Seven Things Sunday

1.  On Friday we gave out uniforms for 325 girls and 60+ coaches.  We also sorted and bagged 200+ shirts for a give away that we did.  Needless to say, it was crazy.  This was all done in my living room.  At 10:00 P.M. because the uniform company got behind and weren't able to have the uniforms ready in the afternoon like they planned. 

2.  On Friday the kids and I crash cleaned the living room and kitchen.  (See #1) I wonder how long it will stay clean.  Related: do not look in my room or the laundry room because they are a mess.

3.  Opening Ceremonies was yesterday.  Most of our girls showed up and we are excited to get the season started tomorrow.

4.  I have no idea what we are going to do for Easter.  It is the last holiday that I have left in my year of firsts without my mom.  It is also hard because I have fond Easter memories from when I was a kid.  The Easter bunny always hid my eggs while I was asleep and then my dad would BBQ and we would spend the day outside. 

5.  I took two Benadryl last night for allergies and now I feel like I am in a fog.  Ugg.

6.  Meagan has the next competition in her Bible Drill today.  This drill, called the Association Drill, will determine if she goes on to the next level.  She did great two weeks ago so I have no doubt that she will do well today.

7.  We went to a housewarming party last night where they served the most wonderful brisket.  I need to get their recipe.  Yum!

Bonus! 8.  We are planning our next vacation and have lots of various ideas but I am so unsure of myself when planning.  What to do, what to do.  I hate the thought of spending so much money and then it flops.  I also need to realize that it needs to be fun for all of us, not just for one or two people.  Double ugg.

Random photo time: 

This is a bulletin board that I created at work this week.  It outlines the TLI grant that our district received.

Sunrise in Pensacola, FL in November

Mmm. . . no explanation needed right??

Seven Things Sunday

**Disclaimer - I just made that title up.  I'm sorry if someone already uses it and I didn't link to you. : )

I've been trying to get back into regular posting on this blog and just keep forgetting.  I think I'm going to try this Seven Things Sunday and see if that helps!

So here goes:
1.  We are coaching 3!! kickball teams this year.  Why? Because we are insane.  Once games start we will have a game every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evening for one team or another from March 25 - June 7.  Insane I said.

2.  It is SPRING BREAK!!! Woo hoo!!  We might take a little trip to do some touristy stuff but I am just looking forward to sleeping late and getting my house cleaned up.  (After typing out #1 I realized that this may be the last time the house is cleaned until June.)

3.  I went to a work conference a few weeks ago and I came back SO MOTIVATED!  (This doesn't always happen so it is really exciting when it does!) I have really changed my outlook and schedule and I am so much happier for it. 

4.  My daughter had to get glasses recently.  Actually, she begged me to call and make an appointment for her to get her eyes checked.  Needless to say, she needs glasses and is wearing them nonstop.  This makes me feel like a terrible mother.  I should have had her eyes checked much sooner. 

5.  My mom's birthday was a couple of weeks ago and I didn't fall apart.  It helped that we had kickball stuff to do all day.  I was sad but it was nothing like how horrible my birthday was.

6.  Laundry sucks.  (Maybe it would suck less if I would actually try to keep up with it but that never happens in my house.)

7.  After trying to clean this weekend I have a question:  Where in the heck does all of the paper come from????  I swear that there are several trees worth of paper in my house right now.  Ugh!

And now some random pictures of us:

Jimmy and I at the kickball fields early one Saturday morning for registration.

Meagan, who is 14 and growing up more and more every day.

Garrett, with a stick on moustache courtesy of his sister who weirdly has a thing for moustches. (Terrible puntuation I know, and I don't even think moustaches is a word!)

2011 All Stars Opening Ceremonies

This past weekend our team competed in the 2011 All Star tournament that was held in Calallen.  We are so proud of our girls!

Taking a deep breath . . . .

Here's why I haven't been blogging:

• Friday was the last day of school for kids and Saturday was the last workday for teachers for the 2008-2009 school year
• Reading Specialists are in charge of organizing summer school for all of the elementary schools in town
• Meagan finished her first year of middle school
• Meagan's birthday is coming up in just a couple of weeks
• Garrett finished kinder - sob, sob
• I helped to make a scrapbook for a staff member who left our school after 8 years
• I finally moved all of my stuff out of my old classroom
• I spent about $2500 (not my money!) on books/supplies for next year
• our kickball team had 5 or 6 games in last three weeks
• our kickball team won the last 10 games they played
• our kickball team won their 10th straight game in the bottom of the sixth inning to become the JUNIOR CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I've been a little busy. I have kept up (well, a little anyway) with my Twitter posts so I will have to reread them to work on blogging all of the things that have been going on around here the last couple of weeks.

All I've done the last couple of weeks in my house is the bare minimum. You know, washing spoons as we need them, making sure we have a clean uniform for both kids for the next day, making sure people have socks and underwear, and washing our kickball uniforms repeatedly.

Today I am cleaning house and then going to a meeting with Jimmy to pick the ALL STAR JUNIOR TEAM! Because, as the coaches of the team who won FIRST PLACE! we get to coach the All Star team and take them to the state tournament in Austin, Texas over the Fourth of July weekend. But, I promise, I will try to start blogging with some sort of regularity (is that even a word?) soon.

(I'm a little excited about winning first place in kickball - just in case you can't tell.)

Water Balloon Fight

Have I mentioned that Jimmy and I are coaching kickball again this season? We coached last year and finished the season in 6th place. (Out of 9 teams - not great but not awful either. We were new to the whole coaching thing and we had some issues with the girls working together as a team.)

Anyway, we are called The Rockers this year. To start off the season we beat the Stingrayz. It came down to the bottom of the sixth inning. We had a two run lead . . . and we let a runner score. A few tense moments later we got the last out and were 1 -0. We were on top of the world because the Stingrayz were in 2nd place last year.

In the next two games our team did not fair as well. We lost to the Cyclones by one run. Even though we lost we were happy with how the game went. Our girls played really well and didn't make any major mistakes. Considering that the Cyclones were in first place last year (they only lost one game the whole season) we were happy.

The third game - our girls just gave up. They were down by three early in the game and never rallied back. We were disappointed in how they lost - not that they lost.

The fourth game was a tie. We played hard to the bitter end but just couldn't score another run to win the game. Even though we tied, our girls were back!

Game 5 - we were set to play the Heartbreakers - who are now 4-0. A good friend of ours coaches the team so it was going to be especially interesting to see who would win.

Jimmy promised the girls a water balloon fight if we won the game. (Can you finally see where this post it going??) Needless to say, WE WON!!!!!!!! and the score was 14-3. Our girls took an early lead and never looked back.

It took Jimmy and I over an hour to fill up the balloons with water. Needless to say, the kitchen floor is pretty clean now from all of the accidents that we had filling them up. I am sad to say that it only took minutes for all of the balloons to be history! However, the girls had a great time.

Just for the record, we won our next game so our record is now 4-2-1.

On Monday we start all over again with the Stingrayz. I know we can beat them again!

GO ROCKERS!!!!!!!!!

This post has nothing to do with Christmas

Jimmy recently coached winter kickball for the first time. He coached with another kickball friend of ours. (Neither one of them had enough girls for a full team so they combined the two teams.) I didn't do much coaching wise this time because I was busy taking Garrett to soccer practice and such.

This league is run by the Boys and Girls club - not the Little Miss Kickball organization. Each girl gets to kick no matter how many are on the team and you can sub players on the field every inning, not just at the 4th quarter. No official score was kept and there were no rules other than three strikes and you are out and three outs in each half of the inning. A total of five teams played in the junior division. All of the teams except one were coaches that we played with in the spring league.

Meagan had fun and even scored a few runs this year. It was very different playing in the winter instead of spring/summer. We actually wore sweats and jackets to the games for the most part! It's also more difficult to practice when it gets dark at 6:00!

These pictures were taken right before the last game of the season.

Back to School Busy-ness sets in

First of all, I know I totally made up busy-ness. I was going to spell it with an i (business) but that's a totally different word.

Anyway, soccer practice started this week. Jimmy said it went really well. Jimmy is helping one of the other dads coach. He said the kids had a lot of fun and really worked hard. There are a total of six kids on the team. Three play on the field at one time. A little girl from Garrett's kinder class is on the team. We have practice twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) and our first game is on Saturday, Sept. 27th. I'll post pictures!

I did not get to attend practice because I was at a technology training. A few years ago our district added an elementary technology person to our school district. She is a former teacher who is awesome! She figures out how to work all of the programs we have and then she meets with us once a six weeks or so to share information about how we can use technology in our classrooms. She also holds workshops after school and in the summer to teach us how to use these different programs in our classrooms. And the cool thing about these workshops? We actually get paid to attend them! She looks for websites/activities that we ask her too, etc. We have to turn in one technology project per six weeks and she has made this task SO much easier to complete! Thanks A - You rock!

Jimmy and I are still getting used to be the parents of a middle school child. At elementary school she had a responsibility folder. She wrote in it each day and her teacher initialed it. We signed it each night. Well now, she throws everything in a zippered binder and I have to dig through it and see what her homework it. This week I fell down on my job and this is why she came to me at 8:45 to show me her science study guide - FOR THE TEST THAT WAS THE NEXT DAY! Sigh. The bad thing . . . I think that this is only the beginning.

The good thing is that our district has a program where I can check all of her grades on line any time that I want to. I can see each assignment that has been counted for a grade and what grade she received.

Winter kickball will be starting soon for us so that is going to add two more nights of practice for us to attend. Jimmy and I both have to attend since he is the coach and I am the ball girl, I mean assistant coach. (I need to learn how to do that neat strike through thing.)

I need to pick my DI team and get started with meeting with them one day a week (after school). I know that tutoring will be starting soon.

Uggh . . . I don't like to have nothing to do, but it seems like my calendar is starting to fill up really fast!