And They’re Off!

the boys left at 9am this morning for shawnee national park for 4 days of backpacking with the boy scouts. this is their first backpack trip as they prepare for philmont next july (as in 2010….the prep starts 18 months in advance.) connor has really gotten into boy scouts and yet, i have no pictures to prove it. other than some lousy shots from a court of honor, there are no pics of all the campouts, summer camps and activities that he does.

it’s easy to figure out why right?

yeah, if i’m going to get pics, that means father and son have to take the photos.

sigh.

so this trip (which they were really excited to go on) i told them that they not only had to take connor’s camera, but they had to take multiple photos. i wanted shots of the two of them together, scenery shots, up close still life shots, wildlife, etc.

and i told them if they didn’t get any photos, not to bother coming home.

but just in case they totally blow it….here’s what i managed to get as they left the house today.

connor’s pack that weighed 32 lbs. before the nalgenes were filled with water (both for drinking and cooking.)

chris’s pack that weighed 43 lbs. before water (they have to carry all their food with them.)

he swears it’s not heavy….wonder how he’ll feel after 4 days of carrying it?

the gang. 3 men, 3 boys and way too much stuff in a minivan….i think it was a long 6.5 hour drive.

the worst part for me is the weather and the lack of communication. not many cell towers in a forest. we are due to get 2-4″ of snow tonight and although they are at the southern tip of IL, i worry about the cold, snow and wind. especially the cold and wind. these 1 man tents are not warm at all. i really really hope those 20 degree mummy bags we bought work. i really hope they aren’t cold. i hope this is a great adventure and that they don’t see too many mini-bears (aka chipmunks who apparently will eat your entire food store if you turn your back.)

It’s a really big rock

the one that i'm under that is.

huge.

it's the biggest project i've ever had to do on the shortest deadline (even less than the Find Your Groove book deadline of 12 weeks) and it's crunch time. so i'm crunching. and not sleeping (not for lack of trying, i know i need sleep to function, it's just not coming easily) so i'm heading out to the coffee shop after this post to get something leaded to help me get through my work today.

but i'm really really excited about this rock. seriously excited. can't wait to unveil it and i'm really honored that i was chosen to be a part of it.

and i think this project is a good excuse not to blog, but alas, life keeps going on and i want to record, remember, post photos while the memories are still fresh.

so here's a very random update of the past weekend/week:

tori had her first soccer game on saturday. there are no photos. it was a rough game for the first half goalie and i decided that i didn't need to take pictures of her crying in the goalie box. she got better as the game went on. just needed to get back in the groove.

last thursday and this monday, we got 3" of rain. it was welcome precipitation. i find it ironic that in the midwest we can welcome the remnants of a storm that created such havoc in the carribbean.

connor had football game #2. they traveled up to a brand new middle school about 40 minutes away. the track and field was brand new and very well done. they had this cool inflatable tunnel that looked like a helmet that the home team could run thru….and then a 3'x2' scoreboard that was so small (and under the inflatable) that you couldn't really see it much less read it. seemed like a slight mismanagement of funds to me, but what do i know?

this time the chargers were victorious. they won 12-0. but they still screwed up the jerseys and once again, 3 kids had to go without numbers or try to use medical tape to make numbers. the coach was NOT happy. connor got in for 6 plays and played better than the first game. i have not been impressed with this expensive league that we have put him in. i think we made a mistake, but there's not much we can do about it now. i just hope that he can learn some skills that will be beneficial for next year during practice. because even with the lead, the coach still played most of his starters on defense. just so the other team wouldn't score.


meanwhile, 17 kids stood on the sidelines without getting much of a chance to play. connor was one of the lucky ones…he actually got in the game.

and we also watched the debut of miss zoe on the soccer field this weekend as well. she had her first kindergarten soccer game which is by far my favorite soccer to watch. i loved it when tori was in this program and it is so fun to watch zo go after it now that she is 5. she loves soccer and has no fear of the ball, the boys or falling down. she actually scored the first goal of the game and went on to score another one later on. they play co-ed, so it's nice to see the girls getting some points. i can only show one pic from the game for now…need the rest of the pics for my "rock" WINK but she was stinkin' cute.


check out the socks. they are completely doubled over back down to her ankles. sarah actually wore hers like leg warmers all the way up her thighs…hee! and the shin guards are peewee size. they are still too wide around her leg, but at least they are small enough from shin to ankle. oh, and those cleats are size 10.5. i was worried they wouldn't make cleats small enough for her.

finally, a quick fantasy football update…..
the first week was not great for me but i learned a lot. i lost my game (you are matched up against other owners in your league) to the commish of the league by 20+points. but i figured out my scout team, did my research and was online the minute you could pick up free agents and i gutted my team.

yeah, some people think that you shouldn't make hasty decisions, but since the draft for me was such a new experience i think that my free agency picks make sense. course ask me how i feel after i go up against MY HUSBAND this weekend.

ok, this is all my alloted time for this blog post.

Are you ready for some football?

yeah, i bet you think this is a post about my son's foray into travel football…well, it's not. and this is where i'll lose  every single woman who reads this blog…

because this is about my foray into FANTASY football.

no, i'm not kidding. my husband likes to brag that his wife loves football (which is true, my dad had to teach the game to someone and since he didn't get sons, my sister and i were it!) in one of these conversations, a guy that he works with mentioned he was setting up a league and they needed a couple extra and well, i was given a spot.

so chris and i are sitting on the couch together last night, on our respective laptops drafting our players. thankfully, they make it pretty easy by keeping a running list of top picks for you to choose from. it just gets more complicated in the late rounds when you have to make sure that you have a  mixture of bye weeks so you can switch players out and have a full team every week.

now we just pick who is active every week (we have 12 "players" two of  mine are actually defenses) and only 8 are allowed to play each week. i'd love to sit here and tell you that i'm confident and i expect to kick some male ego up and down the field, but i really have no clue how this is going to play out. i think i have some decent players but i only know about half of them by reputation. it's going to be interesting to say the least.

here's my team:
starters:
Brees,
Drew QB NO

Grant,
Ryan RB GB

Lynch,
Marshawn RB BUF

Burress,
Plaxico WR NYG (let's hear it for the spartan!)

Holmes,
Santonio WR PIT

Heap,
Todd TE BAL

Dawson,
Phil K CLE

Seahawks
DST

 reserves:

Garrard,
David QB JAC 

Jones,
Felix RB DAL

Stallworth,
Donte' WR

Buccaneers
DST

as soon as the draft was done, the trades started. apparently you can do that whenever you want too. this may be way more than i bargained for…LOL  hopefully i don't finish last.

but so far, i really think i'm winning the name game. you get to name your team and pick an icon for them. my sister helped me out and we picked "runswithscissors" as my team name. thought it was appropriate for a scrapper.

and this is my icon which i lifted from an upcoming movie (i erased the words):


see you on the field boys.

The first 3 days of school

i think this is one of my favorite times of the year. the kids are excited to go back to school and i enjoy the routine of it all, even if we have a few kinks to work out still.

over at designerdigitals this morning, we had a 30 minute masterpiece chat. cassie gives you an assignment and you then have 30 minutes to complete it and upload it to the gallery. this was a challenging assignment and i went over the 30 minutes (took 43) but i like the page.


rules were: use the window frame
no title
2 subjects in the photo(s)
use 3 patterned papers (the edge stitching is actually paper)
use stitching

and here are a few photos that have not gotten scrapped just yet….


too cool for school….yeah!

love zo trying to put her arm on tori's shoulder.

Share

Ok, now that the internet issue is resolved (took 6 days, 4 phone techs and 1 in person tech) I need to get back to May. And that will happen tomorrow. but for now, here are a few sb pages i've done recently. i was going to say that these pages would remind folks what the kids look like but, only the first one is recent (well, "my ball" is recent too but it isn't exactly a telling photo). the rest use nostalgic photos.

tomorrow is the last day of school and i hate the fact that i'm actually grateful.

til tomorrow……

Our budding thespians vol. 1

May has been the month for performances.  so this is post 1 of at least 4 that will be posted about our thespians….or thesbians as connor calls them. LOL i love how he mispronounces words….

anyway, the first play of the month was the musical RATS! put on by the 3rd-5th graders of AGS. as a 3rd grader, tori is not eligible for a part. they are only allowed to be in the chorus as one of the children of hamlin. RATS! is the piped piper story reworked to teach a good lesson about following through with your promises. It was cute, but the performance was a bit painful to watch. the stage was way too small for so many kids (a good problem to have but a problem nonetheless) and the microphones were mediocre at best so you missed a lot of dialogue when the kids were shy and didn't project. but tori had a good time and in the end, that is more important than whether i heard the sheriff's lines or not.

unfortunately, i don't have any decent photos of this play. everything was blurry. think i may need to invest in a mono-pod if this thespian stuff keeps up.

The no photo weekend update

seems sacrilegious doesn’t it?

a girls weekend in Iowa and NO pics to show for it???

well, maybe…..except i was with steph. you know, the chick with a killer camera (with good focus….imagine!) and a great talent for pics (not to mention a kick butt lens that i’m totally coveting now). anyway between her big camera, and stef’s sweet little point and shoot, we were covered for pics.

so if you are dying to see our matching outfits and the thelma and louise shots at the Iowa state line, then hop on over to steph’s blog.

but since this is my journal, i need to write down some of the stuff we did so i remember it later on…..

• love driving with steph. it never feels like a long drive when we can talk and talk and talk and eat reese’s and talk the entire time. even if she signs her will before getting on the road with me and then casually mentions that she, "doesn’t have good luck with rental cars."
• she’s a stickler for rules too….wouldn’t even let me drive thru 2 parking lots and across a side street because i wasn’t on the contract. damn lawyers.
• fast stop gas stations do not have wine coolers with berries…but they do have "rough and ready" condom machines in the bathroom…enter at your own risk.
• stef gets positively giddy when she’s road tripping on her own with matchbox 20 blaring on the stereo. this is not the first time she’s giggled hysterically while driving somewhere with NO DIRECTIONS and talking to me on the phone. the last time, i saved her from going to Indiana on her way to CHA…this time, i gave her the guiding landmark for the trip: the best buy.
• the best western in cedar rapids is decked out like gunsmoke. complete with a Kitty’s lounge…get out…that woman follows me everywhere!
• the napkins at the breakfast buffet are in the HUGE vertical container marked NAPKINS on the end of the counter. apparently, it’s the most popular question they are asked…so i’m in good company.
• "bastards!"
• when a "long" drink is just a $1.00 more, i’ll always get it. that seems like a good deal to me and i’m a sucker for a good deal, even if there’s a hangover involved later (which there wasn’t….for me anyway!)
• steph has a serious love for spaghetti and meatballs. serious.
• the cute waiter at biaggi wasn’t as cute as he thought. but man did he work it! honey, we’ve been there done that, the sideways glance with your laughing eyes does not do anything for us but make us laugh hysterically at you when you leave. save it for the high school girls or the 80 year olds.
• it took 3 restaurants before we finally heard, "whiskers, party of 3!" and then she asked if she said it right as i laughed…..oh yeah, you totally made my day!
• steph looks great in color…next trip we’ll work on patterns too.
• stef looks great with her cute little hairdo, but don’t tell her that…..she’s a "long hair person."
• gas and the gastro…nuf said.
• we had this sweet LG flat screen tv in our hotel room. we admired it when we arrived and then never turned it on once.
• mets are a bad baseball team in new york.
• girls weekend trips are really not that big a deal to plan or execute. especially when you don’t make big plans (much to steph’s chagrin!). so we’ll do this again soon.

thanks my friends for a totally fun getaway. next time, we’ll plan only slightly more than this time…we all want to hit a day spa.

oh, and in case you were wondering about the kids activities…..tori’s soccer game was at 8:30am and they won 2-1. it was cold, tori played goal for the first half and of course there are no photos because i did actually take my camera with me to Iowa…even though i never took it out. dork.

and connor’s game was at 10:15pm (no that’s not a typo) and the phone rang at 11:15pm to tell me it had just ended and they lost 41-6. there was a superstar on the other team who scored a running TD, a passing TD, an interception TD and a fumble TD. nice. oh, and the coach of the other team called a timeout with 14 sec. left in the 3rd quarter (the game was obviously well in hand) so they could try and run another play before the end of the quarter. great coach….let’s teach the kids that they need to win by a lot instead of just win. sheesh.

ok, time to post this and then add the windy acres preschool field trip pics. yeah, i went to the pumpkin patch today with a slew of preschoolers, a lot of mud and 4" boots…..but that story has to wait for now.

Saturday scoreboard

the wildcats were back on the field saturday morning. we rotate our games between 4 area high school fields. this time we were at east aurora high school. they have a nice field. great bleachers, lots of parking, it’s just a pain to get there and the road was closed due to some construction and we (the fans) were a few minutes late to the game. gah. hate that. it didn’t help that they started a few minutes early.

so the first quarter was pretty bad. the kids were flat. actually, both teams were. and coach was NOT having it. oooh boy. that man can yell. in his real life, he’s a counselor at the youth correction facility. when i say that man can yell, i mean that man can YELL. so he went off on the team and lit a fire under them. then we had a kickoff return of 60 yards. then the kids got excited and things started to happen. at the end of the 3rd, the boys were up 18-14. i had to leave to get tori to her first soccer game. but we did win 24-14 (no, we still can’t seem to score a two point conversion). and although i had seen connor make a couple tackles, he hadn’t made any big plays…until….one of the coaches said that he’d pay anyone $5 per sack.

connor had 2 sacks in 3 plays and is looking forward to his $10. LOL don’t think he’ll be offering to pay for sacks again anytime soon. it was really cool to see him after a win. it’s been over a year since he’s won a football game. next week he’s skipping the game for a boy scout camp-out. i think i’m going to miss the game more than he is!

i’ve decided that it’s really a pain to take pics of a lineman. he’s 57 far right….playing right tackle. he also plays defensive end, but he’s always on the other side of the field from me.

after leaving the football game, i headed back to batavia for tori’s game. she’s back to being pink again and she’s not happy about it. but the other girls are thrilled. tori was also on a lousy team last year and i’m not sure they won more than one game (if any). this year they have a new coach, and a new mix of girls as they added girls from another school to our team. so we weren’t sure how it would go.

if you think i’m bad at football lineman photos, you should see my rad soccer picture skills. this was the best photo and yes, every single one was from behind. apparently she wasn’t feeling the ball when they were facing my way.

the girls did win this game. 2-1. that was exciting. it was roxy’s birthday so they all were excited to win "for her". looks like this year will be better than last year for the girls too. i’m grateful for that.

other than that we spent the weekend running kids to 2 birthday parties, 3 play dates, 1 skit rehearsal, 1 youth group meeting and a couple trips to the store. good times.