A Happy Weekend



We had a great weekend- lots of fun things going on.  I managed to do a better job than normal of catching at least a few of them on the camera!  And also decided to START the day with a blog post instead of waiting until the end of the day, since that always seems to roll around long before I've reached the end of the list of things that need to be done.  We'll see if I can get a streak rolling here under this new program.

 

Saturday morning we headed to Joshua's 6th Upward basketball game of the 8 game season.  Most of our Saturdays have been spent wrangling children, buying hot dogs and swedish fish at the concession stand and finding ways to pass the hour with Mara without her running off, disturbing the rest of the spectators, or having a fit.  This particular week was a special one, because Grandma, Aunt Sheri and Jai, and Gage came to watch Joshua play.  So with a few extra hands to occupy the girls, I was able to snap a few pictures.  Joshua has been having such a great time playing this year, and he really has made a lot of improvements.  He is dribbling much better, taking smarter shots and making a few baskets each week.  It's so much fun to watch him enjoy himself so much.  On most weeks, I also get a little bit of social time with Emily and their girls as well, so that's never a bad thing.

 

 

Saturday evening, Jason and I went to the annual banquet for the fire department where Jason has been volunteering for the past 8 months or so, and had a nice time.  I was so proud of him when he was named the Rookie of the Year for the department!  He's donated a lot of time for training and classes he has needed to take, as well as for the few calls there have been in recent months, so I was glad to see him be recognized for the time he has volunteered.  And it was really nice for me to get to meet some of the guys that he has been talking about working with.

We muddled through the whole "spring forward" disaster on Saturday night, and all of us woke up grouchy and tired on Sunday morning.  I opted to let the bad attitudes resolve themselves at home rather than in front of an audience at Sunday School, and we went just for church this week.  I think that proved the right choice.  All three kids woke up on the wrong side of the bed for sure.  I'm convinced that the people responsible for Daylight Savings Time do not have small children.

We pushed through our Sunday afternoon with a special visit from my parents.  The kids were thrilled to have Nana and Pap come to see them.  Mara was especially outgoing with them- she always seems to be more so in our house rather than at theirs, but her very quickly growing vocabulary has given her a lot more confidence to say what she wants to say.  I honestly don't think she stopped jabbering the whole time they were there.  She's starting to now string two or three sentences together-- they're choppy, but if you pay close attention you can totally get what she's saying.  I think Mom and Dad got a kick out of her.  She certainly isn't lacking in the personality department, that's for sure.

After Mom and Dad left, we all decided that we were going to celebrate spring, whether it is here or not.  When the temperature hit 38 on Saturday afternoon, I said to Jason that I thought we should bag the plan I had for dinner on Sunday night and get some steaks to grill.  So I made a trip to Byerly's and we had a delicious steak dinner last night with some homemade apple crisp.  Oh how it made me ready for warm nights of grilling and being outside.  The kids spent the afternoon running around in the driveway playing basketball and writing with sidewalk chalk.  I think the fresh air did them all a lot of good.  But Mara quickly crashed when we came back inside.  I wouldn't normally encourage a nap at 4:00 in the afternoon, but she couldn't help herself and slept from then until it was time for dinner.  Because she was all wacked out by Daylight Savings Time, she didn't have any trouble falling asleep at bedtime (nor did I as I rocked MYSELF to sleep from about 9:00-11:00 in her room last night).

In other news, I was thrilled in the past few weeks to have reached my 40 pound weight loss goal.  When I really started working on this in January 2013, my goal was to lost 40 by the time we left for Disney World LAST MAY.  Needless to say, it's been a bit more of a project than that.  But about two weeks ago, I finally saw that goal to completion and can start to focus on getting to the final goal I have-- only about 19 pounds to go.  I was thrilled on Saturday morning to finally fit into a pair of jeans that I haven't been able to get into since before I got pregnant with Joshua.  This highlights a few things--- 1. Wow, I haven't cleaned out my drawers in a long time!  and 2. I'm a hopeful person.  I KNEW I'd get back there eventually!  It felt great to comfortably wear those jeans.  Everyone else probably thought I was just way out of style in my 2006 jeans, but it was a moment of pride for me.  Sadly that steak dinner and apple crisp probably set me back a bit, but life goes on.  And since I don't weigh in until Friday morning again, hopefully I'll be able to undo any damage by then!

And just for fun, here are my two favorite girls from this morning before I took Lauren to school.  So sweet- both of them.