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!

last day of spring break

we have had great weather all week long for spring break, but the last day (and the first day of spring) turned out to be winterish out there.  so what do you do when it's in the 40s and cloudy?  you stay inside.  and you dye eggs. 

and you show off your new eggs for this year to go on the mantle. 

and then you say a prayer for the sunshine and warm weather to come back! 

weekend fun

while the big one was busy hanging out with the boys, not sleeping, and pretending like the water at the lake wasn't cold,

the other two were pulling out a big win on senior night in starkvegas!  ok...so it wasn't a BIG win.  but it was a win.  and for those of us who know what it's like to be a bulldog, a win is always a good thing! too bad coach didn't put wes in the game.  he was ready!

rainy, random tuesday

you see that solar system?  isn't it pretty?  i have to say that i was a little bit excited to finish the third and final solar system!!  ha!  although, it is kind of easy when the third time rolls around, and you know exactly how to go about it. reed made sure that each planet was painted just right, and he was quite proud of his work.  until.....he came home talking about another kid's project in which the sun was a lightbulb "that actually turns on and the planets spin around it!"  yeah well.  mama's never been known for that right side of the brain stuff.  at least he knows his planets!

G's birthday was in february, and we could not let it go by without some baskin robbins. 

i like to shoot, but i do not like the cold.  so, i'm quite thankful for poppas that will take my people into the woods.  apparently william let a big one get away back in january, but maybe he can get his revenge next winter!

i looked outside the other day to find a backyard X games competition going on. 

wes and knox are the daring middle children, and i'm not sure that they should be allowed to hang out together.  wes might be needing his 5 set of stitches if they keep this up!  but they did at least grab a baseball helmet.  safety first!  

after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, i finally bought a new dishwasher.  i do hate to spend money on appliances.  joyless spending.  anyway, we had magnets of the united states and word magnets on our old dishwasher, and reed was putting them all on our new one.  this was his first sentence.  should i be worried?

happy march, y'all!!!