Seabreeze

It has been quite a while since I have stopped by. My friend recommended that I put a message on the blog that says, “Gone Fishing. See you in the Fall!”

As you may have guessed, my blog hiatus was due to the busyness of life and more specifically, summer!

The kids finished T ball and then started soccer. We have had play dates, VBS, and most recently a week with my sister and her family from Minnesota. It is always the best week of our summer, and this year did not disappoint!

I have many, many pictures to share and will have to do so a little at a time! Our first adventure was our annual trip to Seabreeze amusement park in Rochester. The 15 of us have such a great time there. I have written about my love for this place before, but I’ll say it again! Seabreeze is a wonderful place to go for families with any age children! This is something for everyone there and it is small enough to easily do everything in a day!

Here are a few pictures from our day starring my kids, my nieces Aubrey and Natalie, and my nephews Evan and Ryan.

I LOVE this picture of Brady and Ryan! Evan and Ryan take SUCH good care of their younger cousins.  Brady was holding on for dear life and Ryan was holding him so tightly!

And how sweet is Allie blowing kisses at us! She was such a good girl. Did I mention we were there from 10:30am to 10pm?

 

My four goofballs. I’m so proud!

We actually did the waterpark first. We packed lunches and were able to eat right in the waterpark at a few picnic tables in the shade. It was awesome and another big reason why I love Seabreeze more than Darien Lake.

How funny are my boys kind of chasing each other down the waterslide!

What a great day! The kids were awesome for all 12+ hours of fun. There was a ton more fun planned for the week. More to come!

The Best is Ours

Eli, Cara, Brady, and Allie have the best daddy in the world.

There is no one better to take them by the hand and lead them through life.

Happy Father's Day Matt. We all love you so much.

Minnesota

Already the middle of June! Since I’ve last stopped in to blog  (can’t believe it has been a few weeks!) we had our 3rd annual yard sale. It is an enormous amount of work, but very worth it in the end! We were blessed with one great day of sunshine for the sale and the second day was an exciting mix of rain, thunder, and lightning! It feels so good to earn some money and get rid of things!

Then just 5 days after the sale, Cara and I headed out to Minnesota for a long weekend with my sister and her family. They have a new home on a lake and we got to see everything for the first time. I am so glad that I decided to take one of the kids with me (and thanks to my sister and her hubby for Cara’s plane ticket!) I rarely get quality one on one time with any of the kids, other than doctor’s appointments. Cara did a great job traveling and enjoyed every minute of being doted on by my nephews!

Despite the fact that we packed a lot of fun into the 5 days we were there, I had a lot of mental down time. I wasn’t constantly attending to the needs of small people, preparing meals, cleaning up meals, doing laundry, or disciplining! It was a very nice change of pace.

Here are a few pictures from our trip:

Cara and my sister Melissa (Auntie Lissa)

My nephews Evan and Ryan with Cara at Battle Lake. They fought over who got to hold her hand, sit by her, and buckle her in her car seat!

Uncle Jerry farms 1,500 acres in Western Minnesota and has some pretty cool machinery. Cara and I became acquainted with our first John Deere combine.

Tell me this picture isn’t hilarious?!?! If you know me at all, you know that I’m not known for being an “outdoor girl!”

Uncle Jerry took Cara and Ryan for a 45 minute ride out to the farm in the combine! I hear that Cara colored in her princess coloring book for most of the ride.

My sister has a beautiful home that sits on the highest point around Ten Mile Lake. To get to the water, you have to walk down 50 steps to their dock. I think I may have been lamenting about the walk back up the steps in this picture!

We had lots of fun fishing for bass and sunnies from the boat. We didn’t actually catch any because we weren’t the best at staying quiet. Cara, Auntie Lissa, and I did not care much for the leeches that were used as bait…ugh.

Ryan and Uncle Jerry did catch a few fish early one morning and had to bring Cara outside to show them off.

I have so many special memories from our trip. I am hoping to maybe bring the boys in the next year or so and hopefully our whole family someday! Although we joked that Uncle Jerry will need to buy a party boat if we all come

Heavy

What an emotional week.

Lot of ups. Lots of downs.

Just a heavy, emotional week.

Cara’s first dance recital was Thursday and Friday nights.That meant 2 nights of dress rehearsals and 2 nights of performances. She did great each and every time. She tapped, she sang, and she let that big Cara personality shine! Of course the highlight for her was getting to wear makeup!

The best part was that Cara got to share the whole experience with cousin Aubrey.

We have our final MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) meeting this week. This is always a special time when we invite a speaker to share their personal testimony of faith with our ladies. It was a blessing to pray for a dear friend who shared this year. She did an amazing job and I know that hearts were changed! On the same day in the morning MOPS group, I shared my testimony. Even though I have done so quite a few times now, the process for preparing to share so personally is emotional. I had the opportunity to talk with several moms after the meeting who could identify with parts of my story. Many of them are suffering in areas of their life and were blessed by the hope I was able to share through my story.

A dear friend of mine is going through something unimaginably difficult in her life. She has been on my heart so heavily all week. It has been an honor to pray for her and to ask those in our church family to do the same.

We also had our final meeting with Brady’s physical therapist, Linda, this week. Brady has been seeing Linda for over 2 years now. During our first appointments with her in the spring of 2009, Brady was barely able to stand! Back then we were traveling twice a week to see her, about 50 minutes each way. She was able to establish such a great rapport with our reluctant boy back then. They were quick friends and Brady has looked forward to his “Linda” visits ever since. In the past year we have only been going to PT once a month, kind of like a maintenance visit. Brady has been achieving and exceeding goals almost every visit in this past year. Linda and I both knew that by the end of this school year he would no longer qualify for services. I shared a while back that Brady did indeed show that he was an “average joe” when Linda completed his annual review testing. It is a bittersweet accomplishment as we knew he no longer would need PT, but that we would have to say goodbye to our dear Linda. She made the trip from Rochester to see Brady at preschool on Thursday. I think I cried three or four times leading up to that morning! She is such a treasure and we are forever grateful for all that she has done for us!!!

Today Brady and I went to the Michael Napoleone Memorial Foundation’s Baseball Tournament. We have been blessed to participate for the past three years in the awareness ceremony at this event. To read more about this amazing local charity, click here. I was able to briefly share about our story and how this charity helped us financially and personally during Brady’s illness.  Brady stood next to me the whole time enjoying his very first ring pop! Another special friend of ours, named Griffin, also shared his story as a cancer survivor! He is an amazing 4th grade boy who so eloquently and bravely spoke about how cancer affected his life. I couldn’t help but think ahead a few years and wonder if Brady will ever want to stand before a crowd like Griffin and advocate on behalf of pediatric cancer. It was just amazing.

That wasn’t all! As we were leaving a man approached me and told me and told me that he would be praying for Brady. He had tears in his eyes as he told me that his nephew also had Neuroblastoma. I asked this next question even though the pain in his eyes told me the answer, “How is your nephew doing?” He continued to tell me that his nephew had passed away after seeking treatment in Buffalo and in California. He told me that he understood what an awful disease Neuroblastoma is and how happy it made him to see Brady doing well. He repeated again that he would be praying for Brady and I thanked him. I don’t even know if this man was local, but I will never forget his kind face, the sadness in his eyes, and his sweet promise to pray. I’m always amazed when I’m able to connect with another person so powerfully, in such a brief moment…all because of cancer.

It has been heavy. My heart rejoiced and broke a few dozen times this week. Life is amazing like that, isn’t it?

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

the Father of compassion

and the God of all comfort, 

who comforts us in all our troubles,

so that we can comfort those in any trouble

with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

T Ball or Comedy Show

Being that my kids are the youngest on their T Ball team, I guess we shouldn't have expected all-star-like play from them. They are really trying hard and certainly we have seen some improvement since week one. In all honesty though, it is about 10% baseball and 90% comedy.

Take for example tonight's game.

1.We waded through the muddy baseball park to the field in the way-way back. We dropped the kids off in the dug out and went to sit on the bleachers. It was about 5 minutes later when I realized I still had Cara's glove. She had no idea whatsoever that she was missing anything.

2. Eli stepped up to the plate tonight and spent the first few minutes admiring the bat, the T, and anything else in sight. He finally got ready to swing and hit the ball a solid 8 feet or so! He took off for first base and about 10 steps in, the weight of that big batting helmet won the gravitational battle between it and all 32 pounds of his body. He tripped and fell helmet first on the ground. It was so funny, it really was. He got right up, straightened out the helmet, and made it to first base.

3. Sweet Cara. She is a piece of work. She gets up to bat and when she swings you would swear the bat weighed 100 pounds. It usually takes about 5 or 6 tries before the batting coach will just swing with her to hit it. The greatest part of the whole thing is when Cara does funny things like tell the coach that he needs to fix her hair first, or like tonight when she stopped and used the end of the bat to draw a line in the dirt on which to stand. No matter what she does at the plate, she always trots to first and then turns to us with the most pleased look on her face. She waves, she smiles, and she thinks she is fabulous. And she is.

4. Brady boy is a quiet boy on the field. He seems to pay the most attention to what is going on, but like Eli and Cara, isn't quite ready to field the ball. When it is his turn to bat, he usually gives it a pretty good hit after a few tries. The very best part about watching him, is to see his big smile as he runs to first base. Well, it's great to see his smile and to laugh as his pants start to fall down as he runs!

5. Our kids our usually the last ones in off the field. The coaches prod them along and tell them to "hustle." Tonight we all cracked up as we saw Eli pulling a reluctant Cara off the field by her ponytail!

So even though it is much more of a comedy show than anything else for our family, I'm happy they are playing baseball. They are learning the game, getting some fresh air, and making us laugh twice a week. Life is good.

A Full House

It was kind of a madhouse here tonight. We invited our good friends over and also had our nieces for the evening. My philosophy is always “the more the merrier” when it comes to our home, and it was very merry.

Here is our quaint little dinner party for 4 adults and 8 children, all 4 and under.

If you don’t see child #8, he’s there in the car seat on the floor next to his momma

The kids ran, created messes, and were loud enough to make good conversation tough. It was great. The adults sat, snuggled the baby, and enjoyed a pot of coffee. That was great too!

After our company left for the evening, it was time for the kids and their cousins to get in their pjs. Several episodes of Tom and Jerry followed.

How many preschoolers fit on our couch? About 6.

60 toes to be exact.

There were kisses.

And best of all, a lot of love.

Family and friends are the best.