Basketball Hoop Excitement

We just got a new basketball hoop for our driveway and I think it's been the best purchase we've made for a long time! Noah is out there every night and Madison is out there quite a bit as well.

We did have a few things that hindered progress which included:

1. Missing brackets for the back of the hoop (Dick's Sporting Goods was awesome about getting them from another box and not making us deal with calling somewhere and having the missing parts shipped)

2. Two different times of Sean using the wrong size bolts or nuts and having to redo parts (they all looked the same size)

3. Neighbor kids continually coming to ask Sean if he was going to be done soon :)

All in all, it's going to be a lot of fun playing 2 on 2 or 3 on 3 as the kids keep getting older!

Last Day of School!

Today was the last day of school for the kids. Or as Noah corrected me, "It's not the last day of school, mom. It's the last half day of school." Okay buddy, however you want to look at it.

My soon to be 2nd grader and 5th grader below:

And, as always, they insist on getting to take a silly picture after all other pictures are done. Madison is definitely being a dork, but not sure what Noah is trying to do:

I usually try to think of something creative for the teachers so they don't always get the same thing. A lot of times we do Barnes & Noble gift cards or Tastefully Simple food items (YUMMY!). This year I searched online for ideas and we found some pretty cool ones.

We decided to do a starter plant in a pot. If you look at the picture below, the large pots were for the main teachers and the little ones were for the classroom assistants. Madison colored the wood crosses that we inserted into the plant for a little decoration.

With the plants that we gave the main teachers, we attached a little homemade card that read, "Thanks for helping me grow this year!" I have to admit, they were pretty cute!

One last thing that we added for the kids' main teachers was the poem "Why God Made Teachers". We printed the poem off on colored paper and placed in a magnetic photo holder. (If you can't read it very well after clicking on the picture to enlarge, I can send you the poem.)

Here's a picture of all of it together and completed!

We hope the teachers really enjoy this gift. The awesome thing about it is that it's something they can enjoy year round!

Mason Turns 2!

Last Saturday, May 21, my youngest of four turned 2. The weather ended up being pretty nice that day so the kids were out playing with neighbor kids most of the morning while Sean started putting together a basketball hoop we had just bought the day before.

We wanted to take all the kids to the Children's Museum, but Madison and Noah had ball practices which took up the majority of the afternoon so we just played a lot at home. Mason had fun pushing Noah in the play car (Noah helped by using his feet).



We headed out to Rosati's for pizza, which didn't work out as nicely as planned. Everyone had been outside most of the day, Mason didn't get a full nap, Summer had no nap and we left to eat a lot later than we normally would, which was probably a recipe for disaster.

Once we got home, we gave Mason his gift. Sean got a little "kid happy" at the store and bought a few extra things, but Mason LOVED the Thomas wooden railway sets he got along with a motorized Thomas.



Madison (and usually Noah, too) is always thinking of her siblings when it's their birthday so she had gotten Mason a Thomas DVD & coloring book along with some Cars balloons.

Since Mason wouldn't stay in one place long enough to take a picture with his loot, Sean posed for me instead :) (Just don't pay attention to the clothes in the background I was sorting through for spring/summer.)

Now time to eat some birthday cake that I didn't make until late afternoon so it wasn't anything impressive. We'll get him a really nice one when we head to Iowa the second weekend in June and can celebrate with more family.

And to finish the evening off, the kids played with the balloons and we put together the train track to play with for awhile.



Happy Birthday Mason! We've had a wonderful two years with you and I'm sure they will continue to be just as wonderful as you grow older!