Team Party

On Thursday night, we celebrated baseball with an end-of-season party. Thankfully, we had it at the head coaches' house, so that meant a lot less work and planning for me as the team mom. I assigned myself to make treat bags for the boys which turned out really nice I put in the gum they like and sunflower seeds. The league donated a baseball for each boy so I had Princess make me some vinyl letters and I put Bingham 10U on each one of them. We also made a huge stack of cupcakes for the party.

Other members of the team donated to a delicious meal of hamburgers and hot dogs. The kids enjoyed playing baseball with the wiffle ball set and basketball, but the favorite by far was their beautiful swimming pool. Little Warrior especially enjoyed playing in the water with his uncle and aunts.

The only bad part was when I couldn't quite convince my three youngest kids it was time to go! I think they would have stayed all night. Curly did some amazing things on the diving board. I believe he tried to fly! Baby Doll stayed mostly in the shallow end and sprayed the big kids with the water gun. And believe it or not, the coach has a 13-year-old daughter and she and Scout have been friends at school all year, but we had no idea of the connection.

Maybe they both need to support their little brothers by coming to a few more baseball games...

Family Pictures

The bigger my family gets, the harder it becomes to have a family picture taken. We have had plans at least a half dozen times over the last couple of years and then something comes up and someone can't be there, so we cancel and try to arrange something new. We actually have a pretty tight plan for July 28. We'll see what happens...

My parents didn't have that problem. We only had one real family portrait taken the entire time I was growing up although there are a few that were done at family gatherings and weddings afterward. When my oldest brother was getting ready to go on his mission, my mom pleaded with my dad to make it happen. She was afraid the family would splinter while he was gone for two years, and she was right. I'm pretty sure he left for his mission in 1980 and my sister was married in 1982, but by then my other brother was off on his mission.

But this post is about the picture...

I don't remember the photographer, but I do remember driving to Manti and going up around the back of the temple to pose on the back steps. Li'l Sis truly was little then. She is the smallest in the red dress. I'm on the far right, standing next to my dad. My mom made that tux for my brother to wear to prom that year and just for the record, I made my own dress.

It was a crazy, out of the ordinary summer day when we all donned our church clothes. Even Dad. And we spent time together doing something important that would last through the generations. We were being a family.

Blast From the Past: Cutting Hair

See these two adorable little girls? They just happen to be Princess and Prima Donna and at this age, they were inseparable. At 21 months apart, people often mistook them for twins and after about a year, they always assumed Prima Donna was older. She grew... Princess did not.

But just because she was the smaller one, Princess was great at coming up with crazy ideas. On this particular day. she must have glanced over and said, "Prima Donna? You need a haircut!!" And that's all it took. She smuggled the scissors to her room and with Prima Donna's happy permission, she began to carefully give Prima Donna a new look.

In my defense, there wasn't any screaming or crying, not even when Princess proudly displayed her work. Wait, let me back up... there wasn't any CHILDREN who were screaming or crying, just a mom... this mom.

Although Princess was careful with the scissors and she didn't cut skin, it was still jagged and patchy. In perhaps one of my best parenting moments, I took them both to the salon, asked Melissa to do all she could to even out Prima Donna's hair, and then when she was finished, to cut Princess's hair just as short.

Princess was beside herself with grief! She still felt like she had done a good job and why were we punishing her? It was one of the hardest things I have ever done completely by choice. Princess's hair took almost a year to grow back and within a couple of weeks, Prima Donna looked like herself.

Best part is that it worked! She never cut anyone's hair nor did anyone else for that matter. This is a story that has become folklore in our family, but all you have to do is look at this last pic to know that is was all true.

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

Again, that box with all the memories...

I was actually looking for all of the large envelopes that Great Aunt Laura gave my grandma. Before Grandma passed away, nearly every time we would visit she would hand me another envelope that her sister had sent from California that held family history stuff. Grandma didn't have much use for it, so she just put it in the bag of things she was sending my way. She always seemed so annoyed about Laura spending her money on postage like that.

Now Laura's daughter, who seems to be the self-appointed keeper of all things family history (at least that generation), has asked me to write Grandma's history! Grandma would be so annoyed...

But that doesn't actually have anything to do with the picture I want to show you. When the kids were younger, we didn't travel much, partly because of the cost, and partly because we were nervous. One of the very first trips we ever took out of state was to San Francisco. We loved it so much that we also planned a second trip there a few years later!

This pic is from the first trip. Bossy and The Beast had already grown up and moved on by 2005. I'm sure you have this down already, but let's start with the back row. Reading from left to right, we have Teach, my Sweetie, Dog Walker, Drama Queen with Princess in front of her, and me.

On the second row, Sport is the cute baby in the stroller, then Crafty and Prima Donna. Just to put this in perspective, Drama Queen graduated from high school in 2007, so she would have been about 16, Teach 14, and so on down about every two years, which makes it convenient when you are counting.

We loved the trip out on the Bay in the cruise boat. Other than the prices, we loved pretty much everything about that beautiful old city.