a little tennis

reed played in his first tournament a few weeks ago.  it wasn't quite the experience that this little person had in mind!  he's never had a lesson in his life, but for some reason he had decided in his little brain that he was going to win the whole thing.  well, he didn't win it!  he came in 3rd, and that's not nearly as good as 1st!  i see now that whenever he does take lessons, we are going to have to have a little mental coaching as well!!  :)

parker and reed after warm-ups

3rd and 4th place cousins!

the other two have played a few times this year, and they seem to smile a tad bit more than the youngest sibling while out on the court!

hunter and william

charlie and wes

wes and andrew

william and hunter (again)

the last tournament that my kids played in, william played one of those kids.  you know the type.  every sport has the crazy parents/crazy kids.  this sport is not immune.  he endured the mind games and the snottiness (from his opponent and his opponent's parents) and pulled out a particularly tough mental match.  his cousin was about to play, and i was sitting on the other side of the courts.  after about 20 minutes, i sent chase to find him because he hadn't shown up.  chase found him by himself.  he said he was "just sitting.  i just needed to sit after that."

and then i went to find them both because nobody came back!!

i guess we all just "need to sit" sometimes!!



but for all the meanies, there are 4 times as many nice people! the absolute best part of tennis tournaments is the new friends and the time spent off of the court!  they may not win every match, but they know how to have fun over lunch.  and, they play a mean game of hide and go seek between matches!!

the memphis zoo

let's just go on and get it out there that i'm not a huge fan of zoos.  however, i accompanied wes on his field trip this week to the memphis zoo.  i have to give the zoo some props.  there was one part that you could tell was built somewhere around 1970 (the poor penguins need a serious upgrade), but the rest of it was really nice and disney-ish!  we had perfect weather, and the kids loved it!


watching the bears...

some sort of monkey...

it's not every day that you get to ride a camel.  it's also not every day that the camel poses for a picture!! 

this is what happens when the mamas are too cheap to pay $5 for a photo booth.  children cram in the photo booth, and then mama sticks her phone in and snaps a picture!  perfection!

now i just have to wait two more years to go back with reed!  i'm already counting down the days!  maybe those penguins will have gotten an upgrade by then! 

to everything there is a season...

we had our last soccer game last week.

and, we had our first baseball game this week. 

if you need to find me, just look for the blur running from one field to the other.  (or that crazy woman crumpled up in the corner somewhere because she's just given up.)  no rest for the weary!!!  :)

following orders

wes likes to look through the cooking magazines that come in the mail.  he'll eat pretty much any and everything, and he likes to comment on how good everything looks.  i was flipping through one of them a few weeks ago in the carpool line and found that he had left me a note!

so i surprised him and had this ready for dessert the following day.  he gave it two thumbs up!

i'm fully expecting more notes in the next magazines i look through.  but seeing as how this one pie took hours to make....i think i'll buy the ingredients and let him have it.  he can cook, and i'll be the judge!!! 

we got beat by a dog!

every year we fill out our ncaa brackets and get all caught up in the craziness that is march madness.  everybody....and i do mean every body... gets their turn to sit at the computer and choose their favorites.  then we enter them into a pool on espn with our extended family so the trash talking can begin.  (and there was lots of trash talking in the group text.) 

wes and uncle zeb were brokenhearted when michigan state killed their chances with an opening round loss.  reed and william hung their hats on kansas, and i stayed in the mix for a little bit with virginia.  we were all getting beat by g and frank for a while, but then the two front runners emerged.  chase and abe.  yes....our dog, abe, had a bracket.  wes helped me fill out a bracket for abe based on mascots.  only animals advanced.  and if two were pitted against each other, then he picked whichever animal he liked better or thought would win in a fight.  so in the end, abe had villanova while chase had north carolina.  and we all know how that ended!  i nearly broke my neck jumping out of the chair.  it may have been the best finish ever.  abe sat coolly in his bed barely looking up. 

i think we all learned a valuable lesson this year...don't put too much thought into filling out those brackets.  i'm going by mascots next year! 

we caught it all!

we spent easter weekend in jackson.  we needed our ark on easter day, but that saturday before was beautiful!  we took advantage of the sunshine and fished.  we caught all there was to catch...bream, trout, and ticks!!!  oh yeah...and crickets!  our 100 crickets escaped, so we had to have the great cricket catch of 2016 before we got started.  we got most of them back, and the fish were happy to have them! 

wes was the first one to bring one in!

but everyone else wasn't far behind!

we ended up with around 23 fish, and several hours of sunshine.  and everybody gave the grilled trout two thumbs up at supper! 

then the rain came!  but easter was a success nonetheless!