A Black Eye

Yup… Another first, a black eye.

The Chef was helping some friends finish their basement so I naturally took Junior to baseball practice. It’s pretty early in the season, so RJ gets to bat and field with the team and I get to help the coaches.

It was a pretty quiet practice. Everyone had a chance at bat, and the coach hit a grounder to Junior. It took a couple of hops and as he held his glove against the ground to get it, it hit a rock and bounced right at his eye.

I was, of course talking to the kid on first when I saw the outfield coach bend down over Junior. By the time I got to second base it was swelling pretty bad. I ran to get his water bottle to put some ice on it and this time when I got to second base, there were two tears running down his face and he was rocking back and forth.

In a total mom move, I said “We’re heading home.”

I grabbed our stuff, RJ open the car and one of his coaches carried him to the car and put him in.

We were home in just minutes. He was unable to open it very far at this point. He assured me he could see, so we just put ice on it.

Five minutes later, one of the moms was at the door making sure he was ok. After a short visit, we walk to the door assuring her we were okay and both his coaches are getting out of their cars…. coming to check on him. He was of course not in the mood to have all his baseball buddies over for a playdate, so he just hid behind the bag of ice on his face.

The next day it looked the worst…

But a week later, the yellowing has started to go away and many pop-flys and grounders later, the gun-shyness has gone away too.

Stickers

I have come to realize that I don’t like stickers. Where are they supposed to go exactly? On your shirt for your mom to wash and thus ruin? On your hand so it falls off almost anywhere? Walls… please no.

We came up with the under-the-kitchen-table plan quite early. It works especially well when the kids actually like to play under the kitchen table… but not so much, when they don’t.

Someone else must feel this way too, because just a step up from coloring books are sticker books. Yup, the stickers go right in the book. For Easter, both Junior and RJ got sticker books. Both got right to work and now that it is full, both have about 500 extra stickers. Did I just really walk into that trap or what?!?! Of course they are going to have extra.

What do you do with the extra besides decorate every birthday card and gift that goes out the door?

Here is my answer…

I bought wrapping paper at IKEA, all brown thinking I could dress it up for boys or girls with ribbon. They each got wall-to-wall paper to create on. Stickers and crayons (markers go thru to the wall). They were at it for hours, they even had friends join them.

 

Sorry, no picture of Junior creating Legoland. It was created under lock and key…

 

Turns out, coloring on the wall is allot funner than the alternative.

Mothers Day 2012

I always amaze myself with either my pure happiness or my total selfishness on such holidays.

This year I though I would list all the joys I experienced. So here we go…

a rainy day

a nap

a family movie

thoughtful gifts

spending time with my mom & dad

spending time with my in-laws

homemade tea bags

walking the dog

watching the kids ride their bikes

making masterpieces with sidewalk chalk

going for a run

watering the garden

each of the “Happy Mothers Day” wishes

It was a good, good Mothers Day.

Before and After

Before and After…

   

Never say that a haircut doesn’t transform your look! We didn’t even know his left front leg was crooked under all that hair. And what you can’t see well, is that his tail cut looks like a stalk of asparagus.

Whenever I am down, I will look at this and smile…

Herb Garden

It started with a bit of research on what types of plants keep bugs away. Turns out, most of the herbs we love to cook with. So the Chef built a new garden just for the herbs…

I added the sticks to keep track of what we got out there…

 

 

It smells yummy to me (hopefully not to the mosquitos and wasps)!

The Tulips Dance

RJ joined the Tulips, a dance class, this winter. It was just perfect for her because both friends from school and church were there! And she loves friends.

After each class I would ask what she learned and she always said “the same thing.” Probably because her instructor, Miss Natalie, has 6 five-year-olds that are expected to dance their little hearts out at a recital in the spring. And its spring… and the Tulips danced last night!

Leave it to a dance recital to reveal yourself to you…

I was not fully stressed, until I received the page (front and back) of instructions for the night of the performance and the tech & dress (in layman’s terms, reversal). Top of the stress list: the bun! The instructions spelled out in detail what was acceptable and not… specifically fly aways. No fly aways. Not only have I never done a bun but I have never done her hair without fly aways… never. It’s like one of the coolest parts of being a five-year-old with fabulous hair… it looks great undone. Or do I just think that because the thought of doing her hair daily is too daunting? Either way I need some serious help. I get advice from lots and lots of stage moms… hair and make-up advice, because if we are being honest, I don’t know squat about make-up either. I was told to buy bobby-pins that are the same color as her hair (did you know they made those), lots of make-up or they get washed out on stage (really) and to hang the costume upside-down to get the wrinkles out and get it nice and poofy (did you know this). This is a whole new world.

This was my first attempt at a sock bun (thanks to Pinterest) yup, there’s a sock in there…

Cute right?!?! Um, do you see the fly aways? There is as much hair down as there is up… Not okay for the recital.

But I have awesome friends… L met me at rehearsal for a make-up run thru because, in addition to not knowing what I was doing, I didn’t have all the stuff. Then she came over before the true recital and did it again…

  

We arrive…

We take a ton of photos, because let’s face it… we aren’t doing this again.

The girls from school…

The girls from church…

Then we wait, patiently…

Then it was show time (2nd from right, giggling)…

 

As you can imagine, we saw it all. And RJ did a fabulous job! You could tell the girls who had stage fright and froze from the ones who had stage fright and went into auto pilot doing the dance. But after all the rehearsals, she was smiling and having a good time up there.

She didn’t really like dance until she got on stage…Uh Oh.

You have 10 minutes…

It is dry around here. Dry and summer means fires. The first one of the season took 3 lives and 27 homes. Watching a snip-it of the lives it has torn apart on TV made me think…

What would you take if you had 10 minutes to get out of your home (it probably wont be there when you return)?

We went through a myriad of things… photo albums, computer…

Really. A computer… because it would make life a bit easier to get back on track once the ash settled? Everything we would take would be stuff, literally, stuff. Stuff I like or that has sentimental value, but isn’t stuff just stuff in the end?

Which brings me to the real question… if all was lost, with the exception of your family, would you want to get back on the track you are on?

And if the answer just happens to be no, what do you need to do to get on the right track (with the exception of having everything burn to ashes)?

We are having a garage sale….

I know… deep ponderings, just to get to a simple answer.