Summer fun!

Our summer officially started May 1st when we headed off to the beach for our vacation. The rest of our May looked a little something like this.

 Trips to the library...

 Which always brings hours and hours of peace and quiet into our home. :) Those books are miracles!

 My littlest continues to get bigger and bigger and now can easily reach the pedals!

 A new water toy as a birthday gift provided some water fun at home.

 Speaking of water fun, we headed down the road to a spray ground one day. It's a simple and little one, but my boys still enjoy it.

 A special ice cream date with my oldest boy. (If you see Holden in this outfit often, it's because he chooses it when it's clean. I'm good keeping up with the laundry, so he wears it ALOT!)

See Abe peaking through behind my seat? :)

 The ending of another fun soccer season. 

 And the first year that these two brothers were teammates. I love this picture of them chatting it up on the sidelines.

Don't let this picture fool you. He did NOT enjoy sitting through soccer games.

One morning I left Abe with my parents and took Holden and Pax boys to see Home. Such a cute and sweet movie.

The first of several summer snow cones!

And I think that finally wraps up our May!

Catching up.

It's time for me to catch up over here on the blog. Easter was a fun celebration this year.

 Egg hunt with some cousins.

 Their Easter morning goodies from us...beach towels and candy plus flip flops and sunnies for Abe. Funny thing, we had gotten them sand toys to put in the middle of table for our upcoming beach trip. Then we both completely forgot to set it out. Ooops.

My handsome boys on Easter morning.

 Holden does many hours a week of homework. It's like a prison sentence to him. A prison of homework...that does sound miserable. Truthfully it is. Even for me! I made an effort to change it up a couple of weeks ago by working on it outside. Oh my...that might have slowed us WAY down that particular day. It was beautiful out and every noise and moving thing was a huge distraction. In theory it was a good idea.

 Another day, he set up monkey to watch him work. He is completely attached to that monkey and I hope he is forever and ever. :)

Picnic lunches and silly conversations in the front yard.

Pax took a few weeks of swim lessons and showed some improvement. I'm hoping to work with him more on vacation in a few weeks.

 

This sweet boy spends hours a day with his nose in books. I think it's the cutest thing. If he is reading and I ask him to do something he attempts to do the task while continuing his book. Which sometimes results in running into walls or just moving more slowly than a turtle. The boy can't get enough reading time! Amen for books! I wish I had the same amount of time to devote to fun reads.

 We had an outdoor sprinkler on the trampoline day. But the little one just wanted to sit and enjoy a popsicle.

This boy has a real fascination with "piderman". I think it started because he was obsessed with our Spiderman book. 

And just a cute picture from after lunch yesterday. He looks happy here but he threw a few fits throughout lunch with some extended family. And once we were in the car headed home, he was asleep within 3 minutes. Sunday lunches can be hard! I'm really not sure why we attempt them each week.

The boys are 3 weeks into soccer. This is the first year with them playing on the same team. Holden scored 3 goals in both the first game and the second games. Holden scores a lot because he is pretty good. But also because he doesn't like to pass the ball. :) I'm hoping it's just an age thing and he will grow out of it. We played soccer as a family yesterday and tried to work on the passing part. But the boy just doesn't want to give up the ball, even if a team member is wide open! :) Pax scored 1 goal in the very first game and won the medal for the character trait of the week, which was being a good listener.

That is a recent catch up on our spring happenings!

*Soccer Stars*

We finished up our little 8 week soccer season nearly 2 months ago. In fact, the boys will start basketball tomorrow. It should be interesting. For whatever reason I never got around to posting some great photos that my dad had taken of their soccer games. Both Holden and Pax had a great season. It was so much fun to watch and cheer from the sidelines.
Pax had watched Holden play soccer for 2 seasons. So going in to the sport he already had a pretty good idea of how things were played. He had a much better first season than Holden's first season. He was a full year older than when Holden began. But we also think that watching so many games helped prepare him a little.

Pax had great control of the ball and shocked us with his aggressiveness on the field. In life, he's just not a "get after it and go fast" type of guy. Lo and behold, in a soccer game, that is exactly who he is!

He was rarely ever far from the ball. He always went after it.

 water break but still watching the game.

 I love seeing these action shots.

 Pax was accused by the opposing coach of pushing this little girl down and hurting her. Pax is a pretty gentle boy. And look at her throwing elbows. I think she can hold her own. :) A parent from our team turned that volunteer coach in...suggesting he not volunteer again. Ha. He was a bit ridiculous. It is NOT supposed to be all that competitive. They are 3 and 4, people! They normally don't even care who won the game. They just want to know what the snack is afterwards!

 And he scores! After scoring (which he did often in this first season) he always looked at us with a big smile and a thumbs up. He was so proud of himself.

And here are a few pictures from one of Holden's game. Holden has a long legged stride and speed to help him in soccer. He loves to race other kids and play chase because he is typically the fastest. And he is pretty competitive. This was his third season of soccer. By now he knows the sport pretty well, and he loves it. 

 Taking it to the goal.

And he scores.

 

 His humble victory run down the field. Several times during this season, Jeremy said out loud, we really need to work on humility. You can tell after each goal, when everyone is cheering his name, he's half shy about it but mostly loving all the glory. It made us laugh every time.

I am not a competitive person. I don't play sports. I don't enjoy watching many sports. I was cheerleader for 8 years. I rarely watched the football game...didn't know if we should be doing an offensive or defensive cheer most of the time. That's right...don't nominate me to be head cheerleader. I would have made us look a fool! But watching my own little boys participate in sports and activities that they love...now that's a different story. Being their personal cheerleader brings more joy than those 8 years ever knew. Soccer was fun. And now we are all looking forward to basketball!

My little soccer stars!

We are two weeks in to another sports season. This season, both Holden and Pax are playing soccer. Last season, Pax chose baseball (t-ball actually). He liked it ok. We did not. It was so stinkin' boring. It was a group of clueless 3/4 year old boys and girls. Dads/moms/guardians were on the field with the child. It was just chaotic. It made it worse that the coach did not want to be the coach, showing up as the game was starting most weeks. Nothing was learned. It was something we could do in our own backyard and it would have been better. So I will admit we steered him away from t-ball this season. When he chose it last time, it definitely sounded like it would fit his laid back, slow moving 4-year old personality. But because of his young age and the set up, we called it quits on t-ball once the 8 week season was over. And we strongly encouraged soccer this season. We knew that it might not be his match, but we thought it was worth a shot. Since Pax had sat through two seasons of Holden playing soccer, he jumped on the soccer train easily.
And by now, Holden is a soccer pro. As I mentioned, this is his third season to play. Jeremy has mentioned flag football and basketball to Holden. We think it would be fun to introduce him to some other sports, but his heart is sold out for soccer right now. The boy just loves to run so we know he needs an active sport where he can run it out. This season he is on a 5/6 year old team and he is about a head taller than everyone on his team (and most opposing teams). He'll be 6 in a month!

We love I-9 and that it doesn't cut into our family time during the week. The teams practice for 45 minutes before game time. So with two boys playing this season, we basically commit our Saturday mornings to soccer for 8 weeks and then we are done. No weekday evening practices involved. This is the perfect way to do it for our family.
So this past Saturday was the second game this season. The first week, I didn't really get to see Pax's game. Holden and Pax's practices and games tend to overlap, so Jeremy and I have to divide and conquer. So we are taking turns getting to see each boy. So this past week, I got to watch Pax play in a game. He floored me. My laid back, slow moving boy was not the same boy on the soccer field. He was a little speedy runner and went after that ball. His mind was in the game and his eyes were on the soccer ball (most of the time). And he was really really good! He even scored a goal! I was so so proud! Soccer is not going to be his big brother's sport and he let us know that last week. I was so proud to see the way he played and that he enjoyed the game so much. Each week a child receives a medal. Pax earned the medal last week. He was beaming! He looked my direction to make sure to make sure I was watching as soon as the coach slipped it around his neck.

And what do you know, Holden also had a great game. He scored the first goal for his team and then scored for the opposing team as well. This happens often with Holden. :) The boy is very fast so he is naturally first to the ball most of the time. So he handles the ball often for his team. We've begun to talk about passing, but there is typically no teammates ahead of him to pass too. :) He just gets better and better every season. Holden also was rewarded the medal on his team last week, which was really neat. They both played great games and were the highlights of the team on the same week.

And both boys look forward to their Saturday practices and games each week. Not to mention that it's a fun time for us to watch them play. And this little sign has been in our front yard all week for the boys. :)