Spring soccer

 That's Grace's coach, a student at Wesleyan. She really likes him and lights up when he tells her she did something right!!

Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks of soccer. They're all doing a great job and seem to really be enjoying themselves. Brian is doing a great job as the boys' coach and Grace likes her college-age coach. The weather has either been freezing cold or boiling hot for the games, we would like something in between, please!!

In other news, we've been keeping busy. The kids are busy preparing for a farm play at school, and my piano recital, both of which are next week. We've also been working hard at the house getting ready for a garage sale. Can't wait to keep selling clothes and toys and get rid of them!! I have concerts at both of my schools, also next week and I've been subbing a lot. Things have been eventful around here! This is a very busy time of year!!

Things are still plugging along for the kids at school. They're coming home with lots of homework and reading, but still doing a great job. They had a field trip to the nature center at Pioneers Park a few weeks ago, which was fun.

In a funny and maybe slightly irritating development, they have started to develop a little bit of sass and have been talking back a lot. The first time Will ever did it, we laughed because it was funny. The second time was also funny. After that, not so much. The first time he talked back Brian had said to him "Will, what is the matter with you?"  Will's reply "Nothing, what's the matter with you??" The second time, I sent him downstairs to get something. He couldn't get it separated from the package it was in, so I got annoyed as I had to come downstairs to get it myself. I said ""Will, come here and I will show you how to do it!" Will (annoyed) "You should have showed me how to do it before you sended me down here!" After those two times, the backtalk has gotten irritating and frequent. Of course, the other two do it now, too. Great! Xander is in another phase of not listening. The only thing that seems to combat this is the threat of losing video games. Consequently, he hasn't been playing many video games lately!! It is really frustrating how he is not listening ON PURPOSE. We're kind of short with all of them, because Xander keeps our fuse short. We're not sure what to do about this, so if anyone has any brilliant suggestions, we'll sure take them!!

The other new game in the house is copying each other, which leads to tattling and fighting. I've also heard several times "____ and___ sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G" (I'm sure you know the rest) and my personal favorite "missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me!" I love that they're in elementary school now!! (insert sarcasm here)

We've finally gotten our summer all planned out. They're enrolled at 2 camps, one Bright Lights enrichment camp here in town and a day camp at the Y like we always do. We've also got a week of bible school, several sessions of swimming lessons, t-ball for all, dance class for Grace and the one they're most excited, about a week-long vacation to Chicago. I'm sure I'll give you more information about that as we get closer to it, but we're leaving on Memorial Day weekend and staying in downtown Chicago. It will be lots of fun!

I'll get videos posted in the next 2 weeks of all their programs coming up. Here's hoping we can stay sane in our next few weeks of craziness!