A House Full of Boys

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Gingerbread Houses!

As a last minute kind of project we bought some graham crackers and candy and decided to make gingerbread houses! They were pretty simple but fun...the best kind of fun! The kids picked off of their houses for the next few days and were as happy as can be :) Family time is the best...

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving we went to Jason's parent's house in Idaho...I forgot to take pictures, but Jason did take this cute one of Owen :) Poor Owen ended up with an ear infection and croup! None of my kids have ever had croup before so that was a little scary! His breathing became labored and he was really, really fussy...really fussy...especially at night...all night...I don't think either of us slept very much. I took him into Urgent Care and they gave him a steroid shot to help with his breathing...the doctor said with croup little kids can just be playing around like normal and their airway will swell up and they'll suddenly pass out...uh...scary! Luckily, he seemed to do a little better after the shot and we started him on an antibiotic for his ear.

First Snow of the Year!

The first snow of the year was a BIG ONE! The kids had enough snow to build snow forts with the neighbors and a snowman with Daddy!

Snowball fight!

Aidan hiding behind the snow-fort....


He gets sucked into the game after all! There he is in the yellow in the middle of the dog pile!

Family Pictures

My sister-in-law, Trudy, and I helped each other take family pictures. These are a few of my favorite :)

Harvesting Sunflower Seeds

I wish I would have gotten a picture of the sunflowers when they were in full bloom...they were HUGE and beautiful. Connor and Aidan were excited to harvest the seeds, so we did some research online and got working away...we ended up with two full gallon sized bags of seeds! I didn't get a picture of how our garden turned out either...but it turned out pretty well...our corn didn't work out, but it worked great as a decoration on our porch! lol We got some zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, peas and green beans. Unfortunately, we had a big slug problem so we didn't get as much out of our garden as I had hoped...we also had a really early freeze...the 1st week of September...yeah, I wasn't expecting that...I woke up to look out the window and see our garden a nasty dark brown...we picked and saved what we could, but there was no saving the garden at that point.

Grandma Barbara's Birthday....

We went to Grandma Barbara's house in October to celebrate her 89th birthday. She hasn't lately been strong enough to get out of bed, but she really wanted to sit up long enough to blow out her candles and see the grandkids play.

Now I remember why I stopped buying Spaghetti-Os...

Halloween

Yes, I am just now catching up on Halloween...sad! For Halloween my mom came and so did my sister, Sherri, and her little baby, Miles. It was so fun to have them all here! I loved it! We carved pumpkins, went trick-or-treating, out to lunch, made s'mores, out to ice cream and Gavin's last soccer game of the season which was against an undefeated team...by some crazy miracle we won! It was awesome...the other team was having an "off-day" and our kids kept the motivation going and won! That was really fun to watch. My mom stayed through the weekend and my sister got to stay for a couple of extra days after that. It was so great to have them here...wish we could visit more often!

Just look at how my boys adore their Auntie Sherri!

Owen got a little jealous of Miles from time to time...he wanted a turn in his old jumper too...

Yeah...not as exciting for him as it used to be! lol

Visiting and eating s'mores

Miles loves his Uncle Jason...no one could get Miles to laugh like Jason could.

Grandma and Miles

Time to carve the pumpkins...we got some help from our neighbor, Roan...it was 74 degrees outside...so nice!

Owen was more interested in playing with the water.

our attempt at a family shot

My mom and Sherri also watched the kids for us so we could go on a date for our 11th Anniversary!

Monday, November 12, 2012

Gavin's Soccer

This year we had Gavin tryout for a competitive soccer league and he made a team! They organized the boys according to age and skill. The way Gavin's birthday falls makes him one of the youngest on the team and their team was a level 5 (leveled 1 through 5 with 5 being the lowest skill level). We were just excited that Gavin made a team given his enthusiasm for soccer. A lot of the boys played competitive soccer the year before, but Gavin had just played on a city team and didn't have the same ball handling skill as the other boys. It's been an extremely busy time getting Gavin back and forth to practices, games, tournaments, etc. We've had to travel as far as 1 1/2 hours away for games or some as close as 20 minutes away. On days when Gavin didn't have practice, he had to run 2 miles a day and improve on his time getting done in less than 20 min. That's not always easy to schedule in with school, homework, scouts, etc...not to mention time for him to just play and be a kid! But...Gavin really loves soccer. They had their last game of the season last week...so it's kind of a relief! The Spring season doesn't start for quite a few months. In the off season Gavin's coach wants them to do basketball or some other sport and continue running... This whole experience has been new for us and I've come out of it with some definite pros and cons. Pros are that Gavin loves it, and the games are exciting to watch because the boys are actually set up with positions on the field and it's great to cheer the boys on and see them improve. The cons are that it's sooo time consuming! and Gavin's particular coach didn't give Gavin much game time...like less than 5 minutes some games! Frustrating after all the work Gavin was putting in. Jason talked to the coach and the coach said Gavin's not improving the way he should and not aggressive enough on the field...that in combination with his short height makes the coach think the other team sees him as an easy target to get by. I understand where the coach is coming from, but at the same time, it's so much work for our whole family for so little payoff. Gavin even did extra drills with Jason on top of running on the days he didn't have soccer to try to improve on his skill. I talked to a couple of the other moms and apparently there are quite a few parents who felt like a lot of favoritism was going on and were also upset with how little game time some of the other boys were getting...even during practice some of the less favorite boys seemed to be sitting on the sidelines...during practice! So maybe it's the coach. I do have to say that he did help the kids a lot improve on their skills starting out with a team at the lowest level we actually got 3rd place at the end of the season and won 1st place during one of the 3 day summer tournaments! Gavin loves soccer so much that we'll probably continue on and try to help him improve on his skill and see which coach he might get next year if he makes a team...we'll see...right now I'm a little burnt out and glad it's the off-season...