Gold Medals

Last weekend our family was in Charlotte at an ERLTC convention. LTC stands for Leadership Training for Christ. We are given a theme, book from the bible and a verse. We then interpret it and come up with drama skits, speeches, songs, puppets, art work and other things. The kids work hard then at convention show all their effort. I lead an elementary drama group to gold! It was our first gold. I have had drama for three years. The first year they gold bronze, then silver and this year gold. They and I have improved each year. We write our own skits by interpreting the scripture and theme given to us. This years theme was More Than Conquerors. Here is My drama kids performing!

 

Next the middle and high school drama group which Aspen was a part of!

                                                 

Finally our chorus group.

 

All three performances earned gold! I am so proud of our youth. They participated in other events such as bible bowl, art, speech. bible reading and song leading. The children earned gold and silver. Way to go guys!

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

We went to a baseball game with Matthew's cub scouts last night. Our local minor league team is the Myrtle Beach Pelicans.

  

We were lucky with seats right behind the home plate. The team we played against was the Fredrick Keys. 

The wind up and the pitch!

 

The weather was perfect! I love this time of the year!

The best part was seeing Matthew goofing off with his friends. That's one of my favorite part about baseball games. They are relaxed and you can talk to each other while watching the game. Even though it was Matthew's scout night we all went as a family.

She is always ready for a picture:)

For once a picture of mom and dad! We are usually behind the camera!

Yeah the Pelican's won!!! We were in the lead most of the game then it got close! Even though we enjoyed the game we did not want to see it go into extra innings! After the game Aspen and I went home and Shane and Matthew spent the night. The scouts got to camp out on the baseball field! Matthew loved this! They watched the Sand Lot on the big screen with popcorn and soda then settled in for the night. Here is the badge from the camp out.

Shane doesn't take as many pictures as me. He didn't even want the camera. I should have MADE him! So no pictures of the actual camp out.

If you are ever in the Myrtle beach area during baseball season I suggest a Pelicans baseball game. If you check out their site there are many fun evenings coming up this summer!

Myrtle beach Pelicans

A Royal Day

     I don't have pictures because for most of the day my camera was in the couch cushion. I searched high and low for it and didn't find it. Then this afternoon it magically appeared! I think that had something to do with the little ones in the house. LOL
     The girls brought their dress up clothes and were princesses:) Matthew couldn't resist and put one on for about 2 seconds. Then decided it was stupid. We also watched bits and pieces of the wedding. Of course during down time we watched Cinderella! We had lunch on fancy plates and milk in glass cups! The kids were most excited about that. I made rice crispy treats and chocolate covered strawberries for our royal snack picnic. We "talked fancy" and said everything was lovely. Rebecca the 4 year old loved it the most. She would say, "Mrs. Alissa this apple juice is lovely." lol

     Tonight was parents night out. This is when at church once a month we have free babysitting for 3 hours. We take turns as couples babysitting at church. Most years we have enough families and we only have to babysit once a year. Not to shabby! Our plans were to go to River City Cafe. A burger place then walk on the Inlet. This WAS the plan till a very excited Aspen called. She was asked to play in the varsity game!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She is the JV goalie and the Varsity goalie couldn't play tonight's game. She was so excited!! We couldn't miss her big debut on varsity. The varsity girls are good! The are currently 6th in the whole state of SC. So Aspen touched the ball twice the whole game. The girls won 10-0. The ball didn't make it's way back to Aspen many times. She still had fun!

She had very little action.

I got action shots while she was practicing.

 

She had fun and seeing her game was much better than a date night. Matthew still went to parent's night out so he could play with his friends. So we got some bleacher time:)

    

Walking to Disney

Yesterday I posted about exercising and walking the same amount of miles as going to Disney as a goal. I am a visual person so I made a fun little chart to help keep track of my mileage.

I used Velcro to attach the numbers. This way I could easily change them out. When we got home from Cub Scouts I walked and already changed my numbers!

I walked 2 miles tonight. Only A LOT more to go!

While we were gone Aspen worked on a school project. They are having a recyclable fashion show tomorrow! Here is the dress she designed using only recycled material. 

She used her dad's accounting homework for the main part! She thought it was funny.

And last but not least here is Shane giving Matthew his awards he earned last month. Shane loves doing this with Matthew. He is Matthew's den leader. He was also Aspen's soccer coach for many years. I have been blessed with an awesome husband who is very dedicated to his children. 

Lucky Us

     This morning around 3 Matthew crawled into bed with us. Instead of getting up and putting him back in bed I let him join us. BUT he had to tell me what was the habitat made for! He said, "My toy frog from Alligator Adventure."
     I told him I thought he brought a pet in from outside. He then asked, "What would I do that for?"
     So yeah no critters in my house!

     I saw a number on the scale today I haven't seen in years! I am still slowly losing weight one pound at a time. I am a goal oriented person. I like to make lists and mini goals. they help keep me motivated. Kind of like one day at a time. I like one goal at a time:) I am making a poster with the miles from my house to Disney World. Then once I walk that many miles I will plan our next trip there. I also will do the same for our trip to Hawaii. From my front door to Disney it is 490 miles. So not to bad! I can walk 490 miles. Of course one mile at a time. Before you know it....... Now from my door to Honolulu, it will take a few years! It is 4,805 miles. I enjoy walking after dinner. My neighborhood is one mile. The 2 neighborhoods in front of ours is also one mile each. So it can be done! I will keep you posted on how I am doing! I am making a chart with velcro dots. With each mile I walk I will change the numbers. Hmmm, maybe a chalk board would be easier. LOL

Mom to a Boy

     So all those cuties little sayings about boys made of puppy dog tails and snail...... They describe my son! Perfectly! So far this spring I have been greeted with, frogs, turtles, green anole lizards and caterpillars. Oh, a dead snake too. When he was one and in the everything in the mouth stage he caught and tried to eat a beetle! So he started at a young age. He has even jumped off a dock to try to catch a fish to make fish sticks when he was four!
      I don't get grossed out any more over live and dead creatures being brought to me. I can handle the skeletons and snake skins that are found and showed to me. I have even learned to appreciate these things and not just act like it is cool. I try to nurture this curiosity. I read someplace about a veterinarian whose parents let him keep things as pets. What I can't handle is the unknown.

      This was discovered in his room when he was carried to his room. He fell asleep early in the living room tonight. It looks like he made a habitat for a new "pet" in his room. He emptied a toy shelf to do this. I don't know how he snuck this by me. Usually he is excited about what he caught. I won't know until tomorrow what is roaming around. He is sleeping so soundly I couldn't wake him.

Blue and White Game

     It's that time of the year again..... soccer season! At the end of January beginning of February there is a week of soccer tryouts. At the end of the week the girls have the traditional blue and white game. Half the team wears home jerseys and the other half wears away jerseys. The girls are mixed varsity and junior varsity. So there are both on each team. It is not varsity versus junior varsity.
     The girls find out if they made the team AFTER they play the game. I wish they knew before. It is heartbreaking to see them play then some of them not make the team. Well Aspen......made the JV team!!! She was so excited! When we talked about her trying out I told her to try her best. She had a friend last year that didn't make the team yet was on the year before. I think seeing that made her try her best.
     As we came home from church I couldn't help but smile when I saw the muddy stinky soccer cleats on my porch. I know I will get aggravated with them taking permanent residence. But tonight it made me smile:)

Family Theme Night

     Last year before our Disney trip in June I made an one hundred day count down. I cut out 100 little Mickey heads I copied from paint chip samples from Home Depot. On the count down I had interesting Disney World facts, Disney movie facts and theme nights planned for every other week. Each day we took down a Mickey head and read the fact or did the activity. Last week Shane asked me why didn't we do theme nights anymore. I told him I did it to help get us excited about Disney (like we needed help!). He said he wanted to do them again! So I told him to pick out the movie so I could plan. He let Matthew choose and our movie was Princess and The Frog!

     So I went to the DIS BOARDS for ideas! I missed being on the Disney planning forums. For dinner we had Zataran's Jambalaya, corn and corn bread. It was good! Zataran's also has on their Facebook page fun jazz music to listen to!



We had swamp juice with dinner!

      With Mardi Gras around the corner I was able to find decorations at the Dollar Tree!

The table cloth was more purplish. Psst Shane, see I need a new camera:)

     We only did one craft. I bought a craft for the kids to work on together. I thought it would take too long for each to do their own. I wasn't expecting Aspen to get made about the finished frog not looking like the box!

     We played a couple games. We all had party favors and we tried to "catch" Matthew's toy bugs with our frog tongues. We then played firefly hide and seek. We had glow sticks and one person hid. All the lights were out and we had to use our glow sticks as our lights. It was fun! Matthew was a little scared of the dark so him and I were one person.


Dessert: Mud pie



Dessert: Frog Sherbet

          Then it was movie time. We had fun! I liked doing this again. I think we may have to make it a part of our routine. Maybe do it once a month.

Picture Quality

Please do not mind the quality of the pictures. A certain six year old boy broke my camera making videos. So I have to use my cell phone till his Daddy replaces it. I'm thinking it will be a birthday present in a week and a half!

Our Chinese New Year Celebration

     Since I had off on Thursday and Matthew was at school we celebrated Chinese New Year on Friday. Friday was Matthew's home day. So once he finished his school work we learned about Chinese New Year.
     We had to go get food so we went to Costco and bought pot stickers. I found a recipe to make some homemade but it was quicker to get the ones from the store. We then went to a little Asian store here at the beach. The owners are really nice. I wanted the kids to see foods and other items they don't see at the grocery store. They were most impressed with the fish in the refrigerator. Also they liked the place settings and pretty chopsticks. Rebecca wasn't impressed with the dried shrimp! LOL It was fun seeing them ooh and aah over things in the store.



This store is in Socastee.




Our goodies from the store! Yes all dessert!

     

We used our fun animal chopsticks! Look! I even had rabbit ones!

      For lunch I served fried rice (came from the Japanese fast food restaurant), pot stickers, pineapple cake ( the package said from Taiwan), and fortune cookies (I don't think they originated in China.). So our lunch wasn't very authentic but the children enjoyed it!



Rylie, Matthew and Rebecca trying to eat with chopsticks!

     We had fun learning how to count to 10 in Chinese and learning the meaning of different symbols of Chinese New Year. We learned what animal we were and this year is the year of the rabbit. We also made crafts and watched on YouTube parades in different cities.


One of our crafts.



Our limited decorations. They also colored a flag of China. The center red thing is my cut out of a rabbit.



After watching videos they did their own dragon dance! I did not lead them in this activity. Matthew came up with this one!

      After we watch the Disney movie Mulan. It was a fun day! The kids enjoyed learning a little about China and Chinese New Year. I would love to one year visit a city with a parade. All the colors, music and movement just look so fun!