Silly Faces

and a camera are a great way to pass the time when you're waiting in a very long line for a jumpy house.

Shades

Sometimes a princess needs to wear her shades...

Crafts and Coloring

When I first started trying to color with Luke, it became clear that Luke thought coloring was a contact sport. He would pick up a crayon and slam it over and over again on a piece of paper for about 3 minutes and then be ready to move on. The key word in that sentence is move.

When I was pregnant with Maddie, I prayed God would bless me with a child who liked to sit and play and do things like crafts and color. I do enjoy coloring and sitting these days is always a plus!

Maddie loves to draw, color, paint and do crafts. She also likes to sit and snuggle. 

I'm grateful for answered prayer!

Seeing is...

Well, seeing is just a good thing.

During Luke's pre-Kindergarten check-up with the doc, he didn't do well on his eye examine. They were going to do the examine again before we left the office but we all forgot in the rush of wrapping up and checking. Oops!

It wasn't until the start of this school year that I remembered the issues with his eye examine. So, I decided to go ahead and take him to the eye doctor and have his eyes checked.

And sure enough, Luke needed to wear glasses. Which really wasn't all that surprising considering both Dan and I wear them.

The sales lady asked if I wanted to purchase the one-year insurance plan for his glasses and at first I said no. Then she reminded me that I was purchasing glasses for a little boy. Humm...just pay $25 to replace his glasses IF anything bad happened to his glasses? Well, okay. Just in case...

Wise, wise decision. We are now on our third pair in 7 months. Oh, my! Gotta love those boys!

Treasures

Maddie likes to collect things. Not the normal types of bric-a-brac that little girls usually collect like unicorns, stuffed animals, or stickers. Nope. Here is a picture of one of her collections:

 

When we're walking outside something on the ground always catches her eye and she has to stop, inspect it, pick it up, and bring it home. Rocks, acorns, leaves, sticks, and random things like a plastic clasp that has fallen off of some baby product or a broken pen. Maddie calls these collections her "treasures."

Of course, my first instinct is to have her drop it and put it back on the ground. Yuck!! But Maddie finds this command insulting. She sees something valuable in these things that I would call trash. Why would she not collect the very interesting object she has just found?

There are times when it really is nasty trash and I insist for her physical health (and my mental health) that she leave it on the ground. But I'm learning to be open to the non-health threatening items and embrace these interesting collections.

The items in the above picture seemed like a random hodge-podge of things when I was holding them in my hand... But laid out on the paper, the collection is actually pretty interesting.

See, I'm trying to see the value of these items because it's treasure to my Treasure ;)

First Day of School - 2012

Luke the 1st Grader

Maddie the pre-K'er

Take Me Out to the Ball Game!

Now that we're getting on the other side of summer craziness, I need to play a little catch-up on the old blog-a-roo! So here we go...

A little known fact about me is that once upon a time - when I had time (aka pre-kiddos) - I use to love to score baseball games. Dan showed me how I could "organize" the game of baseball and I was hooked. When we had the opportunity to attend two baseball games the week the Braves played the Cubbies, we where in!

The first game Dan and I went with friends.

We normally cheer on the Braves except when they play Chicago.

Go Cubbies!!

We were offered free tickets for the second game from some of our friends. We were so excited to be able to take the kiddos to the game (it was Maddie's first MLB game - yahoo!). So our family of four headed down to the Ted to see the game. Then we got to the park and realized how ridiculously great the seats where. It was so AWESOME!! No nosebleeds here!

Dan order Maddie and me our very own Cub hats. Maddie looked super cute in her pink hat.

Now, I officially can't say I don't own any sports paraphernalia. 

This had become a badge of honor for me and I'm a tad sad to let that badge go.

Luke likes to understand things and he asks a lot of questions.
Dan spent a good bit of the evening chatting with Luke about the game.

Maddie loved watching the home run fireworks.

This unfortunately happened a little too often during this game.
So sad for the Cubbies!

I discovered that Minute Maid Soft Frozen Lemonade (Strawberry) will keep the kiddos busy and cool during a very hot evening. I'm pretty sure Maddie would've lost interest quickly in the game if it wasn't for the frosty treat. FTW!!

 I think he is a cutie-pa-tootie!

What a little imp!

It's true there isn't enough free time in my day to score baseball games and there isn't "disposable income" in the budget to attend many MLB games; however, I'm very grateful for these peeps and for the time I get to spend my time with them. I heart them!