my pictures here aren't I?

So there we have another year flying past in a blink of an eye. For the time being, I am allowed to say I have a 12 year old, 7 year old, 6 year old and a 4 year old. It will change in a month's time when Michael finally turns 8 but until then I'm allowed. Hopefully his party won't be so late in arriving as the girls.

At the ballpark with Big Z

It's been a while since I've been at Z.'s game. With all the other kids and the games they have, it's been a real juggling act getting everyone where they need to go. But I did finally get to one of Zach's game and remembered my camera. He was pitching that day so I got a few shots of him on the mound and then the rest that I got were of him at 3rd base.

Watching to see what his pitch will be.



He gets set.


Winds Up.


And Releases


I was even able to catch him getting a grounder down the 3rd base line before he threw to first. I can't remember if it was an out or not but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.


Not a bad day for Zach at the ballfield or me and my camera. Always fun to get some good action shots of him.

My baby turns 4

Hard to believe it but my sweet baby girl turned 4 on me. She got to wear her birthday crown all day at school and was spoiled by all who saw her. Grandmama picked her up a little early from school and took her out for lunch. After that she got to go to the post office with grandmama. When she walked in they actually stopped and sang Happy Birthday to her. Not your typical postal group there.

She had grandmama make her cake for her. It was her favorite chocolate of course.

I had to get a picture of my big 4 year old with her mom and dad and grandparents.






Then she got down to the business of presents. With her brothers and sister encouraging her, it didn't take to long for her to get through them. She loved them all of course. That's just how she is. But she really likes her big girl Hello Kitty scooter alot.


She is such a sweet little girl and such a blessing. I am so proud to have her for my daughter.

The Big Egg Hunt

We were invited to some neighbors who live on the lake for an Easter Brunch and Egg Hunt. So we packed up the kids and the camera and headed out to visit with some of our friends around the lake. They had collected over 1500 eggs and had spread them out over the backyards of about three houses.


There were eggs everywhere and to me, it looked like more than enough eggs for the kids that were there. Z. had gone ahead earlier in the morning and helped to spread out the eggs for the smaller kids so he didn't actually hunt them. But he did give his little brother a heads up about an awesome egg which held a cool truck in it. He even showed him where he hid it. Then children were finally set free to gather eggs (it looked like a plague of locust swarming the eggs) leaving nothing behind. Anna made out pretty well and so did Kate and Michael. (Yes, he did get that egg Z. had staked out for him and was very excited about it).


We let the kids get settled in with checking out the eggs and all they held and the grown ups finally got to enjoy our brunch and Mimosa's. It was a big fun party that started early in the day and lasted through the afternoon.



Happily, the eggs didn't make it much longer so we didn't have much fighting about candy after that. But even the kids had so much fun they didn't complain to much.

Penny for your thoughts

I often wonder what my kids are thinking at random moments when I stop to watch what they are doing. Are they happy, sad or just content to be where they are and with what they are doing. In the photo below, she was sitting there in the goal, surrounded by soccer balls and she was happily picking flowers.


I love this one of my girls. I don't know what they were looking at but whatever it is, it's got both their attentions. Since they were so far away I couldn't ask them what they were looking at. So now I'm left to just wonder.

Soccer Saturday Happenings

It's soccer season right now. And I realized that I do not have any pictures of Michael playing soccer. I pulled out the telephoto zoom lens and went to the game. Now can I just say that my mom went with me and that it was beyond windy. I love my mom but I hate the wind. There now you know how I really feel. Anyways, I got some great pictures of Michael looking like he knows what he's doing.


He played extra hard on Saturday and did a really good job. And when I told him so he commented to me "Yeah, I wanted you to get some really good pictures of me so I tried really hard." Have to love that and yes I did get some really great pictures also.

Now Dad and Z. were off at a baseball tournament on a different windy hill so it was just me, mom and the girls watching the game. Well okay, the girls didn't watch a bit of it. Instead they played with their friends and found some interesting ways to keep themselves entertained.

And once they got tired of passing the ball between the tunnel of legs well they moved on but I'm not sure exactly what it was they were doing.

Surrounded by Super Heros

I've been surrounded by my share of Super Heros in our house. This is the year that Zach decided to be the Incredible Hulk and Michael decided to be Superman (aka Pooperman). Zach would put on his Hulk mask and Kate would cry, he would take it off and she would stop. So he didn't wear that mask at all around Kate.

But never fear Kate...Pooperman was there to save the day.

Back when they were little

I get a little sad going through some of these older pictures of my kids. They were so little and so cute. And now, they are not so little and and sometimes not so cute anymore. So it's always good to go back and find a little reminder of what they were like when they were little. Zach drove his first tractor down at Wanda and Bobby's house that day. He had a blast and so did Michael. I remember that day so clearly, hard to believe that it's been five years already.



Driving on that tractor led Michael into a very strong love of all tractors after that. It lasted for many years. He even had this tractor noise he used to make. It sounded terrible and had to hurt his throat every time he did it. Used to make me and Scott laugh so much.

Here's Michael when he was about 2 1/2 or so. Such a cute little face that doesn't have that baby look to it anymore.


And of course I can't not show a picture of Kate taken that same day. She was only about 6 months old. Love all that dark hair of hers, it's gotten so light now but I still don't mind that none of my kids have my dark hair. Well at least not much.


Here she is showing off her little piggy tails. Grandmama probably did it and then they stuck around for a few years. Just getting longer and longer.


She recently made me cut her long hair and no refuses to let me pull it into a ponytail of any sorts. I miss them and keep putting her off on getting another hair cut in hopes she'll let her hair grow back.

Playing on the swings

Here are a few more pictures of the girls that I found of them playing on the swings. I'm really missing that right now and think we need to get a new one...fast!







And after all that swinging I guess a serious thumb sucking nap was in order.


When Michael got home from school he proudly showed us all what he had made that day at preschool. Nothing like a Dalmatian dog hat is there?

Time Traveling

I've finally decided to turn this blog into a scrapbook (well of sorts anyways). I never did any baby books for any of my children since I knew I would not finish it or even be good about doing it for the 2nd,3rd and 4th child. So when I heard you could get your blog printed into a scrapbook I thought what a great idea. So I sent off to have my first year done and am now waiting for it to be printed.

Which brings me to my point. I don't have enough pictures of my kiddos on this thing from when they are little. So as I was looking for a picture to have put on the front of the scrapbook I saw all these great pictures of my kids that I would like to have on the blog for the next book that I get made. So I'm going to do a bit time traveling over the next few posts just to get some of them onto my blog before I forget about them again. And in looking through them, I realize that I really have very few pictures of all four of my kids together so I am going to have to break out the camera again and get busy.

But meanwhile here are a few I came across tonight.
Kate posing by our electric pumpkin.

Anna never one to miss out on a photo opportunity.

Michael showing Jack some love.

Now since it was close to Halloween I'd thought to include a picture of them all dressed up. This was the only one I could find that actually had all of them in it. But as usual at that age Anna would get up and walk away before I actually took the picture.

We were sporting a vampire, a police man, super girl and Minnie Mouse that year. I've seen those costumes played in many times since then and they definitely no longer look quite so good as that. Although it's funny Anna still to this day trys to get into that Minnie Mouse costume these days. She insists it fits, no matter how tight it is.

Spring Break Fun

It's been Spring Break this week. So I decided to take a few days off from work to be home with the kids. They spent the first two days with Grandmama and Pappy so they were already a bit spoiled. But it worked out well since the three youngest had all been sick the last week and a half. So once we got them on the way back to being healthy we were able to start in on a little bit of fun.

Z. got invited to go camping with one of his baseball teammates so he was gone for the first part of the week. It was great for me, he got to sleep in a tent and camp and I got to sleep in a bed and not freeze. He had fun but he admitted it was a bit to cold still.

We went bowling later in the week and met up with some friends for that fun. Then Z. went off for another sleepover and a Stars game. K. went for a sleepover at Grandmama's house and Hoss had a friend over for a sleepover. So lots of shuffling around of kids later and everyone had a good time.







We went and celebrated a friends birthday party. The location was at a church which had converted it's old sanctuary into a playzone area for kids. With a bounce house,play scape, and dress up area and small climing wall. A. spent most the time playing dress up it seemed but she liked the play scape as well.


Hoss had a good time until Elmo tried to eat his head...





We finished out the week with a day of shopping and ice skating. Z. hadn't been ice skating since we lived in Finland. He didn't remember any of it so had to relearn it but had fun. Hoss took a while but finally got it and was enjoying himself (although his pants were wet from the ice) and K. took to it like crazy. She was going fast and enjoyed it but for some reason insisted on holding on to mine or Hubs hand most the time. A. did not care much for it. She would go around once and then want to sit down. She was ready to take off her skates much sooner than everyone else. But she was a troooper and waited patiently until we were all done.







We finished out the day by stopping for popcorn and going to the Skatepark and watched all those boys in there doing wild and crazy tricks on their skateboards, skates and scooters. All I can say is thank goodness none of my boys are into skateboarding. No way would I want them doing that.

Tommorow is technically the last day of Spring Break but we don't have anything planned for it. The temps have dropped and it's snowing again so I may just pack the kids up and take them to the movies tommorow. Then after that it's back to school and work until summer vacation.