10 months, last games, and party, party, party......

Kyleigh is 10 months old today. Wow, in two months we will no longer have a baby in the house. She got her second tooth yesterday and has been trying it out on me. I have little bite marks on my arms and legs.

Valynn has her last softball game tonight. Here are some pictures that our friend Chris took of her game. He got some great action shots. I did pitch 1 1/2 innings, lets just say I was relieved. Mason had his last game this morning. He got a treat, Mark was his coach. Mason's regular coach was gone today so Mark stepped in to coach. Mark is also going to help coach Valynn's game tonight because one of our coaches will be gone.

On Wednesday we finally made it to the pool. The kids had fun swimming, Valynn went down the slide and Kyra and Kyleigh had fun in the baby pool. They weren't ready to go home after 2 1/2 hours of swimming but mom was. They keep asking when we'll go back.

Thursday we met the Drake's at the Farm Park in East Peoria. The kids had fun feeding the animals. The kids were given an ice cream cone with food in it to give to the animals. We now know that animals will eat ice cream cones. Valynn and Mason got another stamp in their passports though. We had a picnic lunch and then met the Bane's at a Sprinkler Park. After cooling off in the water we went to Dairy Queen and then headed home with four exhausted kids.

This is a busy weekend for Valynn, she has three birthday parties to attend, all neighbor kids. I had best get a snack for the kids and ready for the game.

Go Baby Go

I had to take a video of Kyleigh using her walker to get around. Just within the last couple of days she has had another physical development explosion. She will crawl over legs and siblings if they are on the floor. She loves playing around the kitchen table, her own little obstacle coarse. She will pull herself to standing on more things and has started cruising. Notice in the video how she has a constant stream of conversation going. She is getting very loud which gets to be annoying as we can't watch TV. Her other favorite activity is to take the books off of the shelf in the office.

I hope everyone is having a good week. We were going to go swimming today because the heat index is close to 110 but the kids weren't on their best behavior at home so we postponed it until tomorrow, behavior depending. Thursday we're meeting some friends at a Sprinkler park, should be fun and cool. Valynn and Mason are going to vacation bible school this week with the Bowdoin's. Bible school is a couple of hours in the evening. Stay cool everyone!

We won

We won four tickets to the Cubs vs. Cardinals game in September in St. Louis along with a hotel room. Only problem, the hotel doesn't allow kids. We don't know if we'll try to go or try to sell the tickets. We went to Heritage Day in Princeville last night. The kids got to go to the Carnival. They had fun going on the rides. We're enjoying our rainy Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to all.

I'm feeling hot hot hot.....

After a very nice mild spring, summer has come roaring in with high humidity levels, 90 degree heat, and storms. And go figure, our A/C quit working the first day, but we got it fixed and are nice and cool now. Valynn had a game on Wednesday, they lost, the other two coaches were having trouble pitching so I am going to practice this week and I might be pitching the last two games next week. Wish me luck. Valynn is starting to catch on to the catcher position, and is waiting for the first pitch to go home. She also got a couple of balls in the outfield.

Kyleigh got her first chance at the slip and slide yesterday and LOVED it. She was cruising up and down the slide and playing in the water, she didn't care that it was in her face. She did start to shiver to I made her get out long before she was ready to.

We got quite the storm a couple of nights ago. We didn't have any damage except for our corn laying on it's side and a few branches but there are trees down all around us. The kids all woke up and came into our room.

We went to Wildlife on Wednesday and met some friends. The kids had fun as always and Valynn and Mason got the first stamps in their passports for the Academy of Science. Our goal next week is to head across the river to a farm park and maybe stop at a Sprinkler park as well. Seeing how the week goes we might try to fit another stamp in.

I best be off and finish getting ready for our company. Lloyd is coming to visit, he's back from Afghanistan and taking some time off of work so he thought he would head down for the weekend.

Where did the week go?

It's amazing how fast a week can fly by. Valynn had a great time at Basketball camp. I thought it would have wore her out a little more but she still had plenty of energy when she got home. She wants to go back next year. She lost both of her softball games in the last inning. Any ideas on how to get the girls to play better defense and not choke on offense in the 5 inning would be great. But on the plus side our girls got a double play on Friday. Valynn has played well and gotten some great hits and stopped the ball a couple of times. Her favorite position to play is catcher. We went fishing one night and came home with a great catch. We're having fish for supper tonight. Mason had a playmate come over one morning. We went to a first birthday party last night and as always a good time was had by all. Today we've been busy working outside on the lawn and garden. It looks like it's finally going to heat up around here which means I'll have to turn the A/C on. Have a great week all!

An infection, a tooth, and a party....

What do these have in common? Kyleigh. Kyleigh has another ear infection on Saturday she also got her first tooth, this might explain why mom and Kyleigh haven't sleep in a week.

Valynn had a game on Friday, her team lost but Valynn got a couple of great hits in, one went to the outfield.

Mason had a game on Saturday, he did very well, he got to play first base.

Sunday was the Chippewa Estates block party, due to the weather it was moved to our garage. We had a good turnout and it's always fun to visit with the neighbors. That meant we had to clean the house this weekend and somehow two days later it's still relatively clean, keeping my fingers crossed that it lasts a few more days. Valynn had basketball camp this week, she's going to be one tired little girl at the end of the day.

Have a good week all!!

I now know why it's named Sweetwater Park....

Valynn had a game in Elmwood last night. The team did awesome! They got some great hits in and did a great job catching and passing the ball. I don't know the official score but our team had at least 20 runs and they had far fewer. Valynn got three great hits and struck out once. She got to play catcher, short stop and outfield. She stopped the ball a couple of times at short stop. Now for the name. The fields are located next to the sewage ponds and in the middle of the game it started to smell. Mark recognized the smell as cow manure which then wasn't the result of the sewage ponds. Either way as first base coach I never expected to answer the question "What's that smell?".

It looks like I won't be able to do the Heritage Days run, Mason has a game at the same time as the run so we're going to look into doing a different run later this summer.

For the big news since it looks like Brady won't post it. Brady and Jodi are engaged.