The best of the rest of May

Besides all the "big" stuff that happened in May lots of little daily things happened as well.  I absolutely had to take pictures just to annoy my kiddos.

Samuel had the biggest and busiest month of anyone.  He played on two different baseball teams and a flag football team.  He had a second piano recital and a little musical at school.  It's a good thing he likes to be active!

playing his duet with his teacher

Samuel with Mrs. Harriet

Elena and all the kindergartners performed at school.  They are all so cute!  Elena is a cute flower! She continued to love swim team and looks so cute in her googles!

Ranger and I started running together.  At first it was just a little over a mile, but he is getting more acclimated to the heat and humidity.  We finished a 4 mile run in 39 minutes on Memorial Day.  Cats can be an issue and require lots of extra leash holding by me, but I am really happy with how well he is doing!  Ranger also picks up Emma from school every day with me.  He loves the car!

Drew and I had a fun afternoon on a Saturday to ourselves.  The kids all participated in the "Kids Run the Ballpark" at Rice.  They did some announcing, field crew work, sold items in the store, and did lots of touring.  They had a great time.  We had a great time at lunch and watching 5 innings of baseball with no kids!

Mia's downtown is yummy!

Yes these cute faces sold me some Rice gear!

Haude had career day.  Samuel was an Army Ranger.  Elena was a vet.  Jonah was an "I'm not sure".

Finally, I started my little job at church.  I have loved volunteering at Golden Gathering in various ways for years.  I started attending the monthly gatherings in September when Elena started school full time.  I have loved every minute.  Our sweet guests have a special place in my heart and it is something I look forward to every month.  When my friend retired I had the opportunity to be the Golden Gathering leader.  I have big shoes to fill, but I am super excited about the opportunity.  My first on my own meeting was this month and I made these baseball cookies for dessert.

So, May was filled with lots of craziness and activities.  We made great memories.  June brings the end of school and the start of our summer travels.  I am ready for summer!!

Mother's Day weekend

My Mother's Day weekend was filled with lots of love, fun, firsts, and lasts.

The first was Elena's first ever swim meet.  When she asked to swim I was so happy she wanted to do her own thing and so stressed about adding one more thing to our schedule.  We have made it work with help from friends and she is loving it.  She was so happy and nervous about everything, but she did very well!

The last was Samuel's last baseball game with Coach Hamm and as a member of a Farm League baseball team.  He will be moving on to a more challenging league next year.

The fun was watching my kiddos play sports, but also going to as Astros game with Tina.  Of course the Astros lost because that is what they do. But, we went without kids and had a blast.  At least the game went into extra innings so there was some definite excitement in the game.

The love came in the form of sweet cards and little gifts from my kiddos.  Drew gave me beautiful flowers.  I did not have to cook and that was great!

Smash Baseball...Samuel

As everyone knows well, Samuel loves baseball....watching and playing.  He played again this spring on the same Farm League team as last year.  It was not the best experience, but he enjoyed his teammates and made some good new friends. He even hit two in the park homers (the outfield fence is way beyond 8 year old distance).   Because it was not the best season and because of a timely opportunity to play on a select team, Samuel continues to play baseball.

Thanks to friends whose son also loves and plays baseball, Samuel was invited to join the Smash 8U team.  It is a new team with boys and one girl from all over so there has been some adjustment.  The first tournament did not go so well, but the potential was very obvious.  There had only been maybe two practices before that tournament.  They finished the weekend 0-3.  A few weeks ago the team played in its second tournament and it went quite well.

For select ball there is pool play on Saturday and Sunday before elimination games begin Sunday afternoon.  On Saturday the team played two games and ended with a 1-1 record.  The Sunday morning result was the same.  Elimination play began at 12:30 and the game needed an extra inning for Smash to earn a come from behind victory.  It was super exciting....like hands shaking and couldn't sit still exciting!  So, the day that began on the fields at 8:15am would continue.  They were playing in the Championship game at 3pm!!!!

It was Smash vs. the Orioles and unfortunately Smash lost.  It was the same team Smash beat at 9am that morning.  Baseball is crazy like that!  However, it really was a victory.  The team played well.  They hit well and just played a better team in that game.  The boys and one girl gained a lot of confidence and of course, there were trophies.  The excitement on everyone's face was awesome and picture worthy!

As for Samuel, he played decently well all weekend.  He missed some easy plays in the field, but not all time.  He hit safely in all but one at bat.  He wanted to do better because he is his worst critic.  Singles will never be good enough in his mind, but Drew and I were proud of him.  Samuel has to learn to believe in his skills and that will come with time.

It was a long day for the moms and dads.  The players didn't seem to mind 10 hours at the ballpark!

Sweet friends Jackson and Kyle and a great dugout picture.

The trophy ceremony was great.  There is another tournament this weekend so I hope we get to experience it all over again!

Smash 8U

The sweet boys and their trophies!

Trey and Samuel

Such a large trophy for 2nd place!

Samuel and Jackson

I just love my #8 and am so proud of him for playing hard all the time!

Memorial Day weekend 2016

Wow....I haven't blogged in almost two months.  Sorry about that family.  I would say that I have been slacking and I guess that is kind of true.  But, in reality we have just been so busy all the time.  Between all the flooding/rain, end of school events, church stuff, and sports, I can barely keep up with my day to day tasks.  I used to write all our activities on the calendar one month at a time.  Now I do it one week at a time.   I think I can stop that insanity next week or I'm hoping that true!

Looking back at everything I want to remember I have lots of catching up to do.  I decided this would be the week to do that and who knows why because I have already cried about my schedule this week.  But, I will make this happen.  I have decided to start with our Memorial Day weekend and work my way backwards.

I just love three day weekends and I especially loved this weekend because we only had two activities on the calendar.  Two is a joke so I could not wait to spend time with my family!  Our weekend started with yet another rain storm.  When I looked at my phone on Friday it said 30% chance of rain.  Well let me tell you that it rained for 6-7 hours straight and it rained hard.  I had to drive through high water with the kids (it was quite unexpected because it has never flooded there previously) and they thought that was awesome.  Water was spraying everywhere and I was ignoring stop signs (safely I promise).  What was exciting to them was super stressful for me, but obviously all is well.  The rain resulted in everything being cancelled Friday night...yay!!!

Thankfully the sun made an appearance on Saturday and hung around for the weekend.  Elena had her swim meet Saturday morning which was quite the adventure.  The meet location had to be changed at the very last minute because of unsafe water conditions at the host pool.  Too much rain and the pH was off.  Crazy, crazy stuff!  Elena is really enjoying swimming except for backstroke.  She is part of the A relay and that makes her very happy.  She has already asked to swim all year so we shall see if that desire continues for her.

Emma and Ashlynn surprised Elena by coming to the meet

Sunday after church we took the kids to the Fallen Warriors Memorial.  The kids laid flowers at a place of their choosing.  We talked about what Memorial Day means and why we must pay our respect to those memorialized there and all soldiers.

We ended our Sunday with a cookout and roasting s'mores with friends.  The kids played and played past exhaustion and dirtiness, but it was so fun!

Grill Master

Samuel and his friend Ellis

Emma helping Zachary with his marshmallow

Happy, happy Emma feeding Isaac

Today was supposed to be spent at the pool and some of it was until Elena just needed to go home.  She coughed all day and just wore herself out after 30 minutes at the pool.  Poor baby has been asleep since 5:30 or so.  It is a bummer of a way to end our weekend.

You would never know how awful she felt looking at this picture

So thankful for my sweet family and that we could celebrate this holiday and our country's hero's together!