baseball is expensive....

So now we hop right on over into baseball season. No rest for the weary. Andrew has been working crazy crazy hours so I was basically in charge of buying all the good stuff. I felt in adequate shopping for most of the stuff but my brother helped and then I defaulted to what I always do in these situations. I bought the most expensive stuff I could find. I figure it for sure won't suck if its priced that high. We also had a bit of a set back with pitching. According to Dallin I suck and Andrew threw out his arm so the only way we can get batting in on his days off was to buy a pitching machine. I am so immature though I keep wanting to do cool stuff with it. Like the other day I tried to convince Dallin to put his cup on and I would aim the pitching machine at it to see if his cup would hold up to a fast ball. Not to mention how much fun it would be to go out on the balcony and start firing rounds off at the neighbor kids. Overall I am shocked at how expensive baseball is. Even the balls are expensive. Baseball is a "LITTLE PEOPLE" sport. There I said it. Short men and boys with very little growing potential make a BIG deal out of this game and thats fine cause its their only shot at being an athlete. Any time you see a 5'6" dad waltz in with his 8 yr old that's no bigger than a toddler, step aside cause they mean business! And for some reason baseball really reigns in the white trash folk too. At the bear minimum its very entertaining.

Annoying

Olivia was begging for play food for her kitchen and I bought it for her but she took all the food boxes and flattened them. She told me she was getting them ready to be recycled. argh! waste of money

Derek's new thing is to bring in dirt chunks in his pockets and then he will make them into mud once he can get a hold of some water without me looking.

This is what it looks like before he turns it into mud. I now have to check his pockets for these dirt clumps before I wash his little jeans.

Basketball season came and went

It feels like this basketball season went by super fast but thats mainly because I only went to a handful of games. When we first started Dallin in sports I was hard core and thought no matter what it takes I will always come and support him but that whole thought process is long gone. We have had a few seasons of football where we would drag the whole family out to a game and I would watch my other three kids be bored off their rockers. It occured to me this not their obligation they need things for themselves. Now that Addie and Olivia are older we are starting to put them in things too and its evident that its impossible to get to everything with 4 kids. The girls always have done dance but they have one big performance a year not every Sat. Now its to the point where they all have something on Sat so I let go of being hard core. It took me a little over 5 years to figure this out so imagine how long it will take you!
Dallin did decent this basketball season but these kids are so young for the most part its a cluster fuck (pardon the expression but I know no other way of saying it) of kids scrambling for the ball. All we care about is that he improves his skill set to give him a foundation to keep building on. And he did accomplish that.

Hiking

When it finally warmed up I wanted to get out of the house so we went Hiking.
Yeah some days I can't think of any thing else to say.....

Men and Babysitting

I know some women that are so in love they seem to just over look everything their significant other does as blue bids fly in circles around their head. But lets be real people those women are missing a few bricks to begin with. I hate reading face book posts along the lines of... So lucky to marry such a great guy ect ect. I tend to be more.. I would say REALISTIC others might say pessimistic. Either way. I am not beyond grateful when the father of my children babysits most of the time because like all men he tends to not notice things I consider important. Wait let me re phrase that. They over look the kind of things social services would worry about. Men have an ability to tune out noises and whining like nothing I have ever seen. If they were honest with us they would admit they just sit on the couch and serf the web or start playing video games and scramble at the last min to pick up right before we get back. I have circumstantial evidence a mile long to support my theory. For example I came back from my morning run last Sat and the kids were vacuuming the bare floor of the garage. You would have to be pretty gone to not notice three kids hauling off a heavy vacuum and if you did notice at what point do you ask "where are you guys going with that?" For a man... they see no reason for concern. When I got back from visiting my sister EVERY single electrical plate on the first floor had been decorated with stickers. I have had one hell of a time getting them off and for the most part have given up on trying to get them off cause it makes me so mad. The mess. Ohhhh the MESS when I get home is so bad it looks like I left them alone for 4 hours. Not for one hour with a GROWN ADULT. Yesterday I came home to my little boy with a bald patch in his head because he got gum stuck in his hair and the best idea the male babysitter had was to just rip that patch of hair out. Men if you are reading this write this down. You use peanut butter to get gum out of hair. I can remember being baby sat by my dad and it was Hell A Fun cause he let us do all kinds of things my mom never did like running through the grocery store at lightening speed pushing my siblings in a shopping cart and knocking over a pyramid of oranges in the produce section. I get that its more fun for the kids. But seriously there are moments I think the 12 yr old girl that we have come over does a much much much better job. Yup a female child is knocking it out of the ball park fellas and your not!! Ugh MEN!!!

Any time it snows

Any time it snows in Austin Texas the experience must be documented. My kids were as excited about the snow as they are on Christmas morning. It wasn't much but that was fine by me. I think if we all got together as a neighborhood and shared our snow we could make a 3 ft community snow man just to give you an idea of how much snow we got. I was talking to my friend later in the day and we both agreed we couldn't mother in snow. Its sucks. They have all these layers and it takes forever to put them on then they get soaked in them and take the all off. Not to mention how hard it is to keep gloves and hats and scarfs all in one place.