The Big Surprise 4-0!

Well we got him. When I asked him if he knew about the surprise he looked at me and said, "It's September 15th! Why would I think it would be for my birthday??" So the beauty of my, let's do the surprise a month early plan, worked! The day began with pouring down rain and we were all a little bummed. We had no idea what we were doing to begin with, and were pretty sure we weren't going to get any better with rain. But in the end the rain was a blessing in disguise. The rain kept all of the "regulars" off the field and it was just the 10 of us for the first few hours which was so much fun. I believe everyone had a much better time than they thought they would- including Marc since he thought he was going to shoot girlscouts not good friends. We even stayed after closing time so we could use up our ammo. After lunch a couple of young kids came. The amusing thing is they were as afraid of us as we were of them. They were nervous to play against us until we pointed out that we were bigger and slower than they were. We also let them choose one of our team members to be on their team and they chose Kelly because "she is Excellent". Unbeknownst to them she had only arrived 15 minutes earlier and had only played one round, but played it "excellently". We had a great day, ending in much re-hashing of the days exploits. Anyone else a little sore today?



Steve in all his glory looking fierce.

A few choice shots.

at the end of the day, a little worse for the wear.
I will upload all of the pictures and put a link here to view them so check back tomorrow. Thank you to everyone who came yesterday and giving Marc a great day.

Just some Picture Taking

So I am taking another online photography course. This time from a photographer whose work I have been admiring, it is more of a mentoring course. Justin had a playdate yesterday. Jessica takes dance with a girl who has a 2yr old brother. We, the moms, realized that is makes a heck of a lot more sense for one mom to drive the girls to dance and the other mom to watch the two boys at their house. Everyone is happier. This week was my turn to watch the boys. With a photo assignment looming I grabbed my camera and followed them around the backyard. I got a lot of bad photos- I will spare you those, but I also got some good ones. Aidan has not been traumatized by my constant photo taking, so he looked everytime I called his name- love that! Here is my favorite one of Aidan and a couple of Justin.

Justin's First Day of School

Justin's first day of school today. Boy were we all excited! Before school starts the children all received a picture to color and some clues about a story they will all read on the first day. This year they received a race car and had to decide where the race car was going and what happened to it on the way. They also had to name their car. Justin's gave his car the same name that Justin has, that was easy. He barely let a crayon touch the paper so that didn't take too long and he decided the wheel fell off and it was going to California. Well the car fell in the lake and it was on the way to the ice cream shop. I couldn't get a pic of him before school started, he was too excited to go inside, but he complied when I picked him up.

Here he is showing everyone his car and what he think happened.

Here is Sydnie, she and Justin have known each other since he was only a few weeks old. She knows how to pose for the first day of school pictures!

First Soccer Game

Today was Jessica's first soccer game. [FYI, for those of you wondering what the rules are for such small players here are the differences: the game is only played on a half field, there are 6 players on the field, they are required to pass 3 times before they can try to score, the goals are smaller and it is only one hour.] Jessica said her stomach hurt this morning and I realized that she was really nervous about the game. She told Aunt Sheri on the phone last night that she was nervous about playing in a crowd of soccer players. We talked about it and decided that as long as she tried her best and had a good time it didn't matter how she played. She began the game on the sidelines. Once she was put in they put her into a forward position. This is not her strength, she doesn't really have the stamina at this time to run non-stop. After half time they put her back on defense. There are 2 official coaches and 2 dads they are well helper coaches. All 4 of these people are on the field with the kids in addition to the 2 high school referees. One of the helper coaches realized that Jessica needed some extra help and became her personal coach- it was just what she needed. He stayed right next to her and encouraged her and gave her advice on what to do. She did much better on defense. THEN they decided to make Jessica goalie. We were sitting next to our neighbor and her son was goalie and it was driving her nuts (especially when our team scored 3x in a row). Oh no. Every mother's worst nightmare. On the plus side our team has at least two really good players and that means that the ball stays pretty far away from our goal most of the time.

Here she is suiting up to be goalie...
waiting....
showing that she is alert and ready to stop the ball if needed (notice her personal coach hanging out at the goal with her)...
HER BIG SAVE!!!!!
She did it! She stopped a goal and almost stopped another one later. More importantly she wasn't intimidated and threw herself right in there to try to get the ball. I thought she did great. She was very happy and said she had a great time. They don't keep score (well not officially although I am sure some people were). We have at least one game every weekend sometimes one on Saturday and one on Sunday until the 3rd week in October, so you might be seeing a lot of these pictures in the future.

Water Fun!

Nothing like a hose and a sprinkler to create some fun! Kids did a great job of entertaining themselves this weekend (not such a great job of staying dry). Marc was able to work outside and they played nearby. Wait until you see all the yard word that got accomplished! Wish I could say the same about the inside of the house, but as you all know this work is very quickly undone. I was cleaning when he was outside, but if you stop by you won't notice much of a difference.

Poor Bonk

so in June we got a new driveway, and we are so happy. never thought I would rave about a driveway, but I do. one of the best things is that the kids have a great place to play now. they can draw with chalk on our driveway, something that just wasn't possible in its previous state. so this weekend the kids were drawing outlines of themselves, parking spaces for their bikes, Justin chalked up his tire and made all sorts of drawings. they entertained themselves for hours, a true blessing. alas Bonk may not feel the same way. he went and had a nice roll around on the driveway and now he is a little pink. anyone have ideas on how to get pink chalk off a cat?

Playing with Pictures

took some pics this weekend and I am playing around with them. below you will see the before and the after shots. I think I like the after on the first one but the after on the second one has a little too much vignetting, what do you think? at least I got rid of the ugly hose across the yard. took some other pics too and I will post those soon. We had a really nice weekend.