T-Ball Finale

This past weekend we rounded out our little T-Ball season with the final game of the season and their little awards ceremony. 

Peter holding hands with one of his favorite girls on the team.

Not sure who likes whom more... but I definitely spied her sneaking him a few kisses.  He he.  STUD.

We're really hoping they can be on the same Fall Soccer team to give their relationship a chance.

As soon as we got their A.J. led her Daddy off to the playground.

Warming up

Peter at Bat.  You can see the ball flying out of the frame on the left side.

Fielding...

Afterward.... one final circle cheer!

If you're wondering, A.J. and Matt did make it back from the swings to see
about the second half of the game.

Then it was time for the little ceremony where all the kids got their participation trophies.

He loves it.  I've caught him sleeping with it a few times this week.

Finally, we got our pictures back at the game as well.  Peter's individual one is cute, which makes me happy since I special ordered his ESPN All-Stars magazine cover.  In the team photo though he was refusing to look at the camera.

I'm really glad we did this Start Smart season.  Hopefully he had fun, learned about teamwork and he also learned some basic, useful baseball skills for his future in little league and maybe beyond.

Matt's Birthday (and Another T-Ball Game)

So yesterday was Matt's birthday.  This is important, you see.  VERY important.

Why?  

Because I have a 3 year old.  A 3 year old that is OBSESSED with birthdays.  And presents. One that says "Hey, I want that!"  after every. single. commercial for toys he sees on TV.

And nevermind the fact that we just sort of glazed over my birthday just 10 days after Peter's never-ending-third-birthday-extravaganza, because really, we don't need to make a big deal out of mine anyway.

But maybe, like two or three weeks after all the dust FINALLY settled on Peter's birthday he already started asking about when he was going to get to have another one.  We responded as I'd like to think most parents would, by explaining to him that it was going to be awhile.  First he had to start school and then it would be Daddy's birthday.  Next would come Halloween, followed by Thanksgiving and then it would be A.J.'s turn.  Then it would be time to write Santa Claus about Christmas and, and.... and of course by that time we'd lost him and he'd moved on to asking about something else.  

I think the only part he picked up from all of that is that his Daddy's birthday was coming.

So he kept asking when it was going to be Daddy's party.

And we were all "OMG we have to have a party now?"

Then he kept asking what sort of cake Daddy's birthday party was going to have.  What flavor would it be? What would it look like?  How big would be?  Would it be silly?

Silly?

Um.... ohhhh kaaaaaay.

For whatever reason, Matt handled the silly question better than I did.  While I stood there feeling confused, he jumped right in and said, "Silly?  Like, maybe a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cake?"

And of course, me, the lady who'd be expected to make the cake was all, "I'm sorry, what now?"

But it was too late.  Even though I'm CERTAIN Peter has no Earthly clue what a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle is even supposed to be, or really, that there was even any good reason why Matt wold have come up with that, the challenge was extended.  A TMNT cake was what I was going to have to make.

Somebody remind me again WHY I place these stupid expectations upon myself?  Why can't my tradition just be to BUY a cake like a nice, normal person?  

Alright, so on Wednesday I got started making it, with a little bit of unsolicited assistance from the children (as seen below) and the dogs (who diligently mopped up anything I spilled on the floor while I worked.)

And after 4 or 5 hours... much of which was spent waiting for the cakes to bake and then for them to cool and then for the "crumb layer" of icing to set, this was the result.

Sort of makes me giggle....
And start singing the song.
Is anyone else singing the song now?

Peter and A.J. also got their reward, for all of their very helpful helping, at lunch, when I gave them the beaters to lick as their dessert.

Of course, originally, Matt and I had made plans to get a sitter and go out on a date to celebrate his birthday.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans.  Since the temperatures soared above 100 over the weekend the base had cancelled all the little league games and then rescheduled them.  Ours ended up being rescheduled right smack in the middle of our date night.  

Oh well.

Matt picked up his brother after work (so he wouldn't be left to sit alone in his hotel room and he could have dinner with us... after he endured Peter's game of course) and we all went to the game.

Peter messing around with one of his best friends on the team before hand.

A.J. making yet another break for it.....

Coach and I had a laugh.  Peter, sitting still and patiently
waiting for the game to start?   PHOTO OPP!!!!

Matt, with A.J. and his brother, watching.  I was helping
out at first base which is why I'm not sitting with them.

Peter running for second base.

This was his attempt to slide (on the field turf) into home.  

Team huddle!

Coach with Peter's little friend on her back.  His Dad just deployed and he's
been having a rough week.  This just goes to show how awesome she is too
work with out team even though her own daughter isn't even old enough
 yet to play.

Peter getting a few words of encouragement before his second at bat.  

The game overall went about as well as could be expected.  3 year olds are just never going to cooperate very well at 5 o'clock in the evening on a Thursday.

After the game, Peter got help with his snacks from his Uncle.

Ironically enough these included Peanut Butter cookies.  I wonder if they used Jif?  HAHAHAHAHA!

Nevermind.

Semi-private joke....

ANYWAY, when we got home, we had our little party waiting for us.

Do you recognize some of those banners?  I picked most of them
up when Peter was 1, and I occasionally find other cheap items on sale and
we just keep on reusing them for all the birthdays.  The hats too.  :)

The kids piled on their Uncle and read A.J.'s new Dora book while Matt made dinner.
We all  had hamburgers and sweet potato fries for dinnerand then it was time for...

CAKE!!!!

I really wanted to get 37 of the little candles to stick in the top but I could only find them in sets of 12.  For the same price I could get the the "Happy Birthday" letters and just skip the math and buying of multiple packages.

Lighting them!  What on Earth is my left hand doing?

All lit up.  Of course the only trouble is some of those letters melt down funny and they do it really fast!

Matt and I with the cake.  Do you like his shirt?  That was my present to him.
At the Rock and Roll Marathon last June he saw somebody running in one of those shirts
and it made him laugh so when I found it for sale I knew just what to get him!

Blowing out the candles.  I wonder what he wished for?

Molly was all, "What's that I smell?  Can I have some?"

I just thought the pile of used candles was sort of cool looking.

A.J., pondering where to start on hers.

Peter doing the same.

Does the whole thing seem huge?  That's because it is.  When I bought my cake
pans from Pampered Chef YEARS ago (seriously, I think it was when we lived Japan)
they came in a set of 3.  I have never used all 3.  But I have seen cakes with that many layers
before so I figured, why not try it?

Why not?

We all found out the answer to that about 85% of the way through our slices of cake. Holy sugar shock batman!!

Matt enjoying his piece, which is behind the cake.  I know it looks like he's just
eating right off the whole thing, but I promise he wasn't.

A.J. just looks so cute in this one.  She watching all the chaos getting started...

...because of course we had party hats.  And for whatever reason, whenever
there are party hats, really silly things seem to end up happening. 

All in all, it seemed like a good, fun evening and I hope Matt enjoyed his day.  We were glad my BIL could join us, although I'm sure he is more than ready to just get out of dodge and get home.... 

Catching Up

Ugh.

Things have been so busy lately.  Good busy, but busy busy!  I think I'm still adjusting to having a kid old enough to be in structured activities.  I don't mean to seem like I'm complaining, because I'm not.  It's just, I'm having a hard time keeping up.

And so of course I went to dump the latest photos onto the computer to post and while I fully intended to only include ones from the last week (since my last update) but there were some fun ones I just couldn't resist sharing.

Shocking right?

I bet you are all just about to die from the surprise that I have found more pictures that I just can't stand not to post.

Uh huh.

Anyway, let's get started:

Randomly recently A.J. has been waking up and insisting on wearing her Mickey Mouse ears.

Of course, college football season is upon us again and  so this means we try
to spend our Saturdays donned in our finest Buckeye gear, whenever the schedule allows.
A.J. tends to rotate between he cheerleader outfits and her jersey.  Sometimes she adds her
brothers helmet in as a nice accessory for emphasis.  

Speaking accessories, there are some mornings when the mouse ears
aren't enough either.  She needs her sunglasses too.  Rough night A.J.?

The other day Matt took some time to get out his tools and fix a few
odd things around the house.  Immediately after he was done, Peter got out his tool
book and their hard hats and the boys played fix it together for quite a while longer.

When Peter is at t-ball practice, A.J. never knows what to do with herself.
Sometimes she just sits in the stroller and has a snack.  Other times she wants to run
amock in the outfield.  Often, she likes to spin with her Daddy.  And then there are times when
she wants to head off to the nearby playground to swing, swing, swing.

I'm not sure what day this was, but I find it amusing how whenever Matt gets home
from work most days, EVERYONE in the house just seems to NEED his attention.

Except me of course.  Mama is chopped liver.

So this brings us to LAST weekend.  We were having this crazy heat wave with temperatures well above 100 degrees.  This was bad enough on it's own and then on top of that Peter was supposed to have a t-ball game that morning, AND Matt had to work.

A.J. was all ready though, with her binoculars,
to watch brother play.

The call came to cancel the game just was we were loading the children and our sunscreen and plenty of bottles of water into the van, darn it.

Let me just say, there was a major breakdown involved....

But happily, lovely Jamie invited us over later that day to cool off in the pool.  Seriously, I couldn't have imagine anything better....

And once we were out of the pool, the kids had some fun playing dress up.

So pretty.  Haha.

On Sunday, since it was still pretty hot, we went to get new running shoes after church, working, as we often do, under the assumption that it is always better to let the store pay for air conditioning, then us.  Also, they were having a big sale.

Matt ended up buying another pair exactly like his previous one.  He's put just over 500 miles on them since the beginning of May when he bought them and we both got a kick out of seeing the difference between the old and the new.

He also picked up a pair of the "toe shoes" since he's been interested for awhile in trying out the "barefoot" running style.  He's still trying to figure out what he thinks of them, but A.J. was very willing to give them a try too.

Does this remind anybody else of the Flintstones?

My shoes only have something like 100 miles on them since May, but I have had them since January.  I have no way of knowing how may miles I've run in them total though since I didn't get my watch until Matt bought his shoes, so I went ahead an replaced my Nike's as well.  The first store didn't have a color I liked (Gray with Blue?  Blech!)  so I went later and found these, "highlighter yellow" ones.  There was also an awesome hot pink/raspberry color that I love but so many of the Olympic runners had shoes this color over the summer that I just COULDN'T resist.

Also, these will coordinate pretty nicely with my costume for our upcoming Halloween race....

That evening, we decided to have Breakfast for Dinner and the kids helped Matt make pancakes.

And then, see, my husband is really weird.  Because, see, I have recently purchased this teeny little frying pan to go along with A.J.'s Halloween costume.  I got it online and it was really pretty affordable, but so many people in the product reviews were complaining because it was smaller than they expected and what on Earth could anybody cook in it?  Um, pretty sure it said right there in the listing that it was a 3.5 diameter pan.  Where is it's teeny size a surprise?   

Anyway, Matt decided it to good use and make some silver dollar pancakes for the kids.

And in the process prove all the complainers wrong.  You
absolutely CAN cook in a pan that small!

Teeny pancakes.  Heheh.

On Monday not much of anything exciting happened except that Peter refused to take a nap all afternoon, insisting just as he often does that he wasn't tired, only to pass out on me right around the time Matt came home from work.  

Then that evening there was just one more thing.  

Matt's oldest brother (who I used to live with up in Washington) was flying in from Afghanistan.  His deployment got cut a few months short so he got to come home a bit early.  But of course, before he can actually go HOME he has to come through San Diego for processing and medical and a whole mess of paperwork.  

He's actually staying at the hotel down on base but Matt felt it wouldn't be right not to go and welcome him back to America in person.

We wanted to take the kids, but he got in late and by the time he got home the last thing he was going to want to have waiting for him at the airport were my children.  Ha.  So just Matt went and they did that whole brother-bonding thing, or something.

Anyway, we're glad he's back in the U.S. safely and that he's been around this week to visit.  We also hope he can everything squared away so he can get out of here soon, for his sake, so he can finally get back to his wife and kids.