A Big Night of...Disappointment!

Ben has been so looking forward to this evening for weeks now! It was to be the evening of his first tee ball practice! He was even home sick from school yesterday and bound and determined to feel better by today so as not to miss this momentous occasion! :) We pulled in 10 minutes before practice time to discover that we were the only ones there and that the field looked like a war zone. A quick call confirmed my hunch; practice had been canceled until next Monday. Somehow, we missed out on the latest e-mail notification. Ben was really bummed, but Jim and I were so proud of how he handled himself. His eyes didn't even "leak"...as he always says! :)

I think Ben was partly content just to be wearing his new cleats. They are so tiny and cute!

LOVE this next pic of The Cleats and the toothless grin. :)

We ended up staying at the park for about half and hour. Ben ran around the battle ground...uh, I mean ball field, pretending to hit, run the bases, pitch, slide, etc. He did a very thorough job of breaking in his cleats, if nothing else...

He was so excited when he "found" home base. You would have thought we were having an egg hunt or something!

Ellie enjoyed playing on the tot lot that is adjacent to the ball field. Later, she also joined her brother's game of imaginary battle field baseball.

Check out the hat. I'm thinkin' Cousin Lily will be getting a hand-me-down cap soon...and we'll be hunting for a new one. :)

All in all, 'twas a fun evening even though it wasn't what we were expecting. Stay tuned. You can be sure that I'll be posting pics from the "second-first practice" next Monday!!!!

Lions and Lambs

Everyone stop griping about the dreary rain of the past few days! It could be worse...remember the SNOW?!?!?

Look what I never posted! I was too lazy to even edit or crop, so here's the good ole' raw version. :) This was supposed to be a cute picture of the kids in front of our almost-completely-buried lamp post. It ended up being a lesson in why one has to be careful about where one places his snowy gloves. Oh, the shrieking that followed. :) Plus, interestingly enough, Benjamin actually looks like he's two years older than Ellie in this pic! I think he was workin' the slope of the driveway and Ellie's adverse reaction to an ear full of snow.

This shot was taken after I finished growling at them..."Just stop for one minute and come over here to pose together. Someday you will want a picture of you in all this snow! I swear I'm not going to take a ton...blah, blah, blah..." At least they have good "fake" genuine smiles... :)

Keep those chins up, folks. Not too many more "lion" days left. Ellie assures me that tomorrow will most definitely be a "lamb" day.

Check out my latest Pennlive post here.

BIG Weekend!

The boys didn't have school on Friday because of...wind?!? :) So my scrapbooking weekend got off to a different start, since the whole family was underfoot, ...uh I mean home for the day. No, actually, Jim and kids played nicely and left me to my packing and organizing most of the time.

The morning had a ripple of BIG excitement when Benjamin's snaggle tooth began to bleed yet again after some rough-housing. Go figure. When Daddy wiped the blood, he easily pulled the tooth right out, as well!! Ben was so excited! I was planning to take some pics of his toothless grin after he got into clothes for the day, but when I peeked in and found him checking himself out in the mirror, I just couldn't not run for the camera!

So here's Mr. Toothless with rumpled hair and jammies...

I left Friday afternoon for what turned out to be an AWESOME weekend. My sister-in-law and I have been going to this retreat for four years now, and we look forward to it each year. It is run by Dani Grim, a Creative Memories consultant out of Carlisle, and she does an absolutely fabulous job with the whole event! Upon arriving, I was still in a fog from my cold. But miraculously a Quizno's dinner seemed to do the trick. By Friday night I was practically CURED!!! I'm serious. I didn't even open the box of cold medicine that I had packed and hardly even put a dent in the tissues! I am happy to report that I worked on a whopping 92 pages from Friday afternoon through Sunday evening and even found a little time to eat and sleep! I'm a tad bit tired now, but that's to be expected. Looking forward to next year...

And yes, MASH PIT Alums, the tradition lives on - While I was gone, Jim's pit kids struck again. They usually grace us with lovely yard decorations around Memorial Day and/or before Band Camp in August, but for some reason they thought it would be fun to do in the dead of winter this year! Jim took the following pics of the devastation, I mean decorations. For those not in "the know," the little white things all over the front lawn are plastic forks. That's actually a verb now...as in, "We got forked." :)

Apparently, they tied the decorating theme in with this year's indoor percussion show. The soap writing all over the windows and the car were "rules" referred to throughout the show. At least they were creative...

I think they're trying to corrupt our children...

Jim said the funniest part of cleaning it all up with both kids Sunday morning was their differing approaches. Ben was just happy to be outside helping. Ellie kept trying to plot revenge! :) I think she may be the one we have to worry about...