Half Way

Summer is zipping by here. We are officially half way through and none of us is ready for it to be near over. We still have so many things to check off our summer to-do list, I don't know it we will possibly get it all done. It will be fun to try through.

We visited family over the Fourth, and we are now blessed with an Aunt and Uncle with a pool! Every time we step on our back deck now, my children reminecse about "how great that pool was. Gee, it sure would be nice to have one of our own." : ) With the 97 degree spike like today, I too, think a pool sound better and better.

New Dress for an Old Girl

More pictures to come, but here's what we've been spending the majority of any rain free days on -- painting our house. We trying to give our old girl a new dress. Every inch of our big, old house is getting freshened up. I love what it will become, but we have many miles to go before we sleep on this project.

We have the hardest, three-story side of the house done thanks to help from Grandpa. What a load! That one side took 10 hours due to the 40' fiberglass ladder we had to use. Glad the roughest part is done. Now if we could just get some time without rain to work on the rest of the house.

Softball

Softball season isn't quite over yet. Another week and two more tournaments. Ava is soooo over the whole thing, which is sad because she is really, pretty good. I think once swimming season started, Ava was ready to toss the ball and glove in the closet. She normally plays third base. It's her best position. Catcher is her least favorite, but how cute is that little Bird in all that gear? Her team had a rought start to the season. The coaching was way out of control, but after a few conversations with her young and punky coach, everything started to get on track. The girls started having fun, and the team started winning. Win, win situation.

Claire and Paige had a great season too. Claire has really started learning strategy this season. She now really gets what base to throw to for the best out. She also has a bit more finesse to her batting. Paige has fallen in love with catcher. It just became her passion. It's too cute to watch her throw the mask off to try to catch foul tips. She did actually catch a couple, which always brought the fans to their feet. It was a great season, but I think we are all ready to spend a night not at the ball fields.

Spring Showers

Where has the time gone? We've been so busy since spring. Time has just flown by. We've spent much of our time ferrying four kids on three base/soft-ball teams back and forth to games, practices, and tournaments. Zing -- there went April through June.

Anyway, we had a lovely spring for mushrooming in the backyard with all the rain and sun. These were just a sample of what the kids found. We had quite a few more. Only one of the kids actually ate them, but that just left more for me and Brant.

Happy Mother's Day!

You gotta' love Anita Renfroe. I think if her kids have turned out o.k., mine are safe. I handle way too much of the craziness around here with a heavy dose of humor. Hope everyone has a Mother's Day full of burned toast and dandelion bouquets!

Happy Easter

It was a super quiet Easter. We had visited family the two weekend prior, so it was just us hanging out here in Lafayette. We hunted eggs, went to church, had a huge lunch, and then enjoyed the weather. It was a nice day.

The Easter bunny hid the eggs outside. It had rained Saturday, but was warm. Why not? All went well during the hunt, but when we came in to crack open the eggs, we had a few visitors. All the eggs that had been hidden in the lush, moist, hosta beds, were full of slugs. Little, baby, slugs, but, still, . . . slugs. Yuck.

Spring Break Staycation

According to the kids, we were the ONLY family that didn't go to Florida for spring break. Hmmm? Really? The only family? Oh, well. That great economy hits us all in different ways. We did eat out a couple times (rarity for us), and took a trip to Indy. We stayed the night in a hotel so the kids could swim. Our room overlooked Lucas Oil Stadium. Not too impressive for Bears fans, but still neat to be that close to a piece of the NFL. We spent about seven hours gawking around the Children's Museum. This is one of the most amazing places our family has been. We loved it so much, we bought a membership and plan to go back. That tower behind the kids, spans up three floors and is made of glass. That's just the middle of the middle. In the lobby -- Bumblebee. Not some cruddy replica. The Bumblebee is in the lobby. We had a hard time convincing Ike to move on through the rest of musuem. Trust me, it only got better from there.