April happenings

We are in the middle of baseball, when it doesn't rain.  I'd say at least half of the games have been rained out.  It has been a great team so far though.  Austin is playing for the "Red Bulls" this year.  We have been in the season for over a month, and just last week found out that Austin's coach lives in our neighborhood.  His grandson, who is on the team, lives one street over from us (just goes to a different bus stop).  One other boy on the team also lives on that same street.  What great connections!  We have had a bit of a hard time meeting kids in the neighborhood that we can develop friendships with (boys in particular).  I'm pretty excited about that.  This is the first season for kid-pitch baseball.  It is a bit more challenging to hit the ball! 

For the last 2 years I have been an ebay seller (brinkley1702).  I have been GRADUALLY selling a collection of die cast cars that my uncle had in his house.  He passed away 2 years ago and lived in Olympia, WA.  Since I was the only family member that lived anywhere close to him, I agreed to take on the project of selling cars.  I started out looking for a buyer who would take the whole collection of approx. 500 cars.  That didn't work out so I started listing them on ebay and selling them off little by little.  After countless pictures like the one below and trips to the post office, I now have a very nice pay pal balance!  I have to say, it was a little bit fun to see the cars, see who bid on them, which cars actually had people bidding each other up, and seeing where the people lived who bought them.  Not to mention making a little money!  So now, that little part time job is done!

We took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, WA, this weekend.  What a blast.  They swam their little hearts out.  Tim and I too...  Ezra surprised us by being brave enough to try some new slides, even 2 that he had to go down by himself.  They could have stayed in the wave pool all day.  It was nice not to be on a schedule, just relax together and have fun.  The whole experience of the hotel is amazing.  The rooms are so cool and it is very family friendly. 

These 2 special boys just finished their Awana books for the year!

March happenings

Although it continues to rain and rain and rain...we have been finding ways to enjoy our spring.  Austin participated in the 3rd grade music concert at school.  They are in the middle of a unit on Africa.  They tie-dyed shirts a week before and wore them for the concert.  Austin surprised us by having a special part for the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".  He was one of the lions prowling the stage, chasing other "animals" during the song.  The whole class tried out to be lions and only 2 students were chosen.  It was nice to see him enjoy having a "stand out" part.  He has usually shown himself to one of those kids who prefers to just blend in with the crowd.

This is our friend Jacob who is also in 3rd grade at the same school, and attends our church.  All of the 3rd grade classes got to be part of a drum chant to open the concert.

I got to volunteer in Austin's class and help them with this mask/art project.  During the 2 hours I was there they only completed the eyes, nose, and eyebrows.  This was a very involved project but it turned out really cool!

Austin and his teacher after the concert.

Ezra and I made coffee filter butterflies that are now hanging in the window to cheer us.

The boys have been entertaining themselves by loading the couch with all the pillows and blankets they can find.  The hang out up there and of course bring their guns and shoot any bad guys they see outside or indoors. :)

My dad bought the boys Tigers hats.  Austin was sure he needed a good hat like this for baseball practice.  Opening day for the Tigers is this week!

Of couse, we had to color Easter eggs.

We are looking forward to celebrating Easter in a week and the chance to celebrate the reason for our hope!

A day at the zoo

We went to the zoo at Point Defiance yesterday.  The boys had no school and I didn't have to work so I decided to go for it.  The weather these last 10 days or so has been dreadful.  CONSTANT rain.  COLD rain.  VERY depressing.  I decided we were going to the zoo even if it meant getting rained on all day.  God was very gracious though, because even though it was raining pretty hard when we got there, it tapered off pretty quickly and the sun even came out for the majority of our time there.  It was very therapeutic for me. Austin was my little photographer.  He took all of the animal pictures below.  It was a really great day to be there because it was not crowded at all and the animals were pretty active.

Leprechaun Day!

We made a leprechaun trap this morning.  I didn't want to miss this opportunity to enjoy young minds that still might not be sure if this leprechaun stuff is real or not...  I don't know if the leprechaun was supposed to appear last night or tonight, but it could be that our kids might wake up tomorrow to see that a little mischief happened in the house while they were sleeping...

100th day of school

Christian came off the bus yesterday with this hat on.  I love that he still likes to do stuff like that and is not embarrassed.

We haven't been doing much that I felt like blogging about lately!  I have been a little down this last week because my parents left.  They were here for 2 weeks and we had a great time.  We went to the Seattle Aquarium and the boys and grandparents spent one night in a hotel and did a lot of swimming.  I also bought several new light fixtures for our house and my dad installed them.  We can actually see after dark now in our downstairs room!  We also spent a lot of time just hanging around the house which was nice.  I was also able to get caught up on my yearly scrapbooking!  Somehow I didn't take many pictures of our activities though. 

Peter Pan comes to our church!

This is what has been taking up our time for the last 6 weeks...

Our church does not do much in the way of childrens' choir during the rest of the year, because from right after New Year's for 6 weeks they do a musical. It is a HUGE undertaking. They really go all out with it. Our women and childrens' pastor is extremely talented in drama and music and she actually writes the thing. Some of the songs they did this year were from the group Go Fish, but everything else was original in the production. Well, they did base it off of the Peter Pan story and the movie "Hook".

There were a lot of people at the church who gave hours and hours and hours of their time to pull this off. The costuming and set were amazing. They have been doing musicals like this for 21 years and I'm thinking it has just been growing a bit every year and turned into something really impressive. Austin has not wanted to participate the last 2 years since we started attending this church. We told him last year that he would be participating this year no matter what, because 3rd-6th graders are the ages that do the majority of the performing. Since Austin entered 3rd grade this year, we told him he had no choice this year! He had to practice 3 hours on Saturdays, during one service on Sunday and for an hour Sunday nights for 6 weeks to prepare. Part of the reason we had him do this musical was that the kids really get a lot of time together and friendships really grow as a result. Its a really good chance for him to get to know the kids around his age and have fun doing something that is a bit of a challenge. Austin really loves to just stay home and not do some of the church activities (and sometimes we are ok with that), but we thought this was an opportunity not to be missed.

The 6th graders in the church are given the main cast parts, so Austin had to just learn several songs and the choreography to go with them. The director actually writes a part for each 6th grader and has each person and their personality in mind as she puts the thing together. There are also 2 men in the church who are really good at drama and they acted in the play with the kids, one as the older Peter Pan and one as the Sr. Captain Hook (there was a Hook Jr. played by one of the kids and a young Peter as well). There was even smoke and a crocodile that finished off Hook at one point in the play!  I don't think he would admit it to anyone, but I think Austin actually enjoyed it a little, or at least more than he thought he would.  He did a great job with the singing and choreography.  He always knew what to do at the right time and was a great little performer.  Smiling was a bit of a challenge for him, he was concentrating so hard on what he was doing, he had a frown on his face for a lot of it, but for those of us who know him well, we know that was because he was just trying so hard.  I was very proud of him for doing something like this that he wasn't excited about and for doing such a great job of it and always giving his best effort.

The 3rd grade boys were dressed as "woodsmen" for part of the performance. (There were 4 performances and 3 dress rehearsals spread over 3 weeks.)

The 3rd grade cast...

Ezra was a little too scared to get his picture taken with Capt. Hook, but Christian was brave...

 

what a room!!

I gave the boys a roll of yarn and some tape and started them creating a spider web in their room. It turned out really awesome!!

They really wanted to leave it up for a while but that was just not possible!!!

Other news:  Christian tried to do his first microwave popcorn.  Note to self:  6 year olds should not be working the microwave independently.  Apparently instead of pushing 2,3,0, start...he must have pushed 2,3,0,0, start.  When I realized what had happened, there was a bad burning smell and I stopped the microwave when it said it still had 18 minutes to go.  Wow.  Could have been a lot worse than a bag of black popcorn.  Still haven't quite gotten the smell out of the house. 

My mom comes for a visit starting Wednesday.  Can't wait!  My dad comes Sunday.  We haven't seen them since August.  A visit is long overdue...