Love Long Weekends

We all loved the long Memorial Day weekend and we packed it full of fun. Friday night, Cade had baseball practice. After practice, one of the families had the boys over for hot dogs. Saturday morning Cade had a baseball tournament an hour away. We left the house at 7:00 a.m. but that wasn't a problem since Cade and Emma were both up at 6:00. Cade's team had the best two games they've had all season. They lost the first game 8-5 and the second 22-17. We were happy to see that the games were at least close this time. Cade pitched well for two innings in the first game but then struggled the second game. He was pulled after giving up 4 runs (mostly walks, Yikes!). He had some really nice hits and the team played so much better defensively. I should add that he had another home run last Tuesday. I was there to see it this time and I was happy and proud of him. After baseball Saturday, we made a quick trip to the pool with Miss Emalyn.

Cade was worn out from playing two games and Maddi was trying to wake up from her nap on the car ride home. Emma tried out her puddle jumper and it worked great! She had fun swimming with Daddy.

A happy little girl! She had been asking to go swimming and we promised her after baseball we'd take her.

She kept pointing to the area that's roped off where the kids come off the water slide and saying she wanted to go over there.

This was her first time to really swim since last year. We were at the hotel pool a few months ago, but the pool was so cold, she spent most of her time sitting in the luke warm hot tub. She wasn't so eager to jump in like last year, but more sat down and held Brett's hands and scooted in. By Sunday, she was full out jumping like last year. After a quick swim, we went to a graduation bbq for our neighbor, Wyatt. It was a great night with fun neighbors.

Sunday morning, Emma and Maddi played in the sprinkler for about 2 minutes. Ha!

The whole family made a trip to the pool Sunday morning. We broke a record for high temp that day and the pool was already pretty crowded at 10:30 when we got there. Cade took a friend with him and they are in the background. It's the only picture I got of Cade all weekend :(

Emma was much more eager about jumping in.

She was really doing a good job of swimming back and forth between Brett and Maddi. Later on, she was swimming back to the side and climbing out on her own too. She's part fish like Cade, I think.

I love their smiles! We left to go home and eat lunch but Maddi stayed with a friend at the pool. I got Maddi from the pool a few hours later and then Maddi and I went to run a few errands at the mall. She is so fun and funny to shop with these days. I enjoy our time together with just the two of us. That night, we went to a friend's house for a bbq and the kids had a BLAST! They played with water balloons and were launching them down the street. It was a great day.

Monday was more laid back and we got some yard work done, kids played with friends and we enjoyed some family time. The kids have the rest of this week of school and a few hours next Monday and then it's SUMMER!

Happiness

It has warmed up here this week and Brett took Emma for a walk and then to the park while I was getting some work done in the house. They decided they would turn on the sprinkler and let Emma have her first sprinkler experience. She was very excited!

Making her approach...

...all smiles...

Omie, does this remind you of Maddi girl running in the sprinklers at your house many years ago?

She decided the water was much too cold. She would make this face each time the water would hit her. Emma asked to go inside after a few minutes of sprinkler fun. We'll have to try again when it's a little warmer.

Brett, Emma, and Cade went to Cade's baseball game while Maddi and I went to Rockford for a dance competition. Brett enjoys taking pictures of the games. This was Cade avoiding getting picked off at first.

He pitched as a releiver in the 5th inning and the whole 6th inning. I hear he did great.

We have three more baseball games in the next three days. Swim team is supposed to start too but he will have to miss the first 3 days because of baseball. Baseball and swimming make Cade a happy boy :)

Brett took a ton of pictures of Cade and I didn't get one picture of Maddi this whole weekend. I stole a few from fb from a few weeks ago. This is Maddi with the youngest girl in their company, Caitlyn. Cait and Maddi adore each other and Cait really looks up to Maddi.

This is some of the dance girls after class one day. They were silly one night and put stickers on their cheeks and then the girls took turns bringing stickers to wear on their cheeks during class for a few days. Dance makes Maddi very happy.

All of our kids make us very happy and seeing them happy is the greatest. Maddi was very happy (and we were proud as parents) to get a note from a parent of a boy at school. There is a boy, Jarid, who is new to the school this year and he's in a wheelchair and can't speak. He signs. Maddi has become friends with him and talk/signs with him each day at recess and will even help his teachers get him out of his wheelchair and go down the slides. Jarid's mom sent a note home to us saying how Jarid has enjoyed socializing with Maddi and would like to continue over the summer and asked for me to contact her to plan a time for them to get together. I'm sure most kids don't even pay him any attention, but Maddi noticed him, made the effort to get to know him and learned the alphabet in sign language and has been a friend to him. I imagine their friendship means the world to Jarid, but I'm pretty sure it means just as much to Maddi. I am so incredibly proud of the person she is and thankful for her kind heartedness.

One Thing to the Next

This week is one of those weeks where I'm not sure if I'm coming or going and I'm pretty sure I'll get something wrong at some point. We go from one thing to the next with school and extra-curricular activities. Tuesday it was a baseball game for Cade, followed by a choir concert for Maddi, ending with ice cream with the family and some friends to celebrate the choir concert. I had Maddi skip dance that night to make things a little less hectic. Technically she could have gone to dance for an hour or more but I didn't see the point. Here is Cade playing short stop at his game. The runner was safe, you can see the ball almost to Cade's glove.

This little cutie pie had fun at the baseball game. There was another little girl her age there (only a few days younger than Emma) and the two of them sat together on the bleachers for the last half of the game but Emalyn never said a word to her. I had to leave the game early to get to Maddi's choir, so I asked her later if she ever talked to the girl Zoe and Emma said "No, I don't talk to her because I'm so shy." I guess we need to ler her hear us talk about her and how friendly and outgoing she is so she'll decide to be friendly rather than shy. Ugh. My only hope is that Maddi used to be extremely shy and now she is so outgoing and friendly. Let's hope Emma follows in her footsteps.

Waiting on the pitch...

Oh no...duck!

See the ball behind Cade. Would have hit him if he didn't duck down.

He ended up on base, can't remember if he got a hit or walked.

Running on to second base. I like how the 2nd baseman is smiling at Cade. Cade was playing a team that has 4 boys from his travel team on it and this is one of his friends from that team.

And he scores! They ended up in a tie game because of lightning. Cade was pitching and had struck out two batters when they called the game.

At bat again. The bat is almost on the ball.

He hit it...but it was foul! Cade has 8 games in 12 days, starting last Saturday. That's a lot of baseball! They had a game last night and they got beat to a pulp. Ended up losing like 30-3. It was the mercy rule after they were losing by 12 but we had to drive an hour to get there, so they kept playing. It was horrible. Cade couldn't catch a ball that came to him at short stop for some reason and the other players weren't fielding well either. Our pitching was horrible, except for Cade. He came in in the middle of an inning and got his 3 batters out. We couldn't hit either, they had great pitching. Cade did get a hit, didn't get on base, but got an RBI. Summer Swim Team starts next week, that should be fun to add swim team practice into the mix. Not.

We miss our neighbors, the Balls, who moved to Texas dearly. However, our new neighbors are pretty great too because they have a daughter the same age as Maddi. Maddi went over to their house when we left for baseball and they took her to choir and saved me a seat. I got there right before it began and enjoyed a great choir concert. This was the Honor Choir. It's for fourth and fifth grades and started in January. They go to school early on Thursday and learned these songs. The school that feed into our high school got together at the high school to perform the songs. Maddi is the one in the green shirt. Ha! She is next to her bff, Jane, two rows behind the tall African girl. The boy in front of her was covering her most of the time, but he was swaying back and forth as they sang so I got glimpses of her now and then.

Action shot.

I made eye contact with her and told her to smile so I could take a picture. She's smiling and I love everyone else in the background with their random faces. Funny.

Maddi and her friend, our neighbor, Abby, after the show. Maddi really enjoyed being in the choir and I'm glad she got to do something more than just dance. We went for ice cream after this and called it a night!

Great Days

We've had some really great days lately. Friday Brett got a call from a recruiter about a great opportunity in the Dallas area. We are praying that this works out. Saturday was a divide and conquer day filled with dance and baseball. I was with Maddi at dance and I missed Cade's HOMERUN at his baseball game! Brett and Emalyn were at the game. Brett said it was awesome. There aren't any fences at their fields so you can't get an out of the park homer. Cade smashed the ball to left field and the other team didn't get to the ball until Cade got to third base. I'm so proud and happy for Cade. He pitched one inning tonight and he threw 12 pitches in the whole inning. Struck out three batters.

This litle girl was entertaining herself at the baseball game tonight putting on her lipgloss over and over. So cute and silly.

Brett and I were home and heard Emalyn having a conversation with herself. We went to see what she was doing and found this. Emalyn loves her baby dolls :)

Maddi had dance this weekend and they did well. I snapped this picture of her teen dance on Sunday. Maddi is on the back left. We got a letter in the mail Saturday that Maddi was nominated and selected by our village for a Character Counts award for the pillar of CARING. She will be recognized at the Village Board meeting in a few weeks. We are not surprised but we are incredibly proud of her!

The blurry faced one is Maddi...sitting in the splits on the stage waiting for awards. We had a little talk about sitting like a lady :)

Maddi only had one dance Sunday but it was during lunch/nap time. Emalyn had a few busy days in a row with no nap or weird nap times and she got really relaxed and fell asleep during awards.

When dance was over, we went to The Cheesecake Factory for lunch/dinner to celebrate Mother's Day. We got there at 3:00 and thought it would be a great time with little to no wait. We were so wrong! There was an hour and a half to two hour wait so we decided to go to Fudruckers instead. It was a great weekend and I am so thankful to be the mom to the three most wonderful children I could ever ask for.

Half and another Half

Let me start out by saying last week was Maddi's half birthday. We had a very busy Sunday and I honestly forgot it was her half birthday until Sunday night. We celebrated her half birthday Monday after school with vanilla ice cream and Oreos. Somehow she has turned into an Oreo loving girl. I don't have any pictures of Miss Maddi on her half birthday, but it's official, she's 11 1/2. Yikes! How did that happen? She had step up to Plank day last week and I had parent step up night where we learned all about our next adventure....junior high. Maddi is so excited about it and I am excited for her. I am scared and nervous for her too, and I think she's a little bit of those as well, but we are focusing on the excitement. I am so proud of the young lady she is becoming and although it makes me sad that she's growing up, I cherish our time together. She is still as sweet as can be and she's pretty funny too. To go along with her growing up before our eyes, she had the puberty talk at school last week. Oiy! Little Maddison Shea is creeping closer and closer to a teenager! This Sunday was little Emalyn's half birthday. We almost forgot her half birthday too (bad mommy), but we remembered about half way through the day. We were at Cade's baseball game in the morning when a nasty storm rolled in and the game was cancelled when the lightning began, after only 30 minutes of play. We ordered lunch to go and had a nice lazy Sunday afternoon. When we realized it was Em's half bday, we decided to taker her our for a treat. She didn't want ice cream or cake, she wanted a donut! So we went to the grocery store to get her donut (because she's 2 1/2 and doesn't know any different) and to get ice cream for the kids and Brett. (I had a sherbert float earlier in the day). Even though Emma had taken a few bites of her donut in the store, we put some candles in the partially eaten donut when we got home and sang Happy Birthday to her. We told her not to touch the candles because they were hot, and then she refused to eat any donut after that. She is stubborn and sensitive. When she thinks she's in trouble, she shuts down, and I can't tell if it's because her feelings are hurt or she's just being stubborn. Maybe both.

Here's the half birthday girl with some crazy bed head wearing one of her leotards. I've never had a 2 1/2 year like you Miss Emalyn...as stubborn and independent as they come :)

Sissy helped blow out the candles. My favorite 11 1/2 and 2 1/2 year old girls!

Since Emalyn didn't want to eat her donut, she decided to have Cheetos. She's proud of her cheezy fingers! I remember the first time she had cheetos and freaked out and had us wipe her hands over and over because they kept getting cheezy. lol

Later in the day, when Daddy had his ice cream cone, Emma wanted some ice cream too. You can see she has changed into another outfit, now it's a swimsuit. Goof ball!

mmmmmm....soon after these pictures, she was done with her ice cream cone. It wasn't all gone, she had had enough. I wish I ate sweets like her, a few bites and done.

Emma's hair was especially curly this day because of the humidity and rain. Although two can be challenging, Emma really is a sweet girl and is really getting a great imagination and is funny and enjoys humor. I hate comparing her to Maddi and Cade because she is her own person, but it's fun to see the little ways that she reminds Brett and I of Maddi and Cade at her age. The latest thing is that she will tell us "I'm too little" when we ask her to do something. Cade used this saying all the time and he actually said it for many years. Ha! Brett and I are both so thankful for each one of our little blessings.

Beautiful Evening

One of the Dad's on Cade's in house baseball team is taking pictures at the games and puts them online for us to look at. Pretty cool. Here is Cade man pitching today.

Cade with teammates running off the field between innings. This shows how Cade is so much bigger than most of the kids his age.

Here is Cade high fiving the 3rd base coach. The coach for this in house team seems to want to let every kid try every position rather than try to win. It might be long and painful year! Not every kid should pitch, especially if they can't even get it over the plate. Thank goodness for the 5 run rule per inning. Ugh...

Cade was working on his science project trying to make "swooshes" and I was his record keeper again. Emma was taking care of Baby Anabell. It was pretty chilly and cloudy at his baseball game hours before but it was so nice when we were outside for basketball.

After Cade finished up with all of his shots, he went inside to work on analyzing his data and writing part of his report. Emma and Daddy had a fun little game of keep away. You can see by Em's face, she was having a blast!

She finally got the ball from Daddy!

This is how Emma left baby Annabel when she got out of her chair to play with Brett. So cute!

We had some music on and Emma showed us some of her dance moves. I must note that this little leisure suit was Maison's and Emma loves it. She will pick to wear it when I make her wear clothes and not a swimsuit or leotard. She also chose to wear her pink shoes with it. It's her comfy meets fancy look.

Maddi and Abby walked out of Abby's house while we were outside and showed us her "Lady Gaga" look. Silly girls.

More dance moves from Miss Emalyn.

Emma is fascinated with these flowers and looks at them often.

Emma posed and told me to take her picture.

A few minutes later we realized Emma was quiet and we went to find her and saw this...

Poor flower!

Maddi and Emma played on the trampoline after dinner and Maddi taught Emma a dance. Here they are performing it. Brett and I always say Emma is Maddi's personal baby doll. The good thing is that Emma is usually very happy to do whatever Maddi wants to do with her/to her.

The weather was beautiful and we had a nice relaxing evening hanging out with our precious family!