seis

cinco de maya no more...

we had an extraordinarily busy day yesterday with school, soccer, and three dance classes mixed in..not to mention a BIRTHDAY!

we did have a chance to enjoy a birthday dinner (go check out SAHM cooks for what it was!) with Maya in between all that activity, and let her open a birthday present. we're saving the rest of our celebration and ceremonies for sunday, when we'll have a joint experience with her grandparents (and it's grandpa's birthday on monday!). we're going out to birthday dinner to the local japanese hibatchi steakhouse - maya's favorite. she did at least consult her grandpa this year - unlike the year she choose chuck e. cheese for their birthday dinners. though that provided an extra element of entertainment when 'chuck e.' delivered them both ice cream sandwiches as their birthday treats!

it's here!

here i am on november 13th, mailing off my page to memory makers magazine...to get 'published' for the first time...

and here i am TODAY
when my issue, with MY page arrived!!!

here's my page in the mag...and the 'fine print' since you can't read it:

Cara supersized the photo of Molly to showcase her daughter's charming personality. One photo, a piece of patterned paper, cardstock matting, a few chipboard letters, a stamp - it's done!

spring has sprung

and i'm probably slowly going insane because of it, and the millions of things we do this time of year...so here's recap of what we've been doing recently...

we prepared an 'upset tummy package' - complete with bottle of water, some triscuits and (at a huge sacrifice for jason) and orange barf bowl for lilly - who on our ride home from spring break heaved every 10 - 15 minutes or so for several HOURS and needed said package in her room when we got home.

we ate our first meal of the season in our screen room

we explored wildlife at grandmom and grandpop's house


we put up a new toy in the backyard!




and we started soccer season...oh and what a story goes with this...when it was time to register for soccer season, we discussed the playing options with all the kids. maya and porter decided they were going to give it a go (much to their father's delight), whereas lilly held steadfast that if there was an actual competition involved, she wanted nothing to do with it (much to her father's dismay). so we sign up maya and porter and the week that practice starts we're talking about it, when to get their uniforms, etc. and getting them ready for their first practice when lilly is starting to act a little forlorn and jealous. so i ask her - do you want to play soccer? cause if you do, i have to sign you up RIGHT NOW, and you'll be put on a waitlist. and she immediately says yes, she wants to play.

so we're headed out the door to the soccer club admin building to buy the required equipment for the kids. this gives us the opportunity to talk to the club manager about lilly's odds of being placed on a team (and the other two kids are WILD because they both have practice shortly after this adventure and now lilly is somehow DYING to play). the club manager tells me that there is already a U8 girls team (under 8) that doesn't have a coach, so if they don't get a coach, then those girls are going to have to be split up on to other teams, which will then be 'overloaded' and therefore, lilly won't get to play. the solution to this, the manager says, is if we want to coach.

take a deep breath. oye. jason walks in after selecting the uniform stuff with maya and porter. i briefly explain situation and he says 'okay'. as in - we'll coach. we had briefly discussed it previously, when we got an email from the club saying they needed some coaches for the U4 division (that's porter's division). we looked at the schedule and just didn't respond, but knew, between the two of us, that we could probably make it work if we had to.

and there stood lilly - wide-eyed and ready to play. so we said yes. we started coaching last week (a week later than all the other teams) and have a great group of eight U8 girls...it's been very interesting for jason (who LOVES other people's children - NOT!), but has been great for me, cause after all my work with lilly's classes and the girl scouts, it's my first interaction with kids other than mine for awhile, and i've missed it. i handle all our warm up and team building and jason directs the drills, and i think we all are having fun. we practice at our local school, less than a block from our house, so the other kids come along and play on the playground while we're training the next mia hamms of the world.

we had our first game this saturday - and luckily for us - in this rec league we don't keep score. we had to miss maya and porter's first games, as we had tickets to see Avenue Q (the third time for me!) while it's on national tour. my fil covered 'picture duty' for us - because, as an OCD scrapbooker, missing these first games about put me over the edge. so here's some shots of maya and porter during their games, and lilly and jason warming up for ours. i was too busy coaching to take pictures actually DURING our game.




true to his coach's prediction - porter is a scoring machine (coach also said that porter has a lot of energy to play soccer - go figure). looks like this might be his sport. we'll see about the girls!

anniversary

this monday was the 17th anniversary (holy cow!) of this:

some validation...

last november i entered a scrapbooking contest. I'm not big on the contests or submitting my pages to magazines, but this one peaked my interest. winners were announced in february and are appearing in this month's magazine. so i was clicking through the magazine's blog and found an article on the contest...

"Funnest Scrapbooker Ever (for 2007) Contest Winners

In our Scrapbook Play special issue, we initiated a new contest in hopes of finding the Funnest Scrapbooker Ever (for 2007). When it came time to judge all the entries, we found that crowning just one fun scrapper was a challenge far too great for our staff. Instead we chose one grand-prize winner and two attendants to help the winner fulfill her royal duties of spreading “funness” all year long. The winner and both attendants received a sash and a box of goodies from our office. We also picked five honorable-mention layouts that had us laughing so hard we couldn’t resist showing them off. We hope you enjoy laughing at these costumes, jokes, and layouts as much as we did and that they inspire you to have even more fun scrapbooking!"

and so i clicked through the pages to see the winners again...

and what did i find?!?!?

who would have thunk

the grandkids (well, and me, a bit, i guess) talked grandpa into giving DDR a whirl while on vacation (that's dance, dance revolution for you folks 'not in the know' that read this blog).

i believe this was a somewhat overcast, windy and rainy day - so we were stuck inside a bit. lest you think that we could have been sunning ourselves on a beach instead of doing this.


on our last day, we took a trip down to the sea pines plantation and harbor town, home of hilton head island's lighthouse. here's our family by said lighthouse where we watched for dolphins from the dock and met a family that was crabbing there (placing chicken inerds that had been left out to rot in the sun for day into a basket and then lowering it down into the water...one of the kids did get two crabs that maya and my mom got to see them pull up, so that was cool). we saw a few dolphin fins, but apparently arrived a few minutes after a couple of them had been playing near by. bummer.

after that we headed down to the 'beach' area next to the dock that was revealing all sorts of treasures during this almost low tide time. we were accustomed to low tide findings on the beach at our resort, but this low tide area was very different, since it was on a much different area of the island. look at my cute little toddler finding shells (which the whole beach was covered with).

and then look at her after she discovered that this 'beach' was more muck and mud than sand. and had fun seaweed wads to play with.

molly walked away from that beach with a new tshirt, cause we had to strip her down in the public restroom for a bit of a sink bath.

and this is what i ate right before we got into the car to head back to michigan:

creme brulee french toast

it was out of this world

like monkeys in a zoo

so is molly and her poo.

i would so LOVE to tell you about the spectacular day we had on vacation today. all about the sun, the mid-70 degree temperatures, the salty sea air, the kids spending hours hunting for shells with their buckets and shovels, then their first swim in the ocean and enjoying the feature pool here at our beautiful resort.

nice image, isn't it?

unfortunately, all those memories of today are overshadowed with how my day started. we are vacationing with my parents in a two-bedroom condo...this leaves the master for my parents, and the other bedroom for our family of six. it's actually working nicely, except for the fact that molly, who is in a pack and play in our bedroom, has no concept or ability to sleep in.

so this morning, like most other mornings, she wakes up at about 7am and starts talking to and calling to us (and lilly and maya sleeping in the bed next to her). i drag my sorry, tired butt out of bed to retrieve her before she gets loud enough to wake up porter on the hide-a-bed in the living room. she lovingly hands me something, and in my half awakeness, i realize it's HER DIAPER.

yikes. usually she's not poopy in the morning. usually.

but lucky for me - today was unusual. the toddler had stripped off her pajama pants and taken off her diaper. who knows when, cause i didn't hear her do it. i start to panic as i think i notice that indeed, her diaper contains a little present. i'm starting to freak out and now lilly and maya are WIDE awake and i'm hollaring at jason to turn on the light.

pack and play full of poop. there stands my darling little delicate flower of a daughter, bare butt, with poop all over her. under her fingernails. squished on her feet. and she's just delighted as can be. poop OUT of the pack and play on the carpet. like she had thrown it. like the monkey in the zoo. as jason said - it was poopalicious. my parents say it was molly's fecal artistic expression.

needless to say, there was some clean up duty. i did the textiles. jason did the toddler. the older kids did a treasure hunt for missing nuggets. thank goodness molly didn't load up on juice yesterday...

how about some more of how wonderful the REST of the day was....