My Team

T-ball is wrapping up at the end of this month.  I can really tell a major improvement in all 3 kids' skills and attitudes toward the sport this year compared to last year.  Aaron is a coach this time, which I was not thrilled about because I was not about to be a "coach" when he couldn't come due to work conflicts and I absolutely did not want to sit in the dugout with impatient pre-k kids and  kindergarteners.  I'm a teacher .... I only do stuff like that when I get paid!

 Addison is pretty good at the sport.  She is only one of three girls on the team.  Most girls play softball on a separate team in North Henderson.  We've been asked a lot why we didn't sign her up with the girls' team.  It's simple:  I don't want to go to twice as many games.  We have 3 games a week as it is .... that is a lot for us.  I think playing with the boys makes her better anyway. 

 Last year I had to drag Ethan out of the van, onto the field, bribe him, yell at him .... just to get him somewhat involved in the game.  This year he has declared several times, "I quit baseball" when he realizes that we have a game.  But he has gotten out there every game.  He has even hit the ball off a pitch a couple times.  He gets so excited when that happens.  One game when he was on third base, the ball rolled his way and he picked it up and handed to the third baseman before he ran home. 

He does sit in the outfield and play in the dirt which drives his dad crazy.  He takes dirt showers, tasted the dirt once, and even lays down making dirt angels (which did stop a ball once).  He did try to slide home at the last game.  Big progress for him.

 Caden is very serious about baseball.  He has quite the batting stance and runs very fast to the bases.

He is a pro slider.  He is quite brave to do that in my opinion.  He always has the dirt stains on his pants to show it.

I'm very proud of our little team.  I can't believe that next year, we'll be moving on to a new chapter of regular baseball with more than 2 innings, pitching only where they count the fouls and strikes, and keep score.  Yikes, I don't think I'm ready for any of that but I'm sure my team will be!

She

She is cRaZY.  She is 3 and a half.  She can go from 0 to 60 in one second.  She says funny things.  She won't let me come her hair.  She doesn't really listen to me and does what she wants.  She is cute.  She fell asleep on the porch as we were getting ready for a t-ball game a couple days ago.

I really wanted to leave her there and stay home from the ballgame but I was afraid she roll down the stairs.  She did look so sweet and peaceful for a few minutes of her life.

Then today, as we were riding bikes to the post office she fell head first into a mud puddle.  I told her not to ride through the puddle (I told you she doesn't listen.).

Doesn't she look so pitiful?  In the end she was happy because she got to take a bath all by herself in the middle of the day.

She drives me crazy but I love her and that crazy personality.

Crack house

Things sometimes get worse before they get better.  Our new house is no exception.  My mother-in-law and I took all the wallpaper off the living room walls on Tuesday.

Sort of looks like a "crack house".  I have to say the 1992 peach wallpaper was doing a lot for this giant room (indcluding holding some of the walls together!).  4 garbage bags of peach wallpaper decorated this room.

All we are really missing is some homeless people.   It's getting really hard to picture my Christmas tree in that window now.  And the scary part is ... it's going to get a lot worse than this.  Deep breath.  After talking to a previous owner, I am realizing that this poor house hasn't had much, if really anything of major importance (other than paint, wallpaper, carpet, a counter top) done to it in 25 years or more.  Isn't that sad?  Everyone calls this house the Van Fleet house because the prominent Van Fleet family lived here at one point and anyone who had been in it said it was quite a house in its day.  It's just like a person, if you neglected your health, body, and appearance for 25+ years, what kind of shape would you be in?  I'm going to think of it that way, like a person, it needs some TLC ..... maybe we'll even give it a name

We could go with the more Au natural, and give the house the Tuscan look:  leave some exposed walls, paint some green and browns .... old Italy.  Second thought, no, but the Tuscan look is at least a few steps above the crack house look, don't you think?

I would rather

scrapbook, go shopping, swim, go out to eat, plan a party, have a clean house ...... anything other than what needs to be accomplished.  Of course, isn't that how it always is, if someone said I had to scrapbook right now, I'd probably find some other endeavor I'd rather do.  

2 houses and things to do at each is very overwhelming.  Aaron was laid-off on Friday so now we will have some time but he's helping out some people right  now .... so I'm still on my own.  We made a smaller list of "to-dos" at the current house, it didn't even fill up a piece of construction paper.  I'm scheduling 2 weeks!  Then we MUST get this house on the market and get to working on the BIG house.  I'm coming to terms with things at the BIG house.  After scraping some paint on the stairs I will be living with mostly white woodwork, which is very trendy right now .... I'm even tempted to rip up carpeting upstairs and have painted pine floors for a while until we can afford new hardwood.  We'll see .... It's going to be a work-in-progress for a loooooonnnnngggg time!  It will be okay.  I'm try to pack up "extra" clutter and stuff here and take it to the BIG house but that is also a slow process for me.  I'm just slow!  I seem to be more motivated when my hubby is here.  I also am not sure where to put things so they are out of the way and I don't have to move them several times.  Speaking of which, I have moved these banana boxes no less than 30 times.  They've been on my porch in several places, in the house, in the yard, on the sidewalk, in the backyard, depending on what project I'm working on and where they have to go for a while.  They did come in hand when I painted the porch .....

paint drying baracade!  Of course, I'd rather build things out of banana boxes than do what needs to be done!