Pumped Up Kicks

Hannah Grace and Bennett are playing their first year of soccer this year and they are on the same team. They both actually seem to like it more than we thought they would! I would even say they both love it! Yay!

They may not be the most, ahem, skilled on the team, but hey they keep up with it, ya know!! It ain't bad!!!

I took my cam the second week for some pics, soo...

Here we go!! Getting the show on the road....

 I love this one!

 Nice form Hannah Gracie ;-)

 I guess the tongue is a sign of concentration?!? Haha!

 After each other during practice.

 Celebrating their team mates scoring ;-)

 High fives.. oh and don't mind the kid off to the side with his hands...errrr... anyway, yeah forgot to crop that bad boy! (heh-heh... no pun intended...)

 Bennett really wants to be goalie. They don't have an official goalie at this age, but if they did, he would be all over that one! He ahs blocked a couple shots quite well! I do think he is going to be a stronger defense kind-of guy than offense!

 Bummed about the other teams score...

A sweet buddy. They have seemed to connect since they were pretty little!

Can't hardly handle the cuteness :)

Kitchen Reminiscence

The last few nights as I have cooked my last meal in my kitchen and spent my last post dinner clean ups in this house, I have been thinking a lot about all the memories we have made here!
(Hey! If you know me well at all, you know I am a pretty sentimental person!! This is to be expected :)
And after all-- the kitchen truly is the heart of the home--
So I wanted to jot down as a keepsake for myself---

Favorite Memories in my 1st kitchen:

Little fingers reaching across my island to snitch goodies as I bake... or red peppers.

 as I cook (Bennett ;-)

Refreshing Ryan's memory on how to do "The Pretzel" and other dinner clean up dance parties with the kiddOs.

Hours of kitchen table crafting!

Big sibling heads hovered over a laundry basket on the kitchen table, admiring their new baby sister.

Ryan's wet saw dirtied hands after hours laboring over our back splash together.

Babies in bouncy seats, bumbo seats, and high chairs in every direction.

(Check out that original ugliness pre-updates! Haha! How quickly you can forget!=)

Taking Ryan and his dad's picture on Thanksgiving morning after running their first 5k together.

My dad working ever so generously on projects for us over his short weekend visits!

Bennett's curiosity about how babies get out of mommy's tummy over dinner table conversation.

Playing "kitchen horse" on Bennett's basketball goal Christmas gift.

Making my 1st, and only ;-)... batches of from scratch cinnamon rolls to bring to family on Christmas Eve.

Spinach omelets, mimosas, candle light, and music for our kitchen remodel "christening" dinner we [Ry and I] cooked together.

Bennett working on his 1st steps and hiking those chubby little knees!

Daddy playing guitar in the "sunroom" as Hannah Grace loved listening intently. 

Decorating, coffee, and apple butter with my mom.

Dropping an entire chocolate cake on the floor during Spades night with Ross and Lori.

The guys installing my island light, stove top, or anything for that matter.... always made for a good story ;-)

Hannah's first time at washing the dishes :)

Kids faces pressed against the screen door excitedly as visitors arrive (usually grandma :).

And I definitely can't forget this moment!!

(Yeah, this is what happens when you leave the men to do the cookin!)

Lots of "Happy Birthday" choruses sung over the glow of candles.

Lots of meals, lots of laughing, lots of hugs, lots of time as a family. 

So as we wrap up our time here, my focus has shifted slightly from the excitement of our new place (and don't get me wrong I am SOO excited and feel beyond blessed!!) to a little bit of a sadness over leaving this place. There is a lot we love about this house and a lot I will miss! It was our 1st house, so yeah, It's bittersweet for sure!

That said, we cannot wait for all that lies ahead! God is ever faithful and ever gracious. If all goes as we expect, we will move on Wednesday this week! It is going to be a crazy busy week. I don't know how much computer time I will have or when we will have internet for sure, but we have had so much stuff going on in our lives I just don't want to get too behind! So I'm scheduling another post for midweek this week and hopefully will be able to keep up with my "journaling" through what has definitely been the busiest season  of our life yet!! Catch ya on the flip side!!!

A Fair Day for the Fair

There is a newer fair that comes to the suburbs here for the first couple weekends in September. We have never gone before but it's not far from our current (yes, I did say current.. still haven't blogged about that snippet of info ;) house and when we passed it everyday on the way to and from school the kids would just get so excited and beg me to go. I told Ryan, I didn't know... but I was thinking we just might need to take these kiddOs to the fair! We had some birthday money for the kids from family, so we decided to use that to take a trip to what had to be the most overpriced gig in town! ;-)

 Not thinking it's going to be an every year thing, but I just might be thinking the smiles on these faces may have been worth the bajillion dollars that is cost. (For the record, we determined if we wanted to ride the big ferris wheel as a family of 5, it would have cost $20... yes $20... for that alone.Um, thanks but no thanks...)

 They each had about 3 rides each. They all agreed on this one!!!

(as an aside: Sadie has a way of sneaking out of the house with hidden "glam". This day it was the heart necklace... just in case you were, you know... wondering) 

 Sadie, to her dismay did't meet height standards for this one, but her big brother and sister were pretty pumped about it.

 What's a fair without the animals??

 Sadie: the one who's always willing to do anything =)

"Hey look! It's "Llama, Llama Red Pajama!!" (the kids observation ;)

We paid to park and bought tickets for the 3 rides each. Anything more above that that they wanted to do or get they each brought a small amount of their own money and had to pick what they wanted to spend their money on the most.

This was most definitely Bennett's thing. He had no doubt in his mind this giant inflatable hamster wheel was the only justifiable place to spend his money. 

 Hannah was slightly more indecisive (surprise surprise) but I think deep down knew that nothing but winning a goldfish would do! More on that in a bit...

 I was shocked they were all brave enough to climb aboard this thing. Poor Hannah Grace... or as we southerners say... "bless her little heart" ;-) She was scared out of her boots and her face ain't hiding it a bit, haha.

 She braved it out though, and while she didn't try to pretend she liked it, I think she was proud of herself for doing it!

 The girls wrapped things up on the merry go round with daddy...

 While B and I watched over the newly acclaimed fish.

 And Sadie got a bag of cotton candy, since she doesn't really have quite the dollars that the big kids did and isn't quite ready for the "value of a dollar" lesson just yet. Hannah deemed herself the official cotton candy distributor.

We realized when we got home we missed a whole section of fun things like animal races and the like. Major bummer, but we had a great time and it was "just enough" to get a taste of the fair experience that they were so dying to take part of =)

And the goldfish died less than 48 hours later. HG named it Jewel. I walked into the kitchen while we had it in a temporary bowl until we got it a better home to find it laying on my kitchen counter. I. was. screaming. A LOT. Kind of surprised myself by my reaction actually. Ryan came in and flopped that sucker back in the bowl. I thought it was dead. At the time at least, it wasn't. Ryan and Hannah had a little date to the pet store to buy it a tank. Then it died Monday morning. The kids wanted to know how it got to Heaven and where it went. I had to tell them the truth, but being put on the spot like that thoroughly threw me for a loop. I told them I had to flush it down the toilet because that was the only place there was enough water for it. They wanted every detail! Which toilet, how I got it there.... ayayay. It cracks me up to hear Bennett retell "the fish died, mommy flushed it down the toilet... you told us that, mom!!" In this way that sounds so like "most good moms wouldn't have told us that, mom!" hahaha. Anyway, so Braithwait fish #2 was down fast. On to #3... Ryan did buy a whole tank after all!!! This one is a betta... you know the kind you can't kill... or at least in my case, can't kill for at least pushing a year ;-)

Sharkbait seems to like it here. Yep, we named it Sharkbait and I told the kids they had to include the "oohaha" at the end of each time they say it. 

If your not one of us parents who has seen Nemo a million times, you can watch what I am talking about here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpeJa7pE5q4

Sadie is the only one really willing to entertain me with that request. Ah well, I'll take it!

So a fun day at the fair and a new fish adventure to boot! Alrighty!