Lots to catch up on

I think I'll do this in a more or less random order. I'm not organized enough in my brain right now to do it any other way.

First up, we have a contract on a house! A gorgeous house, even. Never thought I'd have one so nice, especially that I can move right into. A couple of pictures for the curious, but no interior shots yet. It's still not mine, after all.

It's a 2-story house. The boys were thrilled. They've been begging for one for a couple of years now.

And, it has a nice, long backyard. There's room for a big garden, and lots and lots of baseball.















There's a shed in the back. Nothing terribly fancy, but the girls that live there now have been allowed to spray paint one end to their hearts' content. They're actually quite good.

Up next, my brother Jared's wedding to the best girl ever.

Operation Lone Star

Operation Lone Star is our next family project. It will involve a lot of work, from everyone. There will be packing, and purging, and patience. There will probably be tantrums, there will definitely be some tension, and it will all end in the state of Texas.

We have requested, and been granted, a transfer to the Ft. Worth office. This is a really exciting time for us. We'll be able to own a house, rather than rent. We'll be able to have enough space to spread out. We won't have to hear when our neighbors turn on their Wii, which we can now. Hopefully we won't be able to smell if our neighbors smoke a cigar every night, like we do now.

We've narrowed our choices to a couple of communities. They are both far enough out of the city to have large lots, and smaller schools. But they're not so far to have terrible commutes.

We are lucky enough to have some fabulous friends nearby already. The Johnsons are a great family. Gail was A.J.'s first babysitter when I went back to school. They have boys about the same ages as our boys, and all of them are good friends. We are very glad to be moving close to them again. We won't be next door, like we were in Columbia, but close enough for lots of barbecues and other get-togethers.

And, it puts us much closer to almost all of our family. I have some cousins in TX, one near Houston, and one in San Antonio. We'll have to have our own family reunions, since none of us have been to the "big" one for several years.

We've got a lot to do, and it will be stressful, but by the end of the summer, we're hoping to be in a place we can really call "home."

One did, and one didn't

Congratulations to Levi! He made the Shetland (coach pitch-level) tournament team! He is very excited, but he doesn't quite know what it means just yet. :)

They'll be going to three tournaments, but he'll only make two of them. He must have been good enough that they didn't care, because the initial information was adamant that you be available for everything. His first tournament is over Memorial Day weekend, so we'll see how they do and report back.

Sadly, A.J. did not make his team. He was on the bubble, but he's little, and they only would have put him on the bench. So, they just left him off. He was not happy about the decision. He didn't get angry and stomp around, but he was crying quietly. He's in the younger group, being 9 rather than 10. So there are a lot of boys older and bigger than he is. A.J., however, knows that he works harder than just about anyone and thinks that should make him more valuable. I agree, but I'm not coaching the team, and the guy who is coaching, well, he's a little loony. We weren't terribly surprised, but A.J. was terribly disappointed. Maybe next year.

Spring Break and All-Star Games

So since we last posted the snow has all gone away, the baseball season is well under way and spring break has come and gone. We finally went somewhere for spring break this year. Bethany didn't have classes this year, so there was no conflict with her school and the kids school having break at different times. We did a little road trip down to San Felipe, Mexico. It's a little fishing village on the Sea of Cortez side of Baja. We stayed in a house close to the beach and got a lot of peace and quiet. Here's some pictures of the Giant Cactus forest that we drove through there.
Yesterday was our league's all-star festival/fundraiser. Both AJ and Levi were voted onto their all-star teams by their teammates. It was a long but fun day.

It SNOWED!

What wacky weather lately.  Today, it snowed.  Dippin' dots style.  It was a little strange.  I've never seen snow like that.  It looked like sleet, but wasn't.  The boys ran outside to be in it, catch it on their tongues, and touch it...in t-shirts and no socks or shoes.  A.J. was even in shorts!

The boys enjoying the first flakes.

It stopped for a while, and then started again with a vengeance!  It eventually accumulated to somewhere between 1 and 2 inches.

It covered our road.  Jon was out with a friend, and came home to say it's not even cloudy 2 miles away, and doesn't stick until 3 roads south of us.

They suited up (as best they could, with no boots or snow pants, or decent mittens) and headed out for a snowball fight.  First, though, they stopped to make their first snow angels.

We found some small mittens for Levi, and some knit ones for A.J., but they didn't work all that well.

 The boys threw snowballs, and Aaron rolled up the balls for a snowman.  And, our lemon tree doesn't look very happy right now.  Poor thing.

This is their first ever snowman.  Carrot nose, raisin eyes and buttons.

American Folklore Through the Years

Our Blue and Gold Banquet Skit from this year.

H stands for...

Harry, Hermione, Hagrid, Hedwig, Hogwarts, Hufflepuff, and Happy Birthday.

"Mom?  Can you put a little R next to it for Ron?"

Levi had his party last week.  Clearly, it was Harry Potter themed.  He adores Harry Potter.  His favorite character is Ron.  I'm not really sure why, since Ron is kind of a dork.  He's a lovable dork, though. :^)

First, each guest had to be sorted.  This was a way to make them wear nametags.  About half the kids were from church, and half from school, and there's not a lot of overlap between the groups.  And, I didn't know some of the school kids.  So, it helped us, too.  The sorting hat was the same hat I used for my snowmen as a kid.  It's nice and well-worn.

The next task was to make/decorate a wand.  We bought little dowels and had them use markers, crayons and stickers.  Then we added some metallic pearl crinkle (fancy Easter grass) to make it look like a spell was coming out the end.  One little boy (whose dad is a professional magician) decided he wanted to make his wand black.  He spent nearly 30 minutes painstakingly coloring it perfectly black.

Following the pizza (yay, pizza!) they went outside for quidditch practice.  They worked on throwing three quaffles through the hoops.

Then, they used our foam bat as beaters hitting the bludger away.

Since it's hard to keep your glasses on while flying around on a broom, they played "Pin the Glasses on Harry" when they came back in.  Some of the kids were cheaters and looked out from under their blindfold.  Others felt the glasses already on the poster.  Some were happy with wherever they put it. 

After putting the glasses back on, it was time for Potions Class.  We picked up several pop rocks kits that included test tubes and a sour ingredient.  We provided the tall vase of elixir, and the powdered dragon's egg, crystallized unicorn tears, crushed lizard teeth, and dried mandrake root.  When these were mixed properly, it fizzed and foamed, and then would make the drinker invisible.  The kids took this very seriously, and were very careful with the ingredients.

The foaming was impressive...

but the taste, not so much.

The cake and ice cream turned out to be the most dangerous part of the party.  One little guy fell off his chair and banged his mouth on the table. :(  He quickly recovered, though, and finished his cake.

It was a really fun party, but 12 kindergarteners in the house at once was a little crazy.  I didn't mind seeing them go.