When I Grow Up...

Palmer's class did this cute book during the school year and I forgot to put it on here! I LOVE all of the things the kids wrote about what they would like to be when they grow up.

This was Palmer's picture. I love that the "bad guy" is frowning in jail.
So funny. He and all of his brothers want to be police officers. He has wanted to be one since he was very little.
This one was my niece Savanna's picture.
She is so funny. We all love to be around her.
Picture of Palmer's class. I have seen lots of ideas for preserving your kids art. I think I might want to do something similar to preserve the boys' art in a book. I love this idea!

Jug Ball Catcher

I wasn't sure what to call this. The name "junk ball" kept coming to my head. I saw this idea here. Once again I was packing and needed something to keep the boys busy and out of the way (that sounds horrible doesn't it). Well, I had seen this idea and happened to be throwing away three empty jug-type containers and thought I would hurry and whip them out. They were fast, though not as cute as the place I got them from. I just cleaned them, cut off the bottom and duct taped them since the edges had some sharp parts on them.
This is what they looked like and they kept the boys' attention for a long time. Perfect.
Palmer was so excited to play with them that he ran out of the house with ONE shoe on. We had just bought new socks so he was sent back again quickly (am I the only one that has kids who go through socks at lightening speed? We are ALWAYS out of socks!)
It was fun to see the boys toss the tennis ball around and these are pretty easy for little hands to use. Not too much coordination required.
Happy boys, happy mom.

The Travels of Josh

Josh has been traveling quite a bit this year with his new job (new of 6 months). He has mostly traveled to Arizona, but has gone a few other places as well. Josh was out of town for an entire week a few weeks ago going to two conferences. His first was in Portland where he had the unique opportunity to go to a vineyard (for us it is unique). He was invited to a wine tasting, as we don't drink, he and his boss did a wine "smelling" :) He said it was interesting. This was his view at dinner of the vineyard, beautiful huh?
After his Portland conference he came home for a few hours only to get back on a plane to Cincinnati, Ohio.

Did you know that Josh and I used to live in Cincinnati? We did for a summer right after we got married (like moved there 5 days after getting married) while Josh sold pest control for the summer (the following summer we did the same thing in Houston, Texas). While Josh sold pest control from dawn until dusk (literally), I worked two jobs. My first one was as a manager of Michaels craft store.
The second one was a Gap in the Tri-County Mall. Josh surprised me with these pictures of the old stomping ground. He had a few free hours and decided to go and check out all of the old haunts. We had some fun memories here. If I can ever figure out the scanner on our new printer, I will post some.
This was our first apartment. The funny thing was that as we signed up to do the pest control thing late in the season, the company couldn't provide us with an apartment. We looked everywhere and nobody would rent us one for just the summer. We finally found a few, but one was just a bedroom of a pretty scary house and one was literally a drug haven. We were so frustrated so we spent some of the first few weeks of marriage living on the floor of the living room of my brother and sister-in-law's apartment. Awesome right.
Luckily some of the single people there took pity on us and traded us for a two bedroom apartment in this lovely complex and we shared it with my brother and SIL still, but this time we had our own bedroom. It was a memorable summer to say the least. The little sign up above says "welcome home".
Call me a nerd, but one of my favorite things about Ohio were the fire flies. We had a big tree behind our apartment that the fire flies liked to sit in in the evening and it looked like it had Christmas lights in it. It was fun for me to see this walk down memory lane.

Palmer Discovers Laser Tag

One of Palmer's best buddies in his class is named Cemryn. He also happens to be his teacher Ms. Van Adrighem's nephew. So Palmer felt like the luckiest boy alive when he got to go with Cemryn and his cool teacher to Boondocks after school.
He had never played Laser Tag before and discovered that his life had not been complete until he had played it. He gave me a play by play of the whole game multiple times (this is also what his father does after playing a game, I love it). I was so glad that Maria sent me some pictures!

Palmer seriously had so much fun with Maria (his teacher, we can call her that outside school right? Cemryn and his sister).
He has been dying to go back. Josh has told them that we will go to Boondocks as a family when they all get 5 ice cream scoops 7 days in a row. I am not holding my breath :)

All Thanks to Jack Bauer

An interesting little story that happened to our family in which Josh saves the day:

Josh had just gotten home from some meetings at church and was fixing himself some toast when he looked out the window to notice that a man in a big white truck was putting our neighbor boy's bikes in the back of his truck. He thought it odd, especially since there wasn't a license plate on the truck. He quickly called our neighbor and asked if someone was supposed to be picking up their bikes. She wasn't sure and said she would check. We walked outside right after the truck pulled away, as did the neighbor boys and one of them started crying that someone had cut his chain and stolen his bike along with another neighbor boy's bike that they were going to fix.

Well, our hero jumped into our van (not your typical hero vehicle, but in this case it makes it that much more cool :) and drove out to see if he could follow them. He looked and looked and thought he had lost them, when out of the corner of his eagle eyes he spotted the culprit in a grocery store parking lot. Here he turned on the skills that he learned from all of the years of watching "24" (I just knew those hours and hours would pay off someday) and followed them to another store while calling 911. The police met him at the store with 5 (yes 5!) unmarked cars and held a little stake out waiting for him to come out of Sears (bet me he was stealing in there too, okay I am judging...)

Well, I was freaking out in the meantime thinking that Josh was laying dead on the side of the road for following a bike thief. I called his phone but it just went straight to voice mail (I think that is because he was on the phone with 911). Twenty minutes later, in which I was worried to death, he pulled up with two police officers who got everyone's statements and kept us updated about the situation at Sears.

Finally Josh had to leave to go and identify the suspect. He was done another little while, and came back telling us that the police actually had to go in after the man and when he came out of the store they swarmed him and handcuffed him! Wow drama. Josh said he was tempted to take a picture with his phone, but thought better :) Probably a good idea. Later that day the police brought back both of the bikes to happy kids and told the boys that the thief had been taken to jail. So, once in a while good stories do happen especially when their are heroes as courageous (and good looking I might add) as Super Josh around :) The end.

End of Soccer

Soccer season ended a few weeks ago, and since I never posted any picture of it (probably because I didn't take many as I have been chasing McKay around at most of the games :), I decided that it was time to do a few. All of the boys had a great season. Palmer lost his jersey midway through and ended up wearing his indoor one to ever game. I guess it worked :)
He was thrilled when his teacher came to watch him in one of his games. She is seriously such a great teacher.
The awards this year were probably the boys' favorite as the ball on top was squishy and came off so they could play with it. That is a pretty smart idea I think. We also made each member of the team a little "have a cool summer" treat like we did for their school classes. The saddest thing happened at this last game, there was only a few minutes left and Palmer was nailed in the face with the ball. His nose started bleeding profusely and guess what...I didn't have any wipes! I don't know how, but they were taken out of my diaper bag somewhere. So all of the parents on both teams pitched in and we got him cleaned up, but they decided to call the game. The poor kid had to end the soccer season on that? Oh well, he had a great season so I am sure he will forget it :)

McKay totally thinks he is one of the big kids. He loved sitting in this chair (as I hovered worried he would fall out)
Hunter loved his season as well. He had a pretty great team. They were all so silly and had a lot of fun together, but worked very hard. Hunter really surprised me with how aggressive he was this season. His personality is very laid back and it was so fun to seem him stay with the ball until he got a goal. He did this over and over each game.
This was the last cheer. The boys wanted to put their heads in instead of their hands. I told you they were silly! Their coach was a good sport :)
Very proud of his trophy. He doesn't have as many as his brothers since he hasn't played as long, and always is very frustrated when he gets a medal instead of a trophy as he is trying to catch up :)
I finally got a picture of Lincoln getting a goal. Lincoln has grown to love soccer. It surprises me as for a while he really wasn't too into it. We were pretty close to taking him out of it all together because it didn't seem he enjoyed it. He ended up playing last year only because Hunter's team needed someone else and that was the season that he started to love it. I haven't gotten to see very many of his games this year because Josh was coaching him and Hunter needed someone at his games. I always tried to run between games, but it got crazy. I got to see a few though and he did so well.
His dad/coach was pretty impressed as well.
I told Palmer I would give him 2 ice cream scoops if he would "babysit" McKay (yep I use them as bribes). This mostly just mean keep him happy, since I was standing right there, but he was so miserable. Palmer did a great job and McKay was thrilled to play with him.
Lincoln handing his treats out to his team. Lincoln has played with some of these kids for a few years and it will be interesting to start all over with teams in the new area.

Josh has loved coaching the boys this season. He has seen so much improvement for all of them.
At the end of the game Palmer went and got out Josh's bag of soccer balls for McKay to play with. He was so funny playing with the cones.
He was being so good for a long time and I wondered what he was so interested in. I came over to find that he and the boys had gotten into some "dum dum" suckers that Josh had in his bag. McKay was covered in pink. He had to have eaten 4. He had a great time :)
The boys had a great season and are looking forward to playing again in the fall!

Kids Activity-Paper Plate Ring Toss

I hope that some of you are finding some ideas that you can use for summer boredom busters on this site. I am posting a lot of what we are doing in hopes that that is the case. I am frantically trying to pack as our moving day comes closer and closer. We are moving next Wednesday and I have A LOT to do. The boys were so bored today and wanted something to do. I had seen this cute activity here and thought it was the perfect thing that I could put together quickly for them.

I cut out the rings from paper plates (those are a kid crafter's best friend), and let them decorate them while I did the little post thing. It is just a sturdyish paper plate with a empty paper towel roll hot glued to it. Each of the boys got three of his own rings so they could do them at the same time. They each wrote their names on the back so they didn't get mixed up.
Then I sent them in the front yard with their rings and let them go.
It was fun and worked like a charm.


It was a little windy, so they ended up coming inside as the rings are so light the wind would easily take them with it. This really was a fast and easy activity that the boys really liked.

Kid's Craft-Rock Ladybugs

So for a lot of us it is the first week of summer break. Are any of your kids getting bored yet? We haven't had any bored kids yet, but I just know we are in for a lot of days where there is nothing to do. I have a lot of fun ideas stored us for the summer, so I hope that I can keep the boys nice and occupied. I found these fun ladybug rocks on this site.
Can I tell you an "I stink at being a mom sometimes" secret? I am a perfectionist with arts and crafts. I want the boys' ladybugs to look exactly like what they are supposed to, is that too much to ask? Here is something that I have learned about my boys, it is too much to ask. That isn't why they craft with me. They like to watch the paint squish out of the sponge brush, to go hunting for the perfect rock, and by perfect I mean the coolest looking one they can find. They like to feel the cool smooth rock in their hands. They want to see what will happen when they mix the red with the black paint and better yet, the black with the red paint (control freak inside screaming "no no no no!" and yep, sometimes the no nos work their way to the surface).
They craft to be silly and to laugh (even better when one of Hunter's friends was able to come over and laugh with him), to see a white rock turn red and black, they really couldn't care if it resembles what I want it to at all. In fact, thanks to the vision of a child, it usually looks exactly like they want it to in the end, even if it isn't the perfect lady bug. 
Sometimes the rock sits nakedly by as the paper plate gets a heafty coat of paint first.
I love how all of their bugs turned out.  This was Palmer's first rock ladybug. I like to think of this one as the "bouncer" of the group. You totally do not want to mess with this guy. He also might be in need of a some strong prescription glasses.  I think he is a bit of a teddy bear as he is crying gluey tears.
Lincoln's ladybug is a little shy and timid. She isn't quite sure of what she thinks of being a rock-ladybug yet.

Hunter's bug, staying true to all things Hunter, is happy to be here. He looks as if he might be a cross between a ladybug and a beetle.

These bugs kept us busy for a while and the kids were happy to do them, and I am sure Josh is happy to have some new red stains on some of his running shirts we use while painting :)