Friday Photo Story: First Baseball Practce

We have been through many extra curricular activities with Noah, trying to find his niche. There always seems to be something that just doesn't click to make it an activity that he wants to continue.

We tried soccer



2007











We tried self defense





2008













We've tried gymnastics


2009










We don't want to force anything on him, but we also want to give him a chance to try different things to find something that he might enjoy and possibly excel.

So Wednesday night we tried another...Little League.

I was worried that it would be like all the rest....novelty wearing off and seeming like too much work for him to want to see it through.

I was also worried that he would be behind the rest of the kids in his age group since it was his first year. I thought maybe he would be the only kid using a tee while the rest of the kids used the pitch machine and I feared that he would be out playing the sand way more than he actually paid attention to what was going on.

I MAY have been worrying for nothing. We may have found one that is going to stick with.

We got there late since I had gone to the wrong field for practice. But it was okay and he jumped right into playing catch with the other kids on his little team.

Then it was time to start batting. He was a little confused when it was time to put on a helmet



















but once he got up to the plate, he was open to stance help from the coach.



















And after watching a few of the pitches go past him,



















he made amazing contact with ball and got it out toward third base.



















I like how the coach had the practice structured. The each got two turns to bat and then rotated around the infield waiting for the ball to be hit to them.

I was so surprised at Noah in the "outfield" as well. I expected him to spend his entire time doing this:



















But surprisingly enough, each time a kid hit the ball, he hustled to be the first one to pick it up and throw it to first base.



















It was so much fun to watch him. I will miss his Monday night practices since I'll be teaching, but you can bet I'll be one of the loudest cheering on Wednesdays, and I am looking forward to when the games start (even though I have no idea when that will be yet).

The coach ended practice by letting the kids "run a home run" around the field twice, which other moms have told me ends up being the kids' favorite part of practices.














So of course, after a great first practice, there was only one way to celebrate...



















I have no idea if this will be "his thing" or not, but right now he is eager to go back on Monday and that's about all I can ask. I was so proud watching him tonight and you can be sure that I will be subjecting you to MANY baseball pictures in the weeks to come.

Have a great weekend.

Photo Story Friday: The Wheelz Were Rolling Again!

There was never a more perfect name for this blog than this post. As most of you know, my blog name is a play on our last name. Well last weekend, we had another opportunity for fun on wheels; Roller Skating.

I promised you on Monday in my Weekend Top Five that I would share the story, and here it is.

For my friend Deb's daughter's 8th birthday party, we went to a roller rink. Neither of the boys had been on skates before, so I knew it would be a memorable experience, no matter what happened.

The first thing you will notice is that Steve is NOT on skates. Due to a work related injury several years ago, my hubby has an ankle completely made out of steel, and no one wanted to take the chance of another fall.



But he was a great trooper, and stayed out on the rink pretty much the whole time, with Aaron mostly.











Noah started out pretty nervous at the beginning. He was a bit scared and kept a pretty tight hold on to either the wall or someone's hands.















As he got more comfortable though, he started getting a little more brave and started to venture out on his own.











It was so cute though, because every time he would venture off, if he fell down too far away from the wall, he would always crawl back to the wall to stand back up. I thought it was pretty clever of him.









He did take one nasty spill on the floor in the party room however, with the head thunk being heard from the other side of the room. That spill took some Mommy TLC and begging Daddy to take his skates off. I was worried that he was done for the rest of the time, but after a cupcake and piece of pizza, he was ready for action again.








After we had been there about a half hour or so, he noticed a boy from the 2nd grade (he's in first) was there, skating all over like a maniac, and his resolve to skate better became extremely strong. He even started to try skating with style like the other skaters.



By the time we left, he was making the rounds without us with him and I think he would have kept going if we hadn't needed to go.







Aaron had his own progression of the day.

When we started out, we put regular skates on him, just like Noah was wearing. But he was very unsure of himself and even panicked to the point where he refused to go back out skating again.















Steve took him out and took the skates off, and when he went to return them, the employees suggested those plastic kind that connect to the shoes to make it easier to skate.



This worked out WAYYYYYY better. He was able to pretty much walk on the skates with a little gliding once in awhile and he stayed a pretty happy camper the rest of the time.












Unlike Noah, who kind of go a little freaked each time he fell, Goofy Aaron decided that it was fun to PURPOSELY FALL, which he continued to do for the rest of the afternoon.















And then of course, I need to share with the one picture that cracked me up after I got home and started looking at my pictures.


At first glance, this is a sweet picture of a Daddy helping his son learn to skate.


At second glance, you see the second son flat out on the floor while Daddy is helping the one who is actually UPRIGHT at the time.

At third glance, you realize that the Mommy, who could be helping second son to GET UPRIGHT AGAIN is taking pictures instead.


Great parenting, huh? LOL





If course, it had been at least 20 years since I had been on skates, and I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it came back to me. I took one HUGE spill while skating with Deb's daughter, Hannah though and on Sunday morning I noticed a small ache while I was putting on my nylons. Steve took one look and said, "What is that?!" I looked down and saw this:



No wonder it hurt to put nylons on. At least it was all in the name of fun.











I hope you enjoyed our little learning adventure. Noah has asked to go again so that is now his next reward when he has a perfect week in school again...I just hope it happens soon, for all of our sakes.

Have a great weekend!

Photo Story Friday: Jesus On The Cross

I shared this picture on the old blog back in October, because Noah had made it in Sunday School. I wanted to share it again today because it is Good Friday, and it displays quite appropriately how a six year old expresses the idea of what happened to Jesus. He not only included the nails, but also caught the expression on His face.



















The boys have both been very interested in discussing the story this year. In years past, I was always scared to approach the topic of "death" with the kids, but this year, they seem to get it. Each time we talk about the death of Jesus, one of them is quick to talk about how happy Easter is because Jesus comes back to life.

Of course, Noah then turned to me and said,

"Mommy, does Easter mean that you're going to have a baby since Easter means New Life?"

This opened quite a lengthy discussion that I will not expand upon at this time. Needless to say, Noah REALLY wants a baby sister. Sorry kid!

Have a wonderful holiday weekend with your family.

Photo Story Friday: Some Favorite Candid Florida Shots

While re-sorting through the pictures from vacation, I was left with a few that didn't fit into any other categories but that I really liked. I thought I would share them with you, while my kids are chasing each other around the house with yarn...I don't know why but at least they're getting along.




I LOVED this one of Aaron. We were on the people mover going through Space Mountain and his eyes cracked me up.











I have spoken about Aaron and his hearing/speech issues many times. Although he has been given a perfect bill of health in regards to hearing, this was still his pose during anything somewhat loud, whether it be the Lion King Show (shown here), other shows, parades, or rides.














I LOVED this shot. Daddy and both boys jumping into the pool at the same time












Both of my boys love to tickle or otherwise amuse their youngest cousin. Their cousin is happy to oblige.











I love this shot because it was taken on the way out of Animal Kingdom, our least favorite day of the three park days. They were so content to just sit and watch the water and I feel a sense of peace when I look at it.









I like this one of Noah, because on the last day of vacation because it speaks volumes about how tired we were by the end of our marathon day.


















Have a great weekend and come back for Weekend Top Five on Monday.

Friday Photo Story: Our Marathon Day at Magic Kingdom

After a long week of "vacationing", there were still quite a few rides at the Magic Kingdom that we had wanted to experience with the kids but had not had a chance to. So, like you read about here, we had a character dinner with my family scheduled on Friday, our last day at 4:00. We were planning to go to dinner and then hang around the park for the rest of the night to watch the night parade and fireworks.

Steve and I decided that since it was our last day, we would make it count and do a marathon day, from the time the park opened until after the fireworks ended at night.

We knew it was going to be a long and exhausting day, but we are SO glad that we chose to do it. It was the most fun day we had in the parks by far. There were lots of things that we didn't even know about that we got to experience since we got there at opening.

We started out bright and early at 7:00, hoping to get to the parks before it actually opened at 9:00. We got into the outside gate around 8:15 and waited among the crowds (remember this picture from Wednesday?).

The first surprise came at about five minutes to 9. A "welcome show" was held right outside the entrance and all of the characters arrived by train to open the park. It was exciting...you could feel the energy. I didn't get any pictures because we were looking right into the sun, but we did get some video of it. Noah passed some time by taking silly pictures of Steve with my camera.



















When we first walked into the park, we headed right to the "lands" that we wanted to do.

The first thing we came to was Aladdin's Magic Carpet. No line! Cool!

The boys and I jumped right on while Steve went to get fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.








After riding it once, the ride operator told us we could go again if we wanted since there were no people. After two more times, Steve came back, got on and we went yet one MORE time.














Hyped up from our good luck, we headed to Pirates of the Carri bean. Again, NO WAIT. Walked right through and onto a boat. We were even more amazed when we discovered the operator of the ride was a student at the school my taught at before he retired. What a small world! Although the ride was dark and eerie, the kids handled it quite well and we were off to more stuff.





We moved on to Splash Mountain (again, no wait) but as we loaded, the ride broke down and we had to get off...first broken ride of the day.

So off to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Our fastpass was for 10:15 and it was 10:00 with a five minute wait. Let's go ahead and go...

Here came our first glimpse of the day of Noah's "demons" from the Everest ride two days previous (which I mentioned in this post). The kid who LOVED every roller coaster he had ever been on in his life, started crying uncontrollably because he was so scared to go on the ride. Steve and I struggled between one of us taking Aaron and the other sitting off with Noah or just biting the bullet and doing it.

Yup, the bad parents that we are, we just moved him along. I kind of felt that if he was going to get over this issue, we needed to just do it. The part that he was scared of was because that DARN Yeti jumped out at him. It took a lot of convincing that nothing would jump out at him on this ride.

We got through it one time and our fastpass was ready so we just turned around and rode it again. I still can't believe we were able to ride that ride TWICE in a row.

So off we headed to Haunted Mansion. Once again, NO WAIT. We walked right in again.

Noah had recuperated a little from his "trauma" and we loaded into the cars. The spooky music kind of freaked them both out a little but they were fine...
UNTIL..
Oh yes, yet another ride broke down. And where should it break down? The spooky graveyard with loud creepy music and ghosts continually popping out at them from behind gravestones. We sat there for a good 8 or 9 minutes before we went again. No one was interested in doing this one again.


So it was now around 11:00 and we had done most of the rides we had wanted to tackle the entire day. So we headed to Dumbo and waited in a line (still only 30 minutes) and checked that ride off the list.



















We did actually get back to Splash Mountain, where Noah started in on his minor panic attack again, but he got over it when we told him to just watch the story of Brer Rabbit which we had read at home. Once again, the ride was still not quite working properly, and there were major "log jams" and we kept ramming into the logs in front of us while the ones behind us kept ramming into us. The good thing was that I didn't get wet, which was good because everyone else was coming off it soaked and I really didn't feel like being wet for the rest of the evening.

Then it was off to re-ride Space Ranger Spin, which had been the favorite on Monday. My score, sad to say, did NOT improve. I still don't understand how Aaron can get 1000 points, Noah can get 1400 points, I can get 4000 points and my STINKER of a husband can get 50,000 POINTS.














While over there, we took in the people mover through Space Mountain and the Monsters, Inc. Show (which was very funny).



















We stopped to eat our sandwiches we had brought for lunch and were starting to get tired so we headed up to ride a few spins around the park on the railroad. By that point, it was time to start gathering for the afternoon parade, and then head over to dinner with the family.














We also were caught by surprise by a neat character show right out front of the castle that even included it's own little firework show. Aaron was talking about seeing "the REAL Peter Pan" for days afterward.














After dinner, we needed to actually WAIT for rides since the fastpasses were gone, but we didn't mind. We made it to the jungle cruise, where Aaron was invited to drive the boat for a little while














I thought it was kind of neat that every time there was a crowd waiting for a parade, a Disney "cast member" would put out fun activities in the streets for kids to do. Noah is quite the hula hooper!














Are you exhausted reading this? I am again just writing about it. But it really was a good thing that we did it. I was glad we did it on the last day so that the "grumpies" from being tired the next day were spent in the car on the ride toward home.

My T13 for next week will be the images from the evening from this long and eventful day. But for now, I need to go take a shower, get dressed, and take Aaron to the park.

Have a great Friday!

Friday Photo Story: A Letter in the Mail

As I mentioned on Monday, I have jumped back into the world of facebook. I have learned from my mistakes, and with ignoring ALL applications and only writing light hearted updates, I was able to reconnect with people in my long lost past.

I didn't have a lot of friends in high school, but several of the ones that I did hang out with have found me on facebook, and it was fun getting to know them. They were one of the reasons I was sorry to leave facebook.

One of my friends, a SUPER sweet girl, is a pediatrician in California now and takes her two girls to Disneyland often. She LOVES the place and decided to do something for my boys to pep them up for our trip.

So yesterday, the boys received a postcard.














On the inside, "Mickey" had written a letter to the boys telling them how excited he was to see them.



















Isn't that the sweetest idea? This girl was a sweetheart in high school, and she still is to this day. I don't think I'll ever see her in real life again, but it was very neat to reconnect with her and I was honored that she thought of a small special thing to send my boys.

Have a great weekend. We leave tomorrow morning before you wake up, so I will have autoposts next week. I hope you enjoy them. I think his will be a good lesson for me to be without my computer for the whole week.

See you on the 23rd.

Photo Story Friday: Noah's Recipe

I am not the most adventurous mom out there. As a matter of fact on days when I am feeling down, like I was on Monday, I would prefer to curl up in a ball and wallow.

Which I did to a certain extent.



Noah came home from school Monday with an idea in mind. As anyone who knows my little boys will tell you, he is a true scientist, the way his mind works. It amazes me how much he loves to learn about how things work. On Friday last week when his class filled out a paper honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. they had to fill in THEIR dream. Noah's was to be a chemist to make medicine for people (with quite creative spelling I must say).

So that must have been on his mind when he saw me embedded in the couch and headed into the kitchen because he decided that he needed to cook something. I kind of blew off his request because I was in a very bad place and didn't feel like dealing with the mess.

I know...Bad Mommy!

But he headed into the kitchen anyway. I didn't really think he would do anything until Aaron came tattling "Mommy, Noah has eggs!"

Okay, apparently I am not going to be allowed to wallow and actually have to deal with this after all.

I realized this might be a teachable moment and told Noah that if he writes out a recipe and shows it to me, I would let him make it.


I had to alter it a little...

15 eggs became 1 egg

1 cup became a half cup.

Juice instead of jelly

A whisk would work better than a spoon





In goes the flour













In goes the soda (one of Steve's cans of Sprite)












After these, I decided to add a little bit four and some brown sugar, just to maybe spruce it up a little.

Then he wanted to taste it. The raw egg kind of worried me a little so I made another suggestion


Try the microwave













At which point little brother was totally jealous and needed to get in on the fun











It came out very hot but Noah was determined to convince me that he liked it



Never mind the messy counter in the background...I was having a very bad day.










Aaron had his own unique way of trying it. For some reason he was having a momentary evasion to using a spoon

















Aaron gave it his thumbs up because he didn't want to admit how yucky he thought it was

















But Noah finally decided to tell the truth

















Are you wondering if I tried it?

The answer if yes, a little. It actually wasn't bad. I think the idea of adding sprite to add sweetness is intriguing. And I think maybe the oven to cook it for awhile before we try it.

As I was pouring it down the drain, Noah told me he wants to try another one the next day.

I am glad that I got my bum off the couch and let him try the experiment. Like I said at the start of this, I am not adventurous and unfortunately, I think I say "NO" way too often to these curious minds.

Who knows, maybe these experiments will lead to amazing undiscovered recipes that will become world famous. And you can all say you knew him when...

Have a great weekend.



P.S. Did ya notice the new curtains? We have a much warmer kitchen thanks to all of your encouragement last week.