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!

Lately

So, I tried to make this blog private, but I can't quite figure it out. They changed the way this blogspot works and it used to give an option to add email addresses of those you wanted to invite to read the blog. Now I'm not sure how to do it. I will look into again and hopefully figure it out. I will add all of you who said you'd like to be added if/when I ever figure it out.... What we've been doing lately... Emalyn is still a leotard and swimsuit-wearing girl. We were on our way to her gymnastics class. She now goes to "school" for 45 minutes before where they make crafts, sing songs, and play and then they take them to gymnastics class. She loves going. I have signed her up for preschool for next year. They only have half day here so she'll go Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:15-11:45. I think she will love it!

This is little Emalyn making cupcakes for her babies. She loves her baby dolls and I am so happy that we kept Maddi's baby dolls because that's what Emma plays with. Brings back memories of sweet Maddi girl at Emma's age.

Apparently not all little girls play with baby dolls, but Maddi and Emma both did/do and they are both so sweet and nurturing to their babies. Emma always holds her babies a certain way and wants me to hold them the same way. If I'm doing it wrong, she'll say "No Mommy, like this" and show me how she want me to do it. I hope Emma ends up as sweet and kind as Maddi is. Just today I had a neighbor telling me how Maddi played with their kindergarden son for over an hour and how much the little boy enjoyed playing with her. She is very good with younger kids and they all adore her.

Emma even got her Daddy and Bubba to play babies with her. The funniest thing is when Emma makes us all stand up and play ring around the rosie together. She is loved!

Baseball season has begun. Cade ended up with number 10 for his "in house" team, same number my brother wore, I think. He's got some long legs! It's so funny because EVERY time he goes up to bat, the coaches on the other team yell at their team to scoot back or take big 3 big steps back or whatever, because they take a look at Cade and think he's going to smack the ball. He just looks so much bigger than most of the kids, they assume he's a home run hitter. Brett and I laugh every time to hear what the coaches are going to say when they see him step up to the plate.

The games have been quite windy and chilly lately. Maddi and Emalyn enjoy running around with all of the other siblings.

Maddi is so good to Emma and pushes her around, takes her to the park or whatever. Brett and I are able to actually watch the game, Emma is happy and even Maddi is happy because she gets bored watching the game for too long.

This is Cade at bat for his part time travel team. He's number 32 (Josh Hamilton's number) on this team.

This is Cade pitching. He is short stop and pitcher. It's fun to watch him and see how much he is improving.

Cade was working on his science experiment here. Emma and I are in the back of the car keeping track of how many times he swooshes the ball. His experiment is something about where the best spot is to swoosh a basket. It was pretty cold this day, but he was tough and took 15 shots from 5 spots for 7 1/2 and 8 1/2 feet. He needs to do the same for 9 1/2 and 10 feet this weekend.

After Emma got bored sitting in the back of the car with me, she made a beautiful sidewalk chalk portrait.