Happy Mother's Day!

Hope all you moms out there are having an extra nice day today!

I felt very lucky this morning to get breakfast in bed - banana pancakes, strawberries, coffee and juice - and a singing card, lovingly selected by Susanna.

We have sort of a busy day planned, but it should be a good one. We might go to a local arts fest, and then we are heading to Grapevine (nice historic-type town) to meet an old neighbor from Brownstown.

Happy Mother's Day!

Ben at bat

Springtime

Spring time is in full force in Texas. Actually, to me, it feels pretty much like summer, but I know I need to enjoy these "mildly warm" days while they last.

On the first day of spring we awoke to freshly fallen snow. Enough to go out and play in. That is long gone now, of course.

The kids are well into their sports seasons - soccer for Susanna and baseball for Ben. We have a few more weeks, and all is going well. Susanna's team is finally starting to score in their games, and has improved their defense immensely. Its so much more fun to watch when the games are close! For teeball, they still don't keep score, which is lucky for all the other teams. Coach Brad is having another great season and loves being in charge of the action.

We are starting the last month of school, and though we're all ready for a break, I know the 11-week summer will be long. We have some trips scheduled, as well as a couple of camps, so we should be busy enough. Its been a few years since we've had a proper summer break, and I think it might be nice not having much to do. And by August, we'll be ready to start a new school year at a brand new school, the 16th elementary school in our city. And I'm already signed up to be on the PTA, so it will be new and exciting for all of us!

Party time

Last Friday we had Ben's 5th birthday party at The Little Gym. He goes there for karate class so it was fun to have his party in a familiar place with one of his teachers. We had 14 five-year-old boys, plus two girls, and a good time was had by all!

I think this was the best part - riding the mat down those rolly things.
Hot dogs for dinner and then cake! (Actually frosting, with just a bit of cake.)

Playing catch up

I think its been a while since I've posted anything, so maybe I'll get back to it. I realized that I can change the post date of my posts. Because of my need for things like this to be in order, I plan to back date a few of my new posts. So please scroll down to read all about our exciting lives!!

5

Today Ben is 5! I can't believe it - how did he get so big?

He had a great day today. His Grandpa Kent is here visiting from Pennsylvania, so that helped make the day special. He went to school and had ice cream with his friends. He came home and played hockey with new hockey sticks from his buddies across the street. Then he had his favorite dinner and an ice cream sandwich cake.

His party is on Friday night and he cannot wait.

Happy Birthday Ben!

Gem Hunt

On the way home from Little Rock, we took a detour and stopped at an Arkansas state park, Crater of Diamonds State Park. This is the only place in the world where the public can search for diamonds.

The search area is a big field of dirt. You can bring your own equipment, like the professional diamond diggers we saw getting out of their trucks, or you can rent some there. Having no clue what we were doing, we rented the basic set, and bought a little spade and rake.

When we decided to do make this stop, I think we were all envisioning finding lots of lovely gems quickly and easily in some nice dirt. Silly us. While people do find diamonds (according to the board, 2 were found the day prior to our visit), its relatively rare and take a lot of work and patience (and maybe a splash of luck.)

We picked a spot and started scooping up some dirt. Brad used the boxes to sort through it, then threw the searched dirt into a bucket, to avoid searching it again.

In the end, we left with a little bag full of nice looking rocks and chips of something or other. I think it will be a while before we go back, but at least we can say we've been there!