We have started our trips to Harvesters again this Summer. The kids really like it. They would like to go every week so we try to fit it in when we can. They each invite a friend or two to come. I think 4-5 kids is the magic number. Everyone has a job and can keep busy and it’s not too many for me to wrangle and keep focused. The minimum age is 8 years old. I debated on passing Emilee off as an 8 year old because she is the only one that can’t come. I asked her if she was interested in going to sort food with us, she said, “Umm working is not really my thing so I will let you guys do that. I will stay and play.” After our first trip I figured that was probably best. So I get a babysitter for her or she plays at a friends house and we are all happy.
Hailey Hinton, Aliya and Cambrie McDonald came with us. We sorted and boxed 1,850 pounds of canned goods in 2 hours. They worked hard!Allison, Matthew and Reece. We shucked and bagged a few hundred ears of corn.
Ha! I didn’t mean to make that pun in the title, I realized it after I typed it.
Anyway, it is true. We are in the meat of our Spring Baseball season. We have had a lot of rainouts which is crappy, but in return the games we have played have been in gorgeous weather or cold weather which I will take any day over heat. The Summer temps have finally arrived so now it will get a little less pleasant to watch them play. The team has been doing great though. Matthew started out strong, had a bit of a hitting slump (still one of the best hitters on the team though) and this past weekend finally came out of it and it doing great now. He has had some pretty awesome fielding plays too. Diving and rolling catches, huge leaps through the air to catch it, double plays, and some impressive catches off of hard hits or crazy bounces. He is a fun person to watch play. The last two tournaments we played in were on turf which we have never done. The boys had fun sliding and diving on it. They also took 2nd in one and 1st in one. They played well.
The new trendy word this year I have been hearing a lot is May-cember. Meaning that May is crazy busy and packed full of end of the school year stuff and it feels like December because so much is going on. It is true, its a busy month. I find the word a little obnoxious though. I feel like it will perpetuate the craziness and people will start making things bigger and more elaborate to live up to the word. I am a little grumpy and cynical today though so maybe it’s just my negative attitude. We have had plenty going on this month though. I have put some of it in other posts but there are a few things I think are worth mentioning that I haven’t yet.
Ryan and I celebrated our 17th anniversary. Wow. It seems like forever and 5 minutes at the same time. The kids spent the night at their cousins and Ryan and I went downtown and stayed at a fancy hotel in the Power and Light District. We ate at a fancy steak house, and walked around afterwards for a bit. We found a place called Insomnia Cookie. They had giant delicious cookies that were served warm and they were open and delivered until 3AM. AAAhhh! I have never met a cookie I didn’t like so I tried a few. They were YUMMY! It was a fun little find but probably good that they are far enough away from my house that I can’t just pop in whenever I have a cookie craving.
Saw this at the Insomnia Cookie place, that would make your day better for sure!
The last time we had family pictures taken was four years ago. I have never gone that long between pictures but I really love the ones we have up now. I have been saying every Spring and Fall for the past two years that we needed to get new ones so I finally made myself make an appointment. Part of the reason I was postponing was because I was going to ‘lose 10 pounds first’ but mostly because it is a lot of work to get clean, coordinating outfits that fit everyone and haircuts, schedules, and the weather to all cooperate. It finally got done though. Instead of losing 10 pounds I gained 10 more, we had to reschedule once for rain, and Allison got a giant purple popsicle stain on her yellow shirt hid from me until we got there because she wasn’t supposed to eat it in the first place, but thanks to photo shop, we still got them done. I haven’t seen them yet, I am anxious for them to come!
Girls fell asleep after family pictures. Smiling for an hour is tough work.
I have been working on a few projects, or encouraging Ryan to work on a few projects around the house that we have wanted done for a while. It is nice to be getting a few of them checked off. Ryan put a screen door on our back porch which is awesome. I love being able to leave the door open and get fresh air with no bugs. Assuming everything lives I finally have the rock beds planted we put in last year and everything replaced that died last year and our front yard is done and can just grow and be pretty. Sherri helped me figure out the back yard while she was here so I can start on that…next year. I decorated our bathroom and master bedroom. We have a nice, pretty, relaxing space for Ryan and I to go hide in when we want to now. I also completed phase one of two in our garage re-organization. I designed some custom shelves that would hold and organize all the sports stuff in our garage. Ryan was willing to build them but I was not willing to wait until he had time to do it so I did it. It took me longer to do it, but it got done sooner that way and I was pretty impressed with myself. Power tools make me nervous but I got over it and used drills, saws and all kinds of power tools to get it done. The next thing I am currently working on is putting a new sink in our main floor half bath. It has a pedestal sink in it now which is completely useless and drives me crazy. I ordered an unfinished cabinet and I am sanding and staining it to match the rest of our cabinetry, then Ryan will put it in. Oh, we got our house tested for Radon as well and it measured at unsafe levels so we had a Radon pump put in. Ryan is convinced and I am on the fence that the whole Radon thing is a farce but we got a pump anyway. They left a PVC eye sore up the entire side of our house when they put it in. Ryan was not happy. The next day I climbed up to the very top of our 30′ ladder while Matthew held it with enough focus that made me feel only slightly more secure then if he wasn’t there at all but he promised to call 911 if I fell. I painted it all the same color as our house. Ryan hasn’t said anything since so it worked well enough that he doesn’t notice it anymore.
Matthew finished up 6th grade! He said it was the fastest year of school he has had so far. He also admitted that it school ‘isn’t that bad’. He had Field Day too but I didn’t make it to his so I don’t have pictures. He said it was a good time though. He always enjoys when he gets to test his speed skills. He is looking forward to not having to ride the bus for 45 minutes next year because he will be at the new middle school by our house. He picked art, cooking class, engineering and I can’t remember the last elective for next year. I was impressed with his variety when he showed me.
I did make it to his award ceremony. He was on the Principals Straight ‘A’s’ Honor Roll and was also recognized for participating in Mathletes and being the representative several times for their school for the events throughout the year. He is such a good boy. He just takes care of what he needs to have done and does a good job and is a good person. I am glad I get to be his mom.
For Mother’s Day weekend Ryan and Matthew decided that I would love to watch baseball. Just kidding. The coach asked if the moms were on board for a tournament that weekend and none of us were going to be the one that poohooed the idea so the coach decided that’s what we would want to do for Mother’s Day. The boys probably put him up to it though.
I do very much enjoy watching them play though so I wasn’t put out. The rain decided to come down almost nonstop for the whole weekend though so instead of playing baseball we spent most of it waiting the rain out in the car, or under an overhang somewhere. One of our games was close to one of the players homes so we went and had a little Mother’s Day celebration there while we waited for a bit. The boys each gave us a red carnation with a card that they wrote a little note to us on and it had a team picture and an individual picture of Matthew for me. There was brownies, donuts, and chocolate too so it was a pretty fun time. While the moms hung out and relaxed the boys and the rest of the kids decided to have a game of wiffle ball in the cul de sac. I think we only ended up playing one game the whole weekend. We all went to lunch together while we were waiting too. We do enjoy this team and the families. Everyone is nice and friendly and for the most part gets along. We have fun times together.
Emilee and Allison love being around the boys. Allison plays is cool and tries to act like she could take them or leave them. Neither one of them is supposed to be in the dug out but Allison will casually meander in there and try and go unnoticed as long as she can. Emilee is much less subtle. She knows better but occasionally I have to haul her out of the dug out or an after game huddle. She likes to give the boys more attention then they usually want with hugs, jokes, sharing toys, tickling, stealing their hats, offering one sunflower seed at a time, asking them for sunflower seeds and anything else she can think of. Some of them don’t know what to do with her so they just pretend she isn’t there. A few start calling for Matthew to ‘fix her’ and a couple are sweet and play a little bit with her. We remind Matthew that they will never admit it (at least Allison) but they watch him like a hawk and want to be like him and with him as much as they can so when he can he needs to include them. Sometimes I get an eye roll but most of the time he is good about letting them hang around when they can.
Team lunch waiting for better weather.
Matthew running the bases in wiffle ball.
All the moms and the boys on Mother’s Day.
Emilee spending a half inning on dads lap.
Matthew forgot how to wear a shirt.
Emilee giving Cam the run down on how many flowers she collected so far.
Opening day for Spring Baseball! These two were skipping out the door with a big smile at 7am on a Saturday.
2019 Spring Baseball NBA Adams team
First home run!
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.
Making yummy smores
She made it all the way to the top.
An act of kindness coupon from Allison…
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.
Bus ride for Emilee’s fieldtrip.
Emilee’s Paradise Park field trip
The car in this picture is the pace car, not the race car. 🙂
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.
Spring Break was a week earlier than usual this year, and with as much time off in February as we had by the time it came to Spring Break I felt like we had already been having a Spring Break.
Ryan and I talked about doing something further away like maybe Chicago or Gulf Shores. Neither of us got around to planning it though and we had asked our friends the McDonald’s to do something with us. By the time we did get around to planning it we decided to do a long weekend in St Louis with the McDonald’s and spend the rest of the week at home.
Monday was my catch up day. I told the kids that I was going to be checking as much off my to do list as I could then we would have more Spring Break like activities the rest of the week. Monday was actually the first sunny day with temperatures in the 40’s instead of teens so it felt wonderful to be outside. I ‘made’ the kids go to the park for 30 minutes at least. Three hours later I had to drag them home with sun burned faces. After a quick refueling they were back outside playing baseball and riding bikes, playing tag, roller skating, digging in the dirt, and having a great time being outside. It definitely gave us all Spring fever. It was just a teaser though because the rest of the week was cold windy and rainy.
Tuesday was cold and rainy so we decided to go swimming at the Olathe Community Center with the rest of the people in Olathe. Despite the large crowd the kids still had fun. Emilee in particular can’t wait until it is swimming weather again.
Allison picked our activity on Wednesday. A few weeks earlier she had gone to the Johnson County Museum with her girl scout troop. She loved the kids area and has been begging to go back again. We invited our cousins to go with us. The boys stayed behind to play some video games and the girls came with us. They played at the museum until we were all hungry and then we went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch. We topped the day off with a sleepover.
Johnson County Museum
‘modern art’ toys
Spinning chairs at the museum.
Thursday we played around the house and packed up to get ready to go on our weekend getaway. Friday morning we followed the McDonald’s to St Louis and spent the weekend there. We stopped for lunch and then went to The Arch. We had all seen it before but we had never been in it, or seen the museum with it. It was cool to see the view from the arch. The tiny round 5 person pod that takes you 600+ feet into the air was a little claustrophobic but bearable. After the arch we checked into our hotel and then went to Dave-N-Busters for dinner and to play in the arcade for the evening. Matthew figured out the timing on one of the ticket winning machines so he scored a bunch of tickets for everyone. It almost took longer for then to ‘shop’ with their tickets than it did to play the games. It was a fun night.
Then next morning after breakfast at the hotel (one of the kids favorite things about staying in a hotel) we went to the City Museum. It is an incredible place. It is an old ten story building that they have converted into a giant play area. We went a few years ago and it was a little nerve racking trying to keep track of the kids. They can crawl in a hole and come out in a completely different room. It is almost impossible to keep track of them. They are older now so I was a little less worried. We set a meeting spot and split up to explore. There is caves, and a catacomb area with a ten story slide. There are basically just mazes and places to crawl around all over. There is an outside portion the has tunnels and paths leading all around that is literally attached to the side of the building so you are hanging in the air. Everything is made with recycled material too. It is hard to explain but it is a pretty amazing place. We spent most of the day there exploring. When we were worn out, we ate lunch and then stopped at a well known ice cream place that I can not for the life of me remember the name of now. It was yummy though. We were meeting our long time friends the Schellman’s that night so we had about an hour to kill before we were supposed to meet them. We all decided to stop at the park and play because the weather was pretty nice. After dinner and visiting with the Schellman’s for a few hours we met back up with the McDonald’s at the hotel and the kids all swam for a few hours. The second best part about staying in a hotel. Sunday morning we went to church with the Schellman’s and then drove home. It was a fun weekend. It was nice to get out of town for a few days and enjoy some fun time with family and friends.
Fortune cookie at dinner on Spring Break
We went to St Louis with the McDonald’s
Top of the St Louis Arch
Entrance to the pod that takes you to the top of the arch.
The McDonald Pod
The Terry Pod
Riding up to the top of the arch in our five man pod.
This year our resident NFL team did really well. They ended up making it to the play-offs. They haven’t done that for 20 years or something like that. I don’t remember they exact statistic. This year they made it to the play-offs so Ryan took Matthew and went with a friend of his from high school. They got seats for the lower bowl on the 35 yard line. It was COLD! Like low 30’s with snow and wind. They had several layers of everything plus snow pants and boots. They stayed pretty warm except for their toes, but that didn’t stop them from having a great time. The Chiefs won too! They lost the next week, but they won the game they were at which made it even more fun.
Chiefs Play Off Game!
Chiefs Play Off game with dad.
Chiefs Play Off Game 2019
The girls have been taking gymnastics for a few years. A couple months ago we switched to a new gym and they had pictures recently. So I got a cute picture of each of my gymnasts.
Allison’s gymnastic picture
Emilee’s gymnastic pictures
The high school has a Saturday cheerleader camp every couple of months. Allison and her friend Carlee like to go together and dance it up together.
Cheer Camp
Cheer Camp
This is Emilee’s second year playing basketball. She has come a long way. Last year she wouldn’t run to the other end of the court. When the ball went to the other side of the court she would sit under the basket against the wall and wait until everyone came back. This year she runs the court. If she gets tired though she comes up into the bleachers and asks Ryan and I if she can be done. Matthew works on her dribbling with her during the week and she is getting better.
Emilee having a team huddle with her basketball team ‘The Bears’
Emi playing in her basketball game.
February is always an odd month. Its short anyways and there is usually teacher conferences and President’s Day which are no school days. Then there is usually snow days. So far this month thanks to ice storms we have had FOUR snow days and its only half way through the month. Nothing makes the kids quite as excited as a surprise day off of school. We try to get in some fun activities and of course lots of playing in the snow.
Snow day facials
Matthew and Carson built a snow fort.
Emilee and Jovee built a snowman.
Allison and Leah went sledding with Ross and Lauren.
Emilee and Jovee working on their snowman.
Allison was Ms. Coovert’s class Student of the Month. She gets a special certificate and a coupon for a free ice cream at Culver’s. She was very excited and Ryan and I were very proud of her. One of her besties Hailey was PE Student of the Month with her.
Allison was the Student of the Month
Student of the Month with Hailey
More pictures from our Winter.
Allison decided to use her bean bag as her pillow.
Emilee’s 100th day of school celebration
The 6th Graders went on a ski field trip.
I thought this was a cute picture so I just stuck it in here. 🙂
Our Stake President spoke in church a few Sunday’s ago about different titles of the Savior and Satan. He focused mostly on the titles of Satan as an Accuser and the Savior as our Advocate. It was a really good message. Ryan and I both talked with the kids about how we should be advocates for each other in our lives, and not accusers. This has been on my mind a lot and I have been trying to catch myself when I am being an accuser and change to advocate. Not always easy.
A few days after his talk the kids went back to school from a three day weekend and I found myself looking around the house and saw mess after mess that they had been told to clean up, and other jobs they had done but not well. I started thinking about how it was time to have yet another lecture on doing what you’re asked, doing things well, blah, blah blah. As I was mulling over what to say and how to do it as an advocate not an accuser I had the thought to make a jeopardy game.
It didn’t take very long at all to get ready. It took about 20 minutes to make up categories and then five questions for each one. After dinner I set it up and we had the kids play. I was the game show host, dad was the score keeper and played the Jeopardy theme music when we needed it. The kids were a little unsure at first, but after a few questions they started to get into it. Allison was the most enthusiastic, she loved it and gave really good answers. They were so thorough we started giving her a time limit for answers. Matthew was s little bit of a stinker at first because he was having a hard time beating the girls to the buzzer but by the end they were all participating. It was a little surprising the answers they got right or wrong. I need to give Emilee a little more credit and responsibility. She is a little to good at playing the ‘I don’t know how’ or ‘I need help’ card. According to all her answers though she is quite aware of what she is supposed to do.
The final winner was Allison followed by Emilee and then Matthew. They were all on pretty even playing fields which is hard to get most of the time. Allison loved that she legitimately beat Matthew at something. She wants to play Jeopardy every week. I don’t know about every week but it is something I think we will do again on occasion. It is really easy to fit the categories to whatever we want to talk about. It was a fun family activity, we had lots of good, non-confrontational conversations, and had a few expectations clarified or explained.
For example, all of our kids are aware of what the “Golden Rule” is but a little fuzzy on its application and meaning. I remember not quite getting that when I was younger. I remember pondering it many times trying to figure out what I was missing. It might be helpful if it had a second line about treating others the way you want to be treated, regardless of how they are treating you.
Ryan and I learned we need to give the kids more credit as far as what they are capable of around the house. We also need to be more consistent in holding them accountable for what they are asked to do more and remind them less. They are good smart kids.
As a side note, to make it interesting we let the kids have a say in the prize for the winner before we played. The majority vote was for money. The winner got $5 and the other two got $1. When we gave Emilee her dollar she was a little sad. I asked her what was wrong and she said, “I don’t really like dollars, all I do is lose them.” Haha! I thought it was pretty funny. Allison can’t have more than a dollar without it burning a hole in her pocket so she wanted to go to the dollar store the next day and found many things to add to her slimes. Emilee was happy to trade her dollar for a coloring book before she lost it.
Favorite Category- I should know this by now.
Allison is the winner!
Matthew needs to review how to correctly make the ‘loser’ sign.
In our church we believe that everyone has to be baptized to live with Heavenly Father after we die. Not everyone has that opportunity while they are on the earth so one of the things we do in the temple is act as a proxy for our ancestors that weren’t baptized before they died. Once you are twelve you can do this so we got a babysitter for the girls and Ryan, Matthew and I went to the temple last week. Matthew is a good kid. He has a kind, good heart. It was a nice night with just the three of us. We stopped at Freddy’s afterwards for some ice cream.
When we drove up Matthew noticed that the shadows above the windows look like little temples. I thought that was pretty awesome.
