More Baseball

Ollie came home from his end-of-season team party last night with these pictures that another team parent had taken. I love how he's making the same face in pretty much every picture.

And my personal favorite. . . .

I love how this kid looks in a uniform!

Baseball 2009

The boys started baseball in March this year - Tristan in coach pitch, and Oliver in T-ball (with Daniel as his coach).

Since then our schedule has been pretty crazy. Before games started, Tristan had practice every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, and Oliver had practice every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Once the regular season started they cut back a little on practices, but still had games every Wednesday and Saturday.

They did have tons of fun, though, and both Tristan and Oliver improved a lot over the course of the season. It was really fun watching them play.

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I'm just glad we have a little break before football starts.

Yes, Stepmother

Rachel and Lizza have been in a big princess stage lately. I checked out the Cinderella dvd from the library a few weeks ago, and Lizza pretty much thinks she is Cinderella. Whenever I ask her to do something for me, she loves to do a big sigh and then say, "yes, stepmother," because her life is just so hard and I give her so many chores to do. Also, a few days after she watched it, she came up to me and asked if Cinderella wears diapers. Upon finding out that she most certainly does not, Lizza declared that she was ready to be done with diapers. Hooray! I was ready to be done with her diapers, too. We would have watched Cinderella a lot earlier if I had known that was all the motivation she needed.

Before Cinderella, the only princess movie Lizza had ever seen was Enchanted. She has a big crush on Edward, so she loves to pretend she is Nancy so she can run off with Edward and live happily ever after. One of her favorite parts in the movie is at the end when Edward finds Nancy sitting alone looking a little depressed, and then he sees the shoe that Giselle left behind, puts it on Nancy, and they run off, etc.

Anyway, this is how I am required to put on Lizza's shoes these days:

E: Mom, let's pretend you're Edward and I'm Fancy Nancy (any person named Nancy = Fancy Nancy to her) and you're going to put on my shoe.

Me: Okay. I start to put on her shoe.

E: No, now you have to say "Why so sad, beautiful lady?"

Me: Why so sad, beautiful lady?

E: makes what she hopes is a sad/beautiful/dramatic face. She doesn't really say anything here, and we go straight back to my lines.

Me (as instructed): May I?

Me (after putting on the shoe): It's a perfect fit!

E: sheepish grin

(repeat for other shoe)
(repeat several times per day with a number of fancy shoes that she brings me just for this purpose)

Here are my little princesses at play:

Lizza pretending she is half princess/half Ginny at the end of Harry Potter #2, waiting for Harry to come resuce her:

Instead of Harry, though, another princess comes along to help. She's not quite sure what to do about the situation:

So she decides this might be a good time to pose for a photo:

Both princesses alive and well:

And ready for princess races across the yard:

The handsome Prince Charming watching from inside:

More Cousin Fun: A Trip to Dallas

Last week Daniel was out of town, so on Wednesday night I drove the kids up to my sister's house in Lewisville, just north of Dallas. We only stayed for a few days, but the kids had a blast playing with their cousins.

We spent a lot of time at some great parks near Liza's house:

But we also had fun just hanging out around the house:

Final Gulf Coast Road Trip Post: Going Home

We had decided to go a different route home so we could see some more sites and explore different cities. So when we left Miami on Friday morning we drove north through Georgia, and up to Charleston, South Carolina, where we spent the night (by the time our trip was over, we had spent a night in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia. Daniel and I have already stayed in Louisiana, so now we have the whole southeast prety much covered).

We'd never been to Charleston before, and we really loved it. I'd definitely like to go back someday. Saturday was going to be a relatively short day of driving (we only had to get to Atlanta, GA that night), so we spent Saturday morning in Charleston. We drove around for a little while, and then went on a boat tour out to Fort Sumter (where the first shots of the Civil War were fired). The fort is on a little island about a 30-minute ferry ride away from Charleston. I'm so glad we took the time to go see it - the kids loved both the ferry ride and exploring the fort/island.

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After lunch we got back in the car and headed to Atlanta. Our hotel was right next to a little mall, so we walked around for a little while, ate dinner, and then headed back to do a little day-before-Easter hunt in our hotel room. It was very low-key: the kids had decorated paper lunch bags to use as their baskets, and I didn't have any plastic eggs to put the treats in, so I sort of just scattered starbursts around the room. Also, after they were done finding all the candy, I made them give it all back to me and we combined it in a big bag to use for traveling treats the rest of the drive home. Luckily, they are still young enough to go along with stuff like that, and I didn't hear any complaints - I love when simple things like searching for starbursts in a hotel room are still super exciting.

The next day we drove to Jackson, Mississippi. We considered trying to make it all the way home, but it would have been about a 16 hour day, and there was a horrible storm system that we would have had to drive through (there were tornado warnings in Jackson when we got there). We decided to just stay the night in Jackson (which had been our original plan anyway), and I'm glad we did. It was nice to have some time to just relax in the hotel room and let the kids play/color, etc. After Henry and the girls went to sleep, Daniel and I even got in a game of Ticket to Ride with the boys.

The next morning we got up early, were out of our hotel by 6:00 a.m., and home in Austin before 3:30 that afternoon. It felt good to be home, but we still can't stop talking about what a great time we had. My kids (and Daniel) love looking at the map on our kitchen table and planning out future road trips, trying to fit in as many states as possible.

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Gulf Coast Road Trip: The Beach

The day before we left Laura's house, we went to the Red Reef Park beach in Boca Raton. It was definitely one of my favorite days of the whole trip. I was a little unsure of how things were going to go (our last few beach experiences have been less than ideal), and I thought it would be a little hard with Henry and everything, but the whole afternoon could not have gone better.

It was the most perfect beach I've ever seen for young kids. The water was pretty calm and not too cold, and there was a perfect shallow area for the kids to wade/splash around in. Elizabeth was in heaven, and even Rachel, who has hated the beach since her Corpus Christi/South Padre disasters, was getting in the water and having fun. There were lots of little tide pools right on the shore, and the boys had a blast catching crabs and little fish. Henry also loved everything about the beach - there was a perfect area on the shore for him to crawl around and explore.

One of the coolest things about this beach, though, was that there is a man-made reef really close to shore that attracts tons of tropical fish, so it was perfect for snorkeling. Laura had brought some snorkeling masks, so she and I swam out and looked around at all the fish, and it was so much fun! I couldn't believe how many fish we could see - the water was so clear. Because the reef was so close to shore (you literally could just walk out and then put your face under the water and see the fish), Daniel took Tristan and Oliver out there with their goggles, and they loved it.

And I just realized that I used the word "perfect" maybe a little too much in the above paragraphs, but I am not even going to change it, because that's really what it was: perfect beach, perfect day!

Gulf Coast Road Trip: The Everglades

One of the things we were most excited about doing while in Florida was exploring the Everglades, which are only about an hour from Laura's house.

I couldn't believe how many alligators we saw!

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