Happy Birthday Emily

Where did the time go? Our little baby is now 5! It seems like just yesterday that she was trying to enter this life, arm first! I can't believe that next year she will be in kindergarten. It seems like when you have a house full of babies, we're ready for them to hurry up and grow...now I wish I could pause time and live in this moment for just a little longer.
Emily and I got to spend her birthday with Grandma Bentz today. It's always a treat when Grandma comes. We got to go eat a Emily's favorite lunch spot...Chick-Fil-A and then went to pick out her birthday cupcakes for preschool. If only everyday was so laid back!

I love that my kids get to see their Grandparents so often and know them. I never had that, we saw my Grandparents maybe once a year. We are so lucky to live within driving distance!
It has been such a great day. Happy Birthday Emily! You will always be my baby! Also a special shout- out to my brother Jason who Emily shares this special day with...Happy Birthday Bro!

S Is For Strawberry...

Today I dug deep and found my inner "Molly Homemaker"... We started our mission yesterday with a trip to the store and found our family fav.. strawberries were on sale! In our house that means only one thing... homemade JAM! Emily decided that since she was the only one home with me, she would get to be my helper. Emily had a great time helping me get our jars ready for canning, and by that I mean, splashing hot, boiling water on my foot. Yeah ouch! Then her next task, that she loved was mashing up all of the cut berries. She did a great job keeping most of the berry juice in the bowl. I love that she loves to help me!

So after several hours we now get to enjoy the fruits (no pun intended)of our labor for the next few months. Yummy! The rest of our family will be very happy in the morning, because nothing is better than fresh jam! Well unless you have homemade bread...maybe tomorrow :)

Long Sundays...

I don't know about your house, but at our house Sunday is a LONG day! Yeah, its suppose to be the day of rest, and yeah we could go for long drives or walks or even better, play board games all day long but on our Sunday.. when boredom has set in..
It's time for some good old fashion dress up! The
girls had so much fun with their bucket of dress up, courtesy of Grandma Bentz. You'll notice that Shayne and Todd are no where to be found...must have been nap time or a good soccer game on! What do you do at your house to fight off the Sunday humdrum??

Sometimes things don't always go as planned..

This weekend was a fun filled weekend with lots of Diamondback action. We had tickets to both Friday and Saturday's games. Fun right? Well, when Todd bought the tickets he was thinking that he and Shayne and some buddies would have a great time all weekend. Well... sometimes things don't work out just right for him. The girls had other plans for their dad.

The Daddy/Daughter dance at school....

Yes, that's right, Todd was the lucky dad who got to take all 3 girls to a dance instead of going to the game. They had a good time shakin their stuff and Todd was glad the dance was only an hour. He's not a big dancer ya know. Nevertheless, he went like a good dad because his girls were sooooo excited!

So I got to go to the D-Backs game on Friday night with Shayne and two of his friends. We had a great time and even got on to the new HD big screen! The boys went wild, waving their shirts and going crazy because they are now famous!!! All three boys are huge Eric Byrnes fan's. They yelled, they screamed, they chanted, they went wild everytime he did anything note worthy. They were cracking me up! They knew every stat of every player, they tryed to predict what every batter would do, they even tryed to "distract" the first baseman so that he'd drop the ball. Boys and baseball... two peas in a pod!

Now remember those Saturday tickets??? Well as luck would have it, the game was the Fox game of the week and ended up being a day game. It just so happened that Shayne's football game, that Todd coaches, started at the same time. Bummer for him again! So this time, I got to take Megan, Ashley and her friend McKinley with me. As luck would have it, we made it on the big screen again. Megan proclaimed "This is my dream come true! I alway's wanted to be famous." Our seats were directly in the sun, so it was fun until the ice cream was gone and then so were we.

It's funny the difference between the girls and Shayne. Shayne would stay until the bitter end, sunburned and all and then would want to stay until he got to see Eric Byrnes drive away, hoping for an autograph. The girls, wanted the free give away, ice cream, a visit to the team shop and then they were done.

I had so much fun going to two games, back to back! Who doesn't love the sights, sounds and smells of the ballpark? Got to love it! Go D-Backs!

A Sad Day

Tonight Ashley experienced he first heartbreak. Her hamster "Princess" died. After Ashley left for school today I was doing my normal rounds in the kids room when I smelt something gross. Upon closer inspection, I found the poor little thing. I have to admit that I was never a big fan of small creeping animals, still not a big fan, but my heart broke that Ashley's little pet that she spent her Christmas money on, was now no longer. After a quick call to Todd, I had to leave the room. So tonight I took the kids out for ice cream while Todd had the unenviable job of "burying" Princess. When we returned home Todd broke the news to her. She sobbed and it killed me to watch her. We tried to assure her that Princess is in great hands in "hamster heaven" but for now that wasn't enough. We carried her sad body up the stairs where she found her other hamster "Puff" running on the wheel, happy and healthy. Thankfully she and Todd had decided to buy 2 hamsters at the same time so that they could play while she was at school. Good thinking Todd!

This is our second attempted at having a pet. Our first pet was Shayne's. A beautiful white Lab named Bronco. He was a very over active puppy. Shayne and Emily and I loved him but the other girls wouldn't go outside with him out there. So we had the heart wrenching decision to have a dog or let the girls have their backyard back. Needless to say, the humans won. We found a great home for him where I'm sure he is running happy. That was our first experience with pet heartache, it wasn't any easier today watching Ashley.

Thank goodness we can ask for comfort for all things in our lives, no matter how large or small.

Tennis anyone?

I love tennis. I love the feel of returning a serve right down the line hit with full power. I love to run after a base line shot to lob it over my head and still getting it in. I love to have dirty tennis ball hands (and I hate to be dirty). I love to play with great friends. I love the tennis "trash talk" that would only happen on the court. I love to frustrated my opponent with a good shot. I love the sound the ball makes when it hits the "sweet" spot of my raquet. I love to have fun and of course, I love to win.

Today I got to play with my friend JoAnna. We haven't played together for maybe a year or more. We had so much fun. Today we got a good lesson is sportsmanship, of lack of, from our opponents. We had the F bomb dropped our way (not by us, thank you), we had a raquet thrown our way and to top it off, I had a ball hit directly at my face after the point was over. Luckily I got part of my raquet up and the brim of my vissor deflected the ball enough that I didn't have a "Marsha Marsha Marsha" moment! But in the end, none of it really matters because we had fun, neither one of us broke anything, and the icing on the cake..... we won.

Ya got to love a good game of tennis!

It's all in the joke..

So today is April Fools day, Megan's favorite day! From the moment she woke up she was playing jokes on everyone. Today the joke was on her. She came home from school dead set that a pool was being built in the playground. The school had places cones in a "pool" shape out on her playground this morning and then closed the deal by using the morning announcement's to let everyone know that no one was to go into that area because they'd be digging for a pool later on that day. Megan came home so thrilled. "Mom, you'll never guess what our school is getting!" Shayne, being the all knowing big brother, then explained that it was only a joke. She didn't buy it. It took several hours to convince her that it was all a good joke.

Well Megan, being the spunky kid that she is, decided no matter what she was going to get the last laugh on some poor soul. So, she went to play at her friend Grace's house and the two little jokesters plotted out their joke. (I didn't know about it until it was long over) They decided that it would be so funny to write notes to two of their friends and invite them over to each others houses for a party! So they wrote this note:

Dear friend,

You are invited to come to my house for a party tonight at 6 pm. It's for all of Mrs Clarks 3rd grade class. I hope you can come!

From,
You know who

They then put a address, mind you a real address that is right down the street, and door bell ditched their friends.

Now fast forward a few hours. I arrive at our wards enrichment several hours at the plot had taken place. As I am walking in, one of Megan's friends mom signals me to come over. Yeah no big right? Well turns out that Megan's friend, the one that she door bell ditched, thought it was a real party and went over to the address that was provided!!! I laughed so hard that my little 8 year old was crafty enough to pull a carefully plotted joke and then found someone that actually fell for it! That's my little girl!