Team Alligator

Jude and Maeve are playing on Team Alligator. Jude may be a bit young for soccer but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to have both of them on the same team. This will be the only season that they can play together. Batman didn't get scored on. After a few minutes he decided to take the mask off and reveal his true self. 

It was nice of him to share the mask with his side kick. 

Actually even though Jude is the younger of the two, he probably kicks the ball about as often as his sister. At his game this week each time he kicked the ball he came running over to me on the side line so I could give him a high five for kicking the ball. 

Maeve is more active this season. I am not coaching and I think that helps. Though she did tell me that she liked me better as a coach. She said I had better games at practice. Nicest thing she said to me this week. Most of the other things were at the top of her lungs and had the word hate in them. 

Remember the boy on the right? Zach, Maeve's future husband. He broke his arm at the play ground and is out for the rest of the season. Total bummer. Especially since it happened the week I was the substitute coach and we got slaughtered in our game. The kids didn't care but it was lame. All they care about is SNACKS! In fact that is the ONLY reason Jude stays on the field. I have to remind him that people who play get snacks several times during the game. Good times!

Broken Arrow Walk-a-thon

I will be honest. I regret volunteering to be on the PTA board. It is not really that time consuming right now but the commitment of being the president next year makes me anxious. (On our board the vice president is the president the next year.) I did it so Adelle could continue at Broken Arrow which I keep reminding myself I volunteered for a good reason. She is on a transfer because we moved out of the boundaries when we left Joel's parents home. But the district closed another elementary school last year and moved all those students to our school so I had to reapply for the transfer. 4th grade is huge for Kansas, 29 students in each class. No other 4th graders were approved for transfer as far as I know. The district actually denied our transfer but the principal reversed it because I was on the PTA board. So if I had not volunteered she would have had to leave her friends and all of Joel's old teachers. I just couldn't make her do it.

Emerson and Adelle

Megan and Adelle

Mrs. Turvey who taught Joel and Adelle for 4th grade. She retires this year.

I spent the day at the track helping with the walk-a-thon. (Thank you to those that donated money!) The child care I had arranged fell through at the last minute so I ended up with all the children there. Jude and Maeve both did several laps and everyone was really good. I wore Roman on my back most of the day.

The bummer about being on the PTA board is the commitment for next year. We are trying to figure out if we are suppose to move back to Utah or stay here or what. I feel bad leaving my commitment at Broken Arrow and my job, which would both end next year. So do we stay and fulfill those commitments and maybe be a single mom again for a year or do we go to Utah where Joel has some work lined up right now at least? It is a tough decision.

I went and look at a home to rent this week because I REALLY want a yard for the boys. The price was great but as soon as I walked into the door the landlord told me, "I could put 25,000$ into this place and it wouldn't make a difference." That pretty much says it all about the landlord and the place. The yard is awesome but I am not sure it is worth it just for a year. It is a fixer upper--for a renter. :(

Tuttle Creek State Park-- Our Cabin

Joel and I talked about going camping over spring break at Tuttle Creek State Park, outside Manhattan, but then he got a job in Utah. I was not up to going tent camping alone with four kids so we decided to rent a cabin. It was a good thing too because it really rained both nights we were there. But we had a great time. Here are some photos of the Osage cabin. The boys never tired of going up and down that ladder to the loft over and over again.


During the day the weather was great and we did a lot of hiking, I mean what hiking you can do with three kids 5 and under. They had a great park in the campground, shaped like a tree house, that the kids loved. Unfortunately we were there at 5pm one night when it started to rain. We made a run for it to our cabin but were drenched by the time we got there. The rain was coming down so hard it felt like hail!

We were close to the swimming beach so we went and threw rocks and sticks in the lake for awhile on our last day. I tried to teach the kids how to skip rocks without much luck. I should have been teaching Jude how to aim at the lake because he hit two of us with rocks he was trying to throw in the water.

One night we decided to go into Manhattan to get ice cream. We took a driving tour of K-State (actually a pretty campus) while there which resulted in Jude and Maeve falling asleep and missing out on ice cream. You should have seen Roman's face when I handed him his gigantic ice cream cone from Sonic. He was in heaven. I covered him in napkins that protected his clothes but they dissolved under the ice cream mess which was nasty to clean up. Not the best bib. You can't really call it camping when you sleep in a cabin and go out for ice cream.

On the way back to our cabin we passed the dam. This fat little animal came walking up on the road right in front of us. I was not sure what it was until it turned and waddled back to the water and I saw it's big flat tail. Maeve was bummed when we told her she missed the beaver.

Here are pictures from our hikes. It was a much needed, relaxing two days.

Jude and all his "weapons" (Should I be worried?)