"I will never give up"

Baseball, baseball, baseball... Camden can't get enough. We'll see how he feels in a few years!! But right now, he wants to practice everyday and it's really paying off. He has made great improvement over the last few weeks. He is so determined and focused (for the most part) when we practice. The other day we were throwing the ball back and forth when one of my tosses nailed him in the head! It looked like it hurt, but he wanted to keep practicing. I asked him if he was OK and he said "yeah, I'm OK. It hurt a little but I will never give up in baseball because when you give up you lose!!"

The stitches of the ball left their mark on his head. Camden thought that was pretty cool!

Movie Night

I decided Saturday night would be a good night for a kid movie night. While the kids ate dinner, I made a pallet on the living floor, laid out the couch pillows and gave each kid their own spot. Of course, I put Maya (the peacemaker) in the middle of the boys. I was so exhausted by the end of the day that I figured this would be a great way to get through the last couple of hours of the evening and allow me some time to get ready for the next day without too much commotion. Once I got everyone settled I decided I would try to shower very quickly. This is not always the smartest decision and those of you with young children know this, but sometimes you do what you have to do. I gave them a rundown of the rules, made sure all doors were locked and keys were out of them and ran to the shower. A quick eight minutes later, I opened the shower door to hear nothing! Usually, when I try this quick shower “technique” I’m interrupted by a child coming in to tattle, or one or all of them follow me in the bathroom simply because I’m in there. But not this night, they actually sat still and watched the movie! They were being so sweet that I skipped my remaining chores and watched the rest of the movie with them. While we had seen Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa at the movie theater it was a successful movie night in our house this weekend as well!

Maya's Prayer

During the kids nightly routine we try to pray. We don’t always do it and there typically is no standard prayer we say. Maya and Braeden have decided lately, after a long time of me saying the prayers, that they wanted the limelight. Braeden typically says “Thank you God for …” with the "…" being generally whatever is in his eyesight. So tonight it went something like this – “Thank you God for our food. Thank you God for Mommy. Thank you God for our clothes. Thank you God for lights. Thank you God for our beds.” He's so cute!

We don’t pray before our meals, but I know the kids do in their mother’s day out program. Tonight, after putting Braeden to bed and letting him say his prayer I went to Maya’s room to tuck her in and say our good nights. Her prayer was the typical prayer some might say before a meal, but I had no idea she had it memorized! I was so impressed even if she was a off a few words and it wasn't said before a meal, that I asked her to repeat it a couple times.

Maya:
God is good, God is good
Let us thank Him for this food
By His hand we are fed
Thank you God for daily bread
In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

Happy Easter!

Camden is too cool to smile now!

Maya HAD to have this umbrella... She does look pretty cute with it!
Braeden had to have an umbrella too! He wanted a girlie one like Maya, but I talked him into waiting to look for one at another store and then of course I couldn't find one, so he got one from his JoJo.

I got one with my name on it!

One more picture before the chaos breaks out please!

What's Easter without confetti eggs?!

Braeden tried to break a real egg on Maya's head! Fortunately, I saved her and the dogs got a treat.

Ending the day with a game of Go Fish!

Hope everyone had a great Easter weekend!

my sweet baby girl

Kids somehow know when you need them to be sweet! It's like they can sense it. I've had a pretty busy couple weeks at work and have just been exhausted and short tempered with the kids.

I hate that - why is it that when I have a bad day or week at work I take it out on my loved ones? I want to take it out on the people that are really the root and cause of my moodiness! Unfortunately, I can't always do that. I like my job and I kind of like getting a paycheck twice a month. :-) So... my family gets the brunt of it. I'm so sorry guys!

Anyways, I got home just in time to put the kids in bed last night. I was rushing them through their much cherished nightly routine. I put Braeden in bed, somewhat reluctantly told him a story, sang the ABC song and gave him his high fives, hugs and kisses. I moved to Maya's room to do the same when I just felt it necessary to hug Maya and tell her I was sorry.

Me - "Maya, do you know how much mommy loves you? I am SO sorry that I have been working so much and I promise I will make it up to you! We will do something really fun this weekend. You are such a good girl and I love you and your brothers so much. I hope you know that."

Maya (as sweet as can be - pushes my hair out of my face, scoots herself up onto my lap and wraps her legs around me, puts her little hands on my face and tilts her head to the side) "You're not sad because I make your heart feel better. I love you all the way around the world mommy."

How do kids know when we need that?! I love my kids so much, they are such a blessing in my life. I love you my sweet baby girl!

yet another one gone...

Hopefully this is my last "tooth loss" post for a while because there aren't currently any loose teeth in Camden's mouth! He has now lost 6 teeth in just under a years time. That seems pretty fast to me. Now let the awkwardness of the adult teeth growing in begin!

Easter pics and that's the spirit

We had another busy weekend in our house, but we had to make time for a quick trip to the mall for Easter bunny pictures before Camden's game Saturday. The kids were in top kid form! Meaning, they were all over the place. Skipping and running through the mall, not wanting to hold hands, and picking on each other. Fortunately, the line for the pictures wasn't too bad and moved pretty quickly. The people in front of us had two small babies and took forever! The photographer was patient and let the parents move the babies around, fix their clothes, take some pics with their own camera and even let the parents view the photographers' digital pictures and take more if they weren't happy with them. That was not the case when we got up there! I put the kids in their places and snapped a couple pics while the photographer was getting ready (or so I thought she was) and she cleared her throat and snapped at me "Are you taking pictures or am I?" I was startled and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, you are. Kids, look at the nice lady and smile!" I was a little shocked she was already in such a foul mood given it was about an hour into her 12 hour day!

One of the few calm moments while standing in line. The kids tried to take the bird house behind them down after I snapped this photo!

One of the pics I got in "trouble" for taking...

Aww... Isn't this sweet!

We were then off to Camden's baseball game. Another great game by the Lugnuts! Camden is so intense out on the field. It's hard to see in this picture (because my camera is ancient) but he's on the far left standing on 3rd base waiting for the batter to hit the ball so he can run home. Most kids at this age barely even run the bases, much less try really hard. Camden is standing in a "get ready, set, go" track star type position waiting for the gun to go off! His hands are stiff like he's about to karate chop a piece of board. That's the spirit Camden! Keep it up!

Mr. Toothless and Mr. Cool

Camden lost another tooth today... I am going to be poor if he keeps losing teeth like this! He asked me on the way to baseball practice what would happen if he lost all of his teeth at once and how would he eat. I told him that if he keeps losing them at this rate he won't be able to eat any solid food and he will have to drink all his meals! :)

5 teeth gone in less than a year!

Braeden is a creature of habit and lately the habits have been changing every few months or so. He decided a while back that he wanted his hair spiked up every night after his bath, with gel! Recently, he's decided the gel is too much work (I don't know why he thinks it's too much work because I do all the work!) and he wants his hair dried with a blow dryer after baths just like Maya. Tonight, I let him have a go at blow drying his hair while I helped Maya brush her teeth. When he was finished he yelled out "Mommy, my hair is AWESOME! Give me high five!"

Mr. Cool and his awesome spiky hair...

You got me...

Camden's teacher, along with many other Kindergarten teachers I'm sure, has a discipline chart. Each child's folder is sent home daily with a color coded face which is marked by the teacher of the child's behavior for the day. The colors are as follows: Green - right choices, Yellow - be careful!, Red - watch out!, Blue - wrong choices. Camden has been off of green one time this entire school year. Quite a bit different from his dear old mommy! But that's another story for another day. The one time Camden came home with a yellow mark in his folder I grounded him from the Wii for the night. Of course, I listened to what happened and why he was placed on yellow. Whatever he had done didn't seem like a big deal, but I felt like I should let him know not following the rules has consequences. I really didn't think this would phase him as much as it did, because as I said earlier, I had my fair share of "yellow, red and blue" marks in school and I just kept on trucking along. Camden is so sensitive and I just broke his heart, he really felt like he had done no wrong in school and it was just the end of the world to lose his Wii privileges!

Today, Camden came home from school and I asked how his day went. He wasn't answering me so I went to the kitchen where he was standing. He was cowered in corner of the kitchen mumbling something. I immediately go to him and say "honey, what's wrong?" He mumbles in a sad voice "mommy, I got on blue today." I took a breath so I wouldn't overreact and calmly asked "well ok, what happened?" He can't keep a straight face or contain himself any longer. He turns to me with a huge smile and yells "APRIL FOOLS!!! Did I get you? That was funny!" I said, "You ARE funny! How do you even know what April fools' day is?" (we haven't played any April fools jokes on each other) He was so proud of himself that he repeated the joke on my dad a few minutes later!

You got me Camden! Very funny April fools joke! Still not sure where you came up with that one...