Soccer, Politics and Soccer

 

We’ve had a really cold soccer season this Spring.  Brrrrr.  Ben joined the ranks of soccer playing kids this year and while he was super excited he just wasn’t feeling it when it came time to play.  Poor Brennan is the coach and has like 2 players come each week.  He bribes Ben into kicking the ball a few times and then he’s usually pretty done.  The first week was wet and cold and freezing and the  Ben played for 2 minutes than wanted to be held, the other player was crying.  When Brennan asked the other coach if they were ready to just call the game the coach said, “Why don’t you just try encouraging your team more.”   Why don’t you… never mind ;)  Last week went a lot better.  We actually had a full team and Grandpa and Grandma and some cousins came to watch which was evidently all the motivation Ben needed because  he played the whole time and even scored a goal.  Most of the time he ran around feeling AWESOME, and ran over to tackle Nate every time he ran by.  Good times.

 

Abby and Belle, twins 7 years apart born to different mothers

Our soccer star and his cute coach

 

Soccer star graciously posing with some fans.

Last Saturday we got to go to the State Republican Convention to support my Dad.  I took a few photos of my kids and Liza’s kids, Ryan’s kids were there too but just aren’t as photogenic.  LOL, (remember I really do laugh at my own jokes) just kidding they were late and missed our great photo shoot with this lovely backdrop between the fire extinguisher and electrical thingy majigs.  Some people like to take pictures on couches in the meadow, but this is how we roll.

This pic. cracks me up because it looks like Nate is doing a lovely ballet lift with Joshy, chubbiest ballerina you ever did see.

 

In this one Joshua has gone from ballet dancer to big beefy football player.

And here we have one last soccer game pic. from Nate’s freezing cold game tonight.

 

That’s all for now.  Thanks for tuning in.

Mom

I love my Mom. She is one of my favorite people to be with and to talk to. She has a magic ability of listening to me and without saying very much makes me feel completely listened to and understood as well as motivated and confident I can do so much better.

She’s so complimentary and positive without being an enabler. A few weeks ago we went to their house for a Sunday dinner and she told me about a conversation she’d had with a man in my neighborhood who said some nice things about me and my family. A few minutes later I found a sticky note on her kitchen counter with some key words of what he had said about us. She had written herself a note to be sure she passed them on. Isn’t that just the cutest thing ever?

I’m really proud of her. She detests the spotlight. You might find that hard to believe if you know me or any of my siblings :) but it’s true. My Dad’s job has made avoiding the spotlight pretty hard for her and she’s been an unbelievably good sport about it and has done a beautiful job whenever she’s had to.

I realize this picture is kind of weird, I think one of my little people took it thus the weird angle. I love it though because I think my Mom looks so beautiful and I love the way she’s looking at my Dad.

She’s very talented. Since emptying her nest she’s busied herself with much service, and learning and developing many talents. She takes tennis and painting lessons and through the years has taken gardening classes, piano lessons etc. For Christmas this last year in spite of a hectic schedule decided to do homemade gifts. I blogged about the painting she gave all of her children that we treasure. But, I’m not sure I mentioned the foam blocks she made for the grandkids that she spent countless hours on. She ordered I think 30 squares of foam and then sewed covers for each one of them. It took forever, but every time we’re at their house the kids spend hours playing, building, throwing, hiding, jumping with or on these fabulous blocks.

I could literally go on and on, but I better follow her example and go be productive. I just wanted to put on record a few of the things I love and admire about my Mom. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! We love you!!!

A Perfect Example

You know how in my last update I tried to describe a certain side of Abby?  Well, a day later I found this video on my camera. 

Abby's "Robot" from Andrea W. on Vimeo.

You’ve Got to Get It

If you haven’t tried Windows Live Writer, you must.  It’s only about 4,573 times easier to post pictures.  You can actually just place a picture right where you want it and then it will publish everything right to your blog for you.  It’s fabulous.  I had trouble at first, it wouldn’t publish with photos, so I had to download picasa and create a “windows live writer” album.  Picasa uploaded all my photos from “my pictures” file and now I’m going to be a blogging/photographing machine!  Watch out world.

Here are some photos of Anna for the sixth grade Medieval Feast.  My fabulously talented friend Lauri lent us this amazing costume.  I am so grateful I remembered to call her because this would have kind of put me over the edge to come up with something.  She even thanked me for calling her.  Anna was sooooo excited and had a great time.

Oh, and just because it’s so easy here’s another one of Joshy in his new jammies that actually fit him.

Update

It’s been a long time since I’ve done an update so I thought I’d give it a go. Brennan just returned from a fabulous golf trip. He worked really hard again last year and won a trip from his work. We knew we wouldn’t want to leave the babe for a long couple trip so he got past his disappointment :) and planned his dream golf trip. He and a buddy and his buddy’s two brothers who he’s gotten to be friends with as well, went to North Carolina where they got to golf several Pinehurst courses as well as some other famously gorgeous golf courses. He had a great time. He was also great missed. We love Brennan.

This guy was behind Brennan at lunch one day.

I did pretty well, but wow do I wonder how single parents do it! It’s just relentless and not to have someone to shoulder all the responsibilities with is exhausting. I have renewed appreciation for what a helpful, involved husband and dad Brennan is.

Anna is so busy I hate it. I try really hard not to over-schedule my kids. I’ve told them they can choose two things. She chose ballet and soccer. I really wanted her to take piano but she didn’t want that to count against her two things so there’s three. Plus she’s got activity days every other week, plus this play that she and Chloe are doing each week, plus about an hour’s worth of homework every day. Poor thing needs more downtime, she loves to be outside. Last week she cleared out all the dead leaves and weeds in our back flowerbed underneath our big forsythia for a little fort. She should have been raised on a farm. We love Anna.

She’s very cute, isn’t she?

Did I tell you Abby got a part in our city’s summer musical? She’s playing Princess Ying Yaowlak in The King and I. She’s very excited and so are we I absolutely love to watch my kids perform. A few weeks ago Abby got into one of her moods, the kind when she’s extremely silly and laughs so hard at herself you can’t help but join her. For some reason she kept half saying and half laughing while she said “Beware, for (right here she would do air quotes) Determination!” She meant extermination and I don’t think she has any idea what air quotes are for. Even with extermination I’m not really sure what she was saying but she got us all laughing. We love Abigail.

Last night I was singing some primary songs to the boys to get them to sleep. I looked over at Nate and tears were streaming down his face. Alarmed, I asked, “Nate, what’s wrong, why are you crying?” His face crumpled and his voice stammered as he got out, “I…miss…Great Grandma!” Oh, it just about ripped my heart right out. “Why are you thinking about that?” “All those songs about heaven!!!” He has an old football video game that he’s kind of obsessed with. He runs out after each play to tell me all about it. His enthusiasm is darling. We love Nathan.

Benjamin has some serious 4 year old attitude lately. I’m hoping that if I stick to my guns he’ll give up and surrender to my authority. Stubborn little stink. He’s also developing quite a sense of the dramatic telling me that since I put him in time-out his leg wouldn’t work anymore. The other day when he was upset with his siblings he said, “They are making me cry very loud!” Fortunately, we still think he’s irresistible. We love Benny.

Joshy baby chubs is just like the yummiest, most satisfying dessert you could imagine. He sits on my kitchen floor most of the day and while still not crawling or army crawling still manages to travel all over and will go to great lengths to get to a ball or a car. He’s simply scrumptious. We love Joshua.

When You’re 4 and You’re Ben…

You spend your mornings fishing for sharks with a measuring tape off the coast of …couch in mismatched jammies with a golf glove and a panda mask on.

When you’re 4 and you’re Ben you want pizza for lunch and even when your mom tells you she doesn’t have any pizza, you’ll keep telling (and yelling) that you want pizza for lunch.

When you’re 4 and you’re Ben you’ll tell your Mom you’re cleaning her room for her and then when she looks to see how exactly you’re cleaning she sees that you’ve cleared her dresser off and are doing this:

Uh, so yes this is our bedroom and that wallpaper (which was lovely in it’s day) was going to be to be the first thing we got rid of. Almost eight years later…yeah)

Untitled from Andrea W. on Vimeo.

When you’re 4 and you’re Ben you have lots of opinions and you feel more strongly now than you did when you were just 3 or 2.

When you’re 4 and you’re Ben you’re very loved.

Talents - I've Got Some!

For those of us whose talents are a little less obvious than well, everyone else's our day has come! My very talented sister has started things off and challenged us to declare our talents. Now before you go and tell me that I'm being hard on myself let me assure you that I am generally NEVER hard on myself. That said, I'm pretty aware of what I don't do well, but I've made my peace with it and while it bugs me every now and then I've accepted it and continue to work on those things. Basically what I'm trying to say is that I'm about to list some of what I consider my talents, try not to be intimidated ;) and try not to take this as a cry for help and a plea for assurances of my great worth. When my children look back and remember how our house was always messy and how often I lost my patience I'll whip out this post and show them how lucky they are to have me in their lives. Okay, enough disclaimers, here we go:

• I am freakishly strong. (Now I know why, the Good Lord knew I'd be lugging around some seriously chubby babies). I am an incredibly inaccurate and inconsistent bowler, but I throw that bowling ball so hard it's impressed my Dad for YEARS. Seriously, you should see it. Or just ask my Dad, he loves to talk about it.
• I have the good fortune of not needing anyone else for good humor. I find myself really funny sometimes and am not above laughing at my own jokes. (I do find lots of other people funny too, it's just nice that I don't need them to get a laugh.)
• I'm a fabulous finder. I've honed my skills from years of being unorganized and never putting things in the same place. Seriously, I can find a missing shoe, my keys almost every day, a needle in a haystack, etc., etc. faster than anyone in my family. (I'll admit my competition isn't much, they're all hopelessly terrible at finding things.)
• I inherited my Grandpa's love and appreciation for characters. As in really colorful people and then I went and married one and then I bore 5. While I'm not always patient with some of their eccentricities, on some level I always see some humor in it and think they greatly enrich my life.
• I sing lullabies well. I have no memory for lyrics to songs and I've lost all my nerve for public singing, but I do have a few lullabies that I know all the words to and when it's nice and dark I can sing with the best of them :)
• I'm not a flake. I'm disorganized and last-minute and barely keep my head above water, but I'm not a flake.
• There's this one game that I think my parents gave us for Christmas when we were kids called, "Rubics Race" and I was pretty much unbeatable. My brothers refused to play me after a while because they got tired of being slaughtered. I could also usually beat them in indian leg wrestling (that's what we called it, probably not very pc is it?). I'm usually good at games in general and am very competitive.
• I'm good fixing things. One day Brennan was with some buddies leaving our house to go golfing. When he tried to close the garage it wouldn't so he called me from his car and asked me if I could please fix it. He took more than a little abuse about that from his buddies.

Okay, your turn, what are your talents?