Our maple tree

Payton used to climb this maple tree all the time when he was younger. Just lately he's climbed it again a couple times. I think he got a little nostalgic or something. What stinks is that the tree is dying and we're most likely going to have to cut it down--so sad! It has beautiful ORANGE leaves in the fall that the boys used to LOVE jumping into after they raked them into a big pile.

Our family on Easter Sunday

face painting

Cooper went to a birthday party today (he was one of 50--yes--Five-Oh kids there, (but that's another story), and he got skateboards painted on his face. I wanted to get a picture before they got washed off in the tub.

Basketball on Saturday night

Jackson loves to have Chad play basketball, football, catch--whatever with him. I decided to get some shots, and boy am I glad I did!!! What an amazing dunk! Jackson has some serious skills! Who knew???

Cooper freshly bathed and in his jams wanted to play too.

Butterfly

When I was little, I remember a girl's dad bringing a whole ton of monarch caterpillars to our 1st grade classroom. We put them in jars and watched as they each formed a chrysallis and eventually became a beautiful butterfly. I even remember letting them go. Well, one day I found a monarch caterpillar in our yard. We drove around Beavercreek looking for milkweed, as I remember that's what they like best. I wanted so much for my kids to have a similar experience as I had. We put it in a jar with milkweed, but it died. I was so sad. Well, a day or 2 later, I went out on the porch and saw a chrysallis hanging from the railing! Just a couple days later, we saw that the butterfly had come out! I was so excited! Throughout the day, it slowly made its way along the railing, up to the top of the pillar where it dried its wings, and eventually flew away. We got to watch it for quite a while and I even went and got the neighbor girls to see it. Talk about tender mercies!

The butterfly drying its wings preparing for takeoff!

Bed & Breakfast

My friends and I went to Dresden Ohio to a bed and breakfast. This is the place where the Longaberger baskets are made. I couldn't care less about the baskets, but it was a great excuse for a get-away! We were the only guests at the B&B and we stayed up into the wee hours of the morning acting like silly little girls. It was a BLAST! I'll never forget Joann's impersonation of an egg beater!

Roly Polys

Cooper found some "roly polys" one day. He is our only kid to have anything to do with bugs--and this has been it for him. He loved watching them crawl all over him. Needless to say, not all the bugs survived him! I (Kim) have fond memories of playing with them when I was little and so I had to grab the camera and get some shots of Cooper playing with them!

Payton

Payton's love is football--well one of his loves anyway. I think his true love is giving 110% every practice and game at whatever sport he happens to be playing. His football and basketball coaches have praised his work ethic and said they wished every player would work as hard as Payton. Payton had never played on a football team before 7th grade (unlike 99% of his team), but he still made the first team, playing much of each game on offense and defense. I love that the coaches rewarded him for his hard work! Right now (April 2009) he is probably the only consistent incoming 9th grader working out in the mornings with the high school players. It is optional, but you know Payton is almost always there!






Payton's basketball team worked HARD this year and took 1st place in their division! GO CREEK!

Payton is awesome on defense and if there was ever a real strong offensive player on the opposing team the coach would have Payton guard him and shut him down!

This was a dramatic slide into home. Payton (in the green) was safe! His team won the tournament (without him--he was in Boise!) in 2008.

Jackson

Jackson pitched and played first base on his team last year. He pitches pretty fast, and the catchers would complain about their hands hurting sometimes!

He will move up to the older league this year, so we will see if his pitching is as good against the older kids.








Chad coached Jackson's basketball team this year. I'm getting kind of tired of sitting alone at games! Although, really, I was usually at Payton's games alone, since Chad had to be at Jackson's games. I didn't get to see a lot of J's games. They don't have a tournament or anything in this league--just play against other teams over and over again.

Cooper sports

Cooper as catcher. He asked me why I signed him up for softball. The question caught me off guard because it never occurred to me NOT to sign him up. You play softball until you are old enough to play baseball! Well his love is soccer--didn't love softball, but that doesn't mean we won't sign him up again!










So here is Cooper doing what he loves best--playing soccer. I try not to yell out too much, since I have no idea of the rules, also because every time I do yell out, I tell him something completely wrong! Their team is the "Highlighters", because they are flourescent salmon color! The league calls it watermelon, and it may look orange in this picture, but really it is definitely between orange and pink. It's not hard to find their team when we get to the fields though!

Cooper

I love this picture of Cooper. I took it when I was taking a photography class from a lady in our ward. "Not bad, but too much tree."

Wow, so I'm finally creating a blog. I didn't know if I'd ever do this, and I don't know if I'll actually keep it up---especially since I'm not even good at writing in a journal anymore. But here I am, starting one. Hmmm....so what do I say? Weird--can't think of anything! I'm just trying to figure out how to do this--how to do a slideshow, etc. And how do I find friends' blogs that I have visited before? How do I add them to my blog? I'll keep working on it!