Where have I been?

I have been a bit absent from the blogging world lately.  My goal during the summer is to be inside as little as possible.  This results in a messy house, not well fed me or my family and no blogging.  Actually this summer has been busy and I can’t explain why.  Well for a part of it I have an explanation and that is baseball. 

Last weekend was Jacob’s first tournament and I spent a lot of time at the West Bountiful ball park.  Too bad all that time wasn’t spent at my BFF’s house which is near by.  It was fun, double header games in 90 degree weather.  His team did great and won their first 3 games.  Monday they lost to a team from Kaysville that was like professional little league.  They creamed us, Jacob had the only RBI.  We found out later that they were a competition team and had played lots and lots of games together.  We then lost in the semi finals to another team from Kaysville, they weren’t anywhere near as good as the first team.  It was fun Jacob loves it and plays quite well.  This weekend is the next tournament right here in our backyards.

We also had cousins in town last weekend which was fun, fun and busy, busy.  We spent one day at Snowbird which the kids loved.  We made the most of the 2 1/2 days they were here.  My kids were so sad to see them leave.

Summer is super crazy, I hate it.  I am really trying to work on calming it down.  It is going so fast, I want to enjoy every day and not run around a filthy house wishing I was outside.  Tonight is my first activity as Relief Society Meetings Coordinator, it is a garden party so of course the weather is overcast and windy!

Can he really be 3?

(2 weeks old)  (I think my hair color looks better when he was born, I will have to figure out how to go back to that)

We have come a long way in 3 years!

I really can’t put my head around the idea that he is 3 years old.  The time has flown by, but at the same time he has been around for such a long time.  I can’t imagine life before Jonah baby, did it really exists???

I have been the biggest birthday slacker this year.  I don’t know what my problem is, but I don’t know where my brain was.  I didn’t make plans for his birthday because we didn’t know until the night before if Jacob would be playing in the championship game (they lost in the semi finals by one score) the night of his birthday.  Somehow this registered in my brain that I didn’t need to plan or do anything!  So at 9:00 the night before I think oh I will just have some of our family and close friends over for cake and ice cream.  No big deal, then I realize I didn’t buy any plates, I didn’t buy anything to decorate a cake with.  At 9:30 I realize I didn’t buy a pinata!!!!  I come and tell this to Bryan and Brandon and they say, it isn’t a big deal he won’t know.  I say, I WILL KNOW, my kids have all had pinatas at every birthday.  Brandon then informs me that No, he didn’t have one this year!  AHHHHH what kind of mother am I?  O.K. really not a big deal but where did my brain go?

In spite of my lack of planning the day was a smashing success.

Could any child be happier?

We went to the park and played with our friends. 

Bryan ran to Target and bought the only pinata they had.  No big deal, he was happy as could be to ride on his bull pinata.  And yes since it was his birthday I let him have his binky all afternoon!

I ran to the store while he napped and bought plates and forks and ice cream and candles and all the stuff I should have had days ago!

O.K. so when I say the day was a SMASHING success, this part really was smashing.  I started out thinking I would make him Lightning McQueen for his cake (he loves everything from Cars) Bryan said no way, Jonah doesn’t need you stressed out all day making a cake.  So I decided just to decorate it like a race track.  Well I had a little mishap as I was doing who knows what with the cake in the pan.  The pan hit the floor and half the cake also hit the floor.  I quickly scooped it up (10 second rule), pieced it together and wondered what I was going to do.  Luckily my cake decorating assistant Megan was here with Brandon and she came to my rescue.  She actually said I had to make cupcakes, but I said NO WAY, I am not making another anything.  And with the two of our brains we come up with a perfect cake and no one would ever know what happened. (until I started cutting it to serve)

Especially not a darling 3 year old who thought it was so cool!

Knock down the pinata, all the kids got lots of candy…..very successful.

We ended the night at our good friends neighborhood street party where the band played and sang a special Happy Birthday to Jonah.

Perfect day and I didn’t even have to plan it, this is my kind of party!  I just can’t love our little miracle enough.  He is an absolute delight and we all love him so much.

Birthday #3…..done.

End of the Season

Season over for Brandon and the Diamondbacks.  They were a good team with some good players who just couldn’t make it work this year.  They won 1 game and tied 2.  I think the fact that they only played maybe 2 games in the sun was a big factor.  I could predict the weather by his game schedule.  If he had a game, then it would start raining.  Not a fun time for us watching the game, but the boys played tough.  It was fun to watch them as they played so hard.  His team had some good, fun boys, too bad none of them go to his school. 

Brandon had several key pop fly catches and one of them he turned into a double play.  Fun season, hopefully next year the weather will be on his team.

Brandon’s favorite position is catcher.  He didn’t get to play it this season, so last night for the last inning his coach let the kids play wherever they wanted to.  No surprise to us when Brandon came running out in the catching gear!

All-Star

The baseball season is winding down for us.  This week is the tournament and then the season ends.  It feels like it hasn’t started because SO many games have been rained out.  Now, unless it is POURING they play the games because there is no time for make-ups.  It has been a fun season for both boys.

Today is devoted to Jacob.  Jacob is a really good athlete.  He is good at all sports and just seems to have a natural ability.  He is the type of player who while playing pitcher and the ball  rolls past third base, he is over there retrieving the ball and throwing it to 1st.  He plays machine pitch so people don’t get too upset over him playing all over the field.  Well he has had a good season and last week got asked to try out for the All Star team.  We realized it is only machine pitch, but were still excited for him.  They had try-outs on Saturday in the cold and wind.  Bryan and Brandon both came home and said if he doesn’t make it then something is wrong with the system.  Last night I was walking to the field from a farewell party and as soon as I got in sight of the field I saw Jacob waving from the pitchers mound.  I then heard “Mom, I made the all star team”.

Yes we are naive and this is our first all star player, but we are very excited for him.  People have made a lot of negative comments about it, but we don’t care.  My brother Nate always wanted to play on the all star team, but in those days only the coaches sons made the team and my Dad didn’t coach.  So this is Jacob living Nate’s dream.  We can’t wait for him to get home from his trip around the world to tell him.

So a big congratulations to my All Star Jacob!!!!  At the end of the school year assembly he was awarded with the friendship award.  He and his friend Laila received this award in their class.  I was so proud of him.  I am pretty proud of my good friend and good baseball playing son.

 

Another Birthday

Things have been a bit busy around here.  All of the end of school/beginning of summer activities have kept us going strong.  The first official day of summer vacation was Monday and what better way to start off than with another birthday!

Brandon was sure he would want to sleep in, but I got home from biking and he was awake and ready to open his presents!  He was thrilled with everything he received.  A sleeping bag, batting gloves, under armour among other fun boy things.

We spent the morning enjoying being outside in the fabulous weather.  He wanted to go to the Gateway for lunch so we met Bryan at Rumbi.  We then wandered around  Gateway going in all of the “boy” sports stores with Mom only popping into her favorite stores for a moment.

When asked what he wanted for dinner he replied, that pizza on the cover of your magazine.  Perfect for me, I had wanted to make the Pizza Margherita.  Well lets just say that I spent a lot of time making it perfect and when it was time to put it on the pizza stone it fell apart and made a HUGE mess.  We had globs of pizza and salad instead.

Brandon (well all my kids) are good sports when I mess up on things and he thought it was perfect.  At least the cake made him really smile.

He blew out the candles and raced off to his baseball game.  He didn’t have one of his better games, but he still loved having a game on his birthday.

He finally is 11, just as his friends are ready to turn 12.  What a great birthday for a great boy.

Birthday #2….done.

Let the birthday season begin

Yesterday started our month of birthday celebrating!

Bryan had a list of everything he wanted to do, and he did them all.  It was a race to do it all…. biking, baseball, golfing, walking to the cemetery.  By the time we sat down to eat the absolutely delicious dinner I had made (Si’s Sante Fe Enchiladas) we were all beat.  We had cake and put everyone to bed.  It was a very nice day.