Category: April

Matthew’s most memorable moment this month has been the start of baseball. After months of off season practicing and boost workout sessions it was finally time to start playing again. It was harder to say who is more excited between Matthew and Ryan but I will give Matthew a slightly higher mark for excitement. He played in a couple tournaments right off the bat. The first one was a bit of a let down. They played great the first game and then it went down hill from there. The next weekend they played awesome and ended up taking 2nd in their division for the tournament. More exciting than that was Matthew hitting his first home run! He was pretty pumped obviously. He has been envisioning that moment for years. He loved it and had a permanent grin on his face for several days after that. There has been a stretch of bad luck for us since then in having everyone healthy on the team. The weekend of his homerun Cam got hit by a pitch and had a concussion. I got hit by a foul ball from another field and got a concussion. During the following week at school Derrick and Caden got concussions at school in recess and PE. We had a few fills at games while everyone was recovering. The first game everyone was back Frank got hit in the head with a weighted warm up ball and got a concussion. It is a little ridiculous. I hope we are done with injuries and we will be ready to go for the season. The new Avenger’s movie-Endgame-came out so we all went to the movies together to watch it. We figured that would be a safe activity that no one should get a concussion at.

Allison’s most memorable moment was going on the Girls Scout Unit camp out. She likes to camp. She enjoys being able to run wild, eat smores and sleep outside. She had a great time. They had a choice to sleep in a cabin or in a little outdoor hut thing with three walls and a curtain for the fourth wall. She picked the outdoor hut thingy and was next to the curtain so she was a little chilly all night. She forgot to use the hand warmers she took to help keep her warm along with her sleeping back, flannel pj’s, two blankets, and a hat. She is a tough girl though and she survived and had a fun time despite the cold. Her age group was scheduled for the rock climbing area, which she was very excited to try. She made it to the top of the tallest wall they had.

The last picture in her memorable moments is more of a memorable moment for me about Allison. For the lesson in church one week they made coupons to give to someone to remind them to do nice things for people. All of Allison’s coupons said ‘might’ or ‘maybe’ in them. Ha! That is so Allison. You know where you stand though.

Emilee had her kindergarten field trip to Paradise Park this month. She asked me to be a chaperone for it so we got to ride on the bus together. It was her first bus ride and first time to Paradise Park. There were lots of different stations that they rotated through like cooking, art, face painting, water play, outside play, science, theater, and planting a plant. It was a fun time.

Later in the month Kenny, Sherri and Aubry came for a weekend visit. Sherri gave Kenny a Kansas City Speedway driving experience in a Lamborghini. Emilee and I went with them to watch him drive it. We got to be down in the pit and see them get in and drive off. Emilee liked the sounds the cars made, and of course the different colors. We are not a big race car family but it would be fun to go see a race sometime.

After many years of attending Matthew and Allison’s school programs and trying to see over a bunch of tall heads with little success it was finally Emilee’s turn to have her first school musical. I think she was just as excited that it was Matthew and Allison’s turn to try and see over peoples heads to watch her. Luckily Emilee is one of the tallest, if not the tallest kindergartner so she was up on the top row of the risers and we could see her pretty well most of the time. It was pretty cute. They did songs with a forest/jungle theme and dressed up as different animals. Emilee was assigned to dress up as a porcupine. She strongly declined having a solo speaking part. She did however agree to do the Jungle Hop dance with a small group of other kids. She did a great job.

As excited as we were to see her performance, I was not to thrilled about trying to come up with a porcupine costume. I walk the line between balancing the right amount of time,energy and money for a cute costume that will be worn one time for 20 minutes. It seems like I am often on the ‘most obscure’ costumes list too. Some of the trickier ones we have had to come up with is a worm (we had this one twice, very tricky to not look like a piece of poop or a male body part), Humpty Dumpty (with enough pizzazz and sparkle that Allison would wear it) a snowflake, an Indian, a nerd and a zookeeper (not to be confused with a garbage man).

Each kid is a little different in what they are willing or want to wear too. Matthew usually doesn’t care what I hand him to wear so he is pretty easy. Allison is the trickiest. As soon as she is assigned to dress up as something she immediately rants about how dumb it is and says she refuses to do it. If she sees or hears anything that might indicate you are making a costume it starts the rant all over. Then the day before the performance after everyone at school has been talking about their costumes and building up the excitement she will come to me with a complete over the top idea of how she will dress up as the assigned whatever and expect me to pull it of thin air immediately. This caused complete meltdowns, hair pulling frustration and crying on both our parts the first few years. I really started loathing school programs. However, by the time second grade came around I had figured out a pretty good way to appease my, plan ahead and keep it simple style, and Allison’s flare for drama and statement making style. I digress, Emilee is a mix of the two. I can make whatever I want for her to wear but unlike Allison she does not want to stand out and if she feels like she does she will have nothing to do with it. Case in point. If you ask Emilee if she raised her hand at school she will look and you with a mortified look on her face and say, “No! If you raise your hand people look at you!” So, when I saw she was supposed to be a porcupine I was a little stumped on what would work for her. Pinterest was no help with low key simple costumes. Eventually I came across a porcupine wall decal that would fit perfectly on the front of her shirt. Then we put a pony tail in her hair and made it ‘spiky’. Taadaa! Both of us were happy campers. In fact, I personally thought only one other person had a better costume (according to my criteria of time,effort,money vs 20 minute usage.) One of Emilee’s besties Laney was a peacock. She had a peacock feather in her headband and a shirt that said ‘Pretend I am a Peacock’. How perfect is that! I told her mom I was doing that for whatever Emilee ended up being next year.

I think this time of year with Spring finally coming and things blooming and changing and getting to be outside more and summer getting close and the school year starting to wrap up I start to feel naustalgic.  We have a few months left before we officially finish up the toddler phase of our family and enter the everyone is in school all day phase of our family. It is a bitter sweet feeling. On the obvious side of the perks of having the kids at school and the time that opens up to get stuff done faster and get to things that have been put off for a long time that will be nice. It will be nice to be able to get stuff done so once they get home I can focus on just them and not have other distractions. On the other hand though I will really miss having some company during the day. For the last 12 years of my life I have had at least one of my kids with me for the majority if not all of the day. This is going to be a big change. Things just aren’t the same once they start school, everything speeds up.

I remember before Matthew started kindergarten I thought the parents that said they cried when they took their kids to school for the first time were kind of weird. I envisioned myself doing a cartwheel. Then I took Matthew to kindergarten and I wasn’t crying (ok, I cried when I got home) but it pulled at my heart strings a lot more than I expected. He had been my buddy. He is such a good kid too. He is so kind and pleasant to be around. His cute little giggle and adorable smile. He loved to play and run and do whatever I was doing. He is a thinker and is good at making people around him feel good. One of my favorite memories of Matthew is when he was about 18 months pushing his little bubble lawn mower next to his dad and wearing one of Ryan’s hats while Ryan mowed the lawn. I remember watching them and wishing I could push pause on time for a while. Contrast that to yesterday while Ryan and I were working in the yard and Matthew was riding MY bike in circles in the driveway while he talked with us. He is still an amazing kid but he is starting to get a little teenager in him and doesn’t want to hang out as much as he used to or has a lot of things going on with friends and baseball that keep him busy.

Allison was my saving grace when Matthew started kindergarten. She was still home with me to keep me company. With her little determined independent self accompanied by her cute little bouncing blond pony tails she has always been a force to be wreckened with. She has always been ready to go out and explore the world around her. I could put Matthew and Emilee on a blanket on the grass and they wouldn’t leave because they didn’t like the poky grass. Allison never paused for a second, she would immediatley take off to explore through whatever terrain surrounded her. Her being the middle child Emilee was on her way so she didn’t get as much one on one as everyone else. But we still had many fun times together at the park, or on walks, or story time at the library, playgroup, and anything else we did. She was very good to Emilee and liked to take care of her and help with what she needed. Allison was only going to be five by a couple weeks when she started kindergarten so she only did one year of preschool. She really is an independent person and wants to do everything her older brother does so she had no problem starting school and never looked back. I am more of a home body and she is the exact opposite so sometimes it is exhausting for me to keep her satified with getting out and doing things but I am glad she is that way. She is already great at making things happen instead of waiting for things to happen.

Matthew and Alli were only half day kindergarten, which I thought was perfect for them. Last year was the last year Kansas did half day kindergarten so when Emilee starts next Fall she will be gone all day. I think she will do fine with it. She will be almost six when she starts and has reached the stage where she wants more social interaction and activities going on during the day. I am the one that is going to struggle with it. Emilee is a joyful easy companion. She is fun to take pretty much wherever I go. She has done preschool a few days a week the past two years but it will be very different to have her gone all day. She is my little buddy. I will miss having her joyful little self skipping around the house. I have been feeling a little glum lately wanting to push a pause button on time again. When I got her preschool pictures back it got me thinking about it all again.

I love watching my kids and discovering the traits they were born with from day one and the things they learn and develop along the way. I know I am not done with that either, like I said it is just changing. When we left the baby phase for good, I was a little sad about that too. Our new phase has its perks too. It is pretty easy to hop in the car and go places now. Our Florida trip really was pretty nice, everyone can entertain themselves and can handle being in the car all day. The girls still need a little help but everyone can get themselves ready for things for the most part. I also like them being able to explain and talk things through more, and have a few more reasoning skills.

To sum up, I am happy and gratful I get to be a mom, and I get to be a mom that gets to stay home with her kids. The sleepless nights, blow-outs, being thrown up on, crying, tantrums, fits, sickness, messes, diaper changes, days without a shower, no adult interaction, reading the same book 50 times in a row, singing the ABC’s ‘one more time’, and all the other exhausting sometimes mind numbing activities that aren’t the easiest part of being a mom are completely worth every hug, smile, kiss, giggle, snuggle, laugh, joyful discovery, dried tear, fixed ouchie, silly, funny, happy, once in a lifetime moments that come along with it.

Here is some of my favorite moments from the past few years.