Bella, Gabe and Josiah

Cathy, our temporary roommate, let Josy wear her boots. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Sometimes church with two little boys is easy. Sometimes it involves spoiled cheerios and sticking stickers on your eyes... Josy is going to virtual speech therapy. I think he’s just excited to get to use my computer. I figured out why Josy likes to hang out in the pantry... Gabe is super excited about his new helmet!! Lucy decided to take a nap on Josy’s blanket. He was not amused. In fact, he was very frustrated that he wasn’t strong enough to pull it out from under her. Gabe wanted to swing both of them together. It did not go well. Josy spilled some cereal on the floor. He picked up the cheerios and then I thought he was done. When I turned around, he was cleaning up the milk too. He’s so very helpful! Josy and I went on a run and this is how he did the entire run: thumb in his mouth and one hand on the water bottle. He loves wearing the batting helmet. We went to an outdoor birthday p...

Gabe had his first tball practice last night. He was so excited!! He’s been talking about this for months, pretty much jumping up and down every time it came up. He even wanted me to wake him up super early yesterday so that he wasn’t late... even though practice wasn’t until the evening. It was a pretty wet evening for practice, but he didn’t even care. He thought the whole thing was wonderful and is super excited about “the big game”, aka his first game tomorrow. Josy, on the other hand, couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t play and he kept running after all of the other kids. When that didn’t work, he found some extra cones and decided to play with those. He definitely confused one of the girls when he was standing on first base when she was practicing base running... Then the coach bought the kids pizza. Could you get a better tball practice??? And now Gabe is planning his career as a Seattle Mariner.

My dear husband went all out on Mother’s Day this year. He knew that I was struggling with it, given the fact that not all of our kids are here with us, so he decided to do his best to make the day special for me. It started with breakfast. He got up and made Eggs Benedict and fresh squeezed grapefruit drinks while I slept in. Then there were flowers, cards and a beautiful Mother’s Day present. Unfortunately, we had to eat fast because of church, but it still tasted wonderful. After church, we went on a family run. I never in my life dreamed that a family run would ever be a part of Mother’s Day celebration, but suddenly Pat likes to run and it’s a lot of fun. Also, he runs faster than I do, so he gets to push the stroller, and it pushes me to run a lot faster than I’m used to. Our 4.5 mile run was my 4th fastest 3-5 mile run since I started tracking my runs 8 years ago... We ran to the park to let the boys play for a bit. It started raining while we’re were there, which meant the slid...

In retrospect, it may have been a little over ambitious to try and plant flowers on the first day back to work after vacation when Pat had to work all evening, so I was in charge of dinner and bedtime. But, the weather was nice while we were gone, so everyone had already bought all of the good plans by the time we got home, so Gabe and I bought what we could on Sunday and I wanted to get them in the pots. Also, Gabe was desperate to plant his plants. Also, I had big plans on which plant went in which pot, but Gabe was convinced that he needed to plant one of the ones he picked out in its own pot. It killed my whole plan, but he was super excited about it, so I went with it. Also, doing anything in the yard with an almost 2-year-old is very complicated... But at least we should have beautiful flowers all summer! 

The last day of a vacation is always hard. You want to make the most of everything, but at the same time you have to park and clean up and actually get ready to go... I started out the morning with a run. I’m definitely going to miss running in the nice weather... Then on the way back, I decided to wave at the boys from the street. We’re in the 26th floor, so it was fun to get the perspective. After my run, I had a papaya waiting for me. Unfortunately, I had two little baby birds who felt like they should get my papaya too... Then we went to the mall and found the exact same spot where we are mochi with the entire family two years ago, so we had to get mochi again. Josy wasn’t quite so sure about it... Bella asked for a picture of Hot Topic, so we made sure to stop there. We went to the Disney store and since Gabe was dressed like a pirate, the lady at the store disappeared into the back and came out with a Captain Hook hat that was on sale. So naturally, Gabe has a new pirate hat that...