It's T Ball Season!

B is playing on a T Ball team for the first time, and is having a blast! It is so fun to watch him in ready position, field grounders, step up to bat, and run the bases. He is really having a fun time, and his coach is great! He looks so cute in his ball pants and uniform shirt. B loves being on a team. I think Mike loves seeing Bennett learn the fundamentals, and is looking forward to him joining his fastball team in 2021!

Missing Post!

The post of Annalise holding her Pirates Gold poster is missing, and from reading the blogspot blog sounds like it may be restored at some point. If not I'll have to redo it, but I'm waiting a few more days until posting again. It took me so long to start blogging again, it would kill me for all of my work to be lost. Hang in there...

The Cake Boss strikes again!

Bennett's Fifth Birthday cake was adorned with Spiderman. The family party guests played his game as well, supplying him with a generous supply of superheros and requisite villians. He also got some marbles, which was quite thrilling, as they previously had been restricted to fun time at G&G J's house. Bennett loves being five, and we are so proud of him. Super B, Captain B America, we love you.

Our Fearless Five Year Old!

I mentioned in an earlier post that we had Bennett's birthday party at Wood Lake nature center. It was a great experience! It was really cold outside, but the kids did get bundled up and go on a short critter hunt with the naturalist, Brandon. He was excellent with kids, and we all learned some interesting things. Since the outdoors portion was cut short due to the weather, Brandon added some live animal action, with our own private petting zoo! Bennett held a snake, we also got to touch a frog and a turtle. Bennett had a nice group including a cousin, two school friends, two siblings, and those crazy kids from the H House.

C is for Cookie!

Our first year of Daisies brought our first Girl Scout Cookie Sale! It was a fun experience overall, and we learned a lot of things for next year. I really liked the online sales tool. It helped us track orders, and had a nice visual of cookie boxes stacking up to illustrate how close each girl was to her goal. We had to quickly adjust A's goal, since we sold cookies much more quickly than we had anticipated. It was really fun working together to get the wagon or sled stocked, to monitor our cookie inventory, and to put together orders that we received via the website into bags or boxes to deliver to customers.

One of the first weekends of the cookie sale, our troop met at an assisted living high rise, to sell cookies to residents on their way out of church (we're not just cute, you know). When we pulled into the parking lot, I read a bumper sticker on a car next to us that read something along the lines of, 'don't tell the kids where we are' and then we got in to a discussion about people who lived in a senior apartment building, and that they were retired. Once Bennett heard about this great thing called Retirement, he wanted in. He said, "I want to retire right now!" Annalise, visibly riled, exclaimed, "but, BENNETT, you're not even in Kindergarten yet!"

How cute is this?

My sister and brother-in-law invited our family and my parents to their family's cabin the last weekend of January. Here's a shot of the crew watching Aristocats on VHS (f.y.i. NOT politically correct!) The men tried a little ice fishing, Mom and I read our Kindles (thanks for loaning me Hunger Games, Danielle), and we got the kids all bundled up once to head out on the ice, but the walking was tough for little legs in big drifts.

Our Lovely First Grader

Girl Scout Daisy meetings have been going very well all school year. We meet at school every two weeks on Monday night for 1.5 hours. We had an Investiture Ceremony where the girls got their pins and recited the Girl Scout Law and the Girl Scout Promise for their families.

We all went to school one day to see Annalise's class performance of Snow White (above, greeting her audience, and curtsy-ing). They learned their lines, practiced, and performed all in one day. Annalise was a fairy (a liberty the playwright took for sake of class size), and enjoyed dressing up.

Annalise is trying out many different sports, and is interested in several. She went to a hockey clinic, where she already seemed ahead of the game since she was skating so well, as well as a fastpitch softball clinic, put on by the Hopkins high school team. She loved learning how to slide, throw the ball, catch, and bat, but did not end up signing up for a team this summer, because she is not interested in participating in a game-type situation. Perpetual practice is her preference!