Happy Birthday Cheeky Monkey!

May 8th, 2010, this ray of sunshine came into our lives to complete our families. It's been a wild and crazy 5 years as we've drug this little man to and fro-all with a smile.
As long as you find the FUN! he's up for any adventure.
As for his Birthday celebrations-his expressions tell it best.

Rice Krispy Paintbrushes for his class. Along with "The Day the Crayon's Quit" and "Red" for his mystery reader selections. I Love Themes.

Rainbow, Butterfly cupcakes...

AWESOME!

AMAZING!

And finish the night with macarons-PERFECT.

Christian-We love you so very much and waited so long for you to join our family. You are a dose of laughter and light and are always looking for FUN. Right now, you want to be a music guy, a music teacher and a dentist (obviously influenced by our fabulous ward friends). We're working on sports and learning as you laugh your way through life. You hate to disappoint us and love to make people laugh. 

I hope you always keep your smile, your humor and your sweet, sweet faith.   

A Whirlwind Weekend

While the main event of the weekend was Christian's Birthday, we certainly had plenty of other events to keep us busy. It was one of those weekend's that events just kept piling up on the calendar and even with Reed in town we were stretched to make it work. Completely exhausting, but such wonderful times watching the boys learn and grow.

We started the "weekend" off early with a trip to the Art Barn with G's class. I overcame my reservations about touching farm animals to show this little chickie to the kiddos. 

I'm glad I took the little guy.

His visit to a farm only instensified G's random obsessions with pigs. He wants a pig, he needs a pig, he's written and illustrated and entire book about "unipiggie". It's kind of strange.

Next, G was thrilled to have Little C and I helping at Field Day.

Unfortunately, we had a neither short, nor brief, intermission Friday night from midnight-5am when Christian was miserable with a double ear infection. 

We even resorted to a night time stroller walk around 3:30. Which, was only ironic because some of my good friends were running Cape Cod Ragnar at THE EXACT SAME TIME.

After a day of highs (winning bball) and lows (losing FB) Matts begged Reed to do Sudoku and the USA Today crossword puzzle with him to unwind. They were successful and so the day ended on a high note.

G got to participate in his first lacrosse tournament. They tore it up the first game, winning 14-3 (G scored 4 goals) and then went on to win their next two games handily, with G scoring a goal in each. He did learn an important lesson about resting and refueling as he partied it up Friday night and was definitely sluggish for his Saturday games.

G had to, once again, face the challenge of not playing on Sunday. Thus far, he's struggled with it (Mom-if we weren't Mormon, could I be playing my game right now?) but, it's been a minor issue as his coaches have been supportive and respectful. But, the stakes were a little higher this time and being undefeated going into Sunday, Gray definitely felt the pull to play. So, it was awesome to sit in Sacrament and hear the youth speakers announce their topic of "keeping the Sabbath Day holy" and proceed to give great talks that emphasized the ways our abilities will increase if we honor the Sabbath. Add to that an incredible musical number by 6 of the big, cool YM in our ward and G leaned over and whispered- "Mom, I think my prayer was just answered." 

Random Miscellaneous-April

Christian's Mother's Tea

Reed had the great pleasure of chaperoning the 5th grade field trip. After 6hrs on a bus, Reed has officially confirmed what "the most annoying sound in the world is"

Spring Break-aka Reed is Awesome

For Spring Break this year, we did a staycation which started out with a bang as I finally got my wisdom tooth (yes, singular) pulled. We the spent a relaxing week at home. Actually, I stayed home and organized our entire house, while Reed and the boys biked, basketballed, and lived it up in Atlanta. 

At the Braves Game with Colin

The big boys

Go Braves!

Reed did it. He actually tired our boys out. All it took was a week of partying and a baseball game with a rain delay that went until Midnight. 

My Dead

As a consolation to missing out on the "late" night festivities Reed gave Little C the Coke gift basket he received for speaking. C is a authentic Atlantan and LOVES Coke!

And to top it all off. They hit up the Hawks game. Monday AFTER Spring break.
Yep, Reed is pretty much "the patron saint of Awesomeness?

Instant replay

As we wrap up Spring season, I feel like our life is on instant replay. 

Practice, game, repeat. Sometimes I moan and groan but there are few things better than watching your child playing on a beautiful day with a gentle breeze. 

Supporting Joey at his Match to make it to state

Joey is our next door neighbor. He happens to be 15, his family's caboose, own a chinchilla and be excellent at tennis. He's also one of the boy's favorite people. Gray pops next door to check on him on a daily basis, he's given Matts the low down on Middle school and he taught Christian the art of drinking through a red vine. Basically, he's a rock star and the boys are some of his biggest fans. 

C's first game.

Watching Christian play lacrosse is one of the cutest things I've seen. It's been a great learning experience. It's been his first run in with older kids who don't think he's super cute-they just think he's little. He's very strong and likes to help the Coach coach. But, when it comes down to it, he just wants to have FUN!

He's ready to go. Except when he isn't. Let's just say,  the playground can be more alluring than the field for Little C.

During another 8am-1pm stretch of watching his brother's games, Christian found a comfy, new seat.

Another new seat. Who knew hammocks can provide hours of entertainment?

G is still obsessed with lacrosse. He's settled back into his position as Middie (although he did get to play goalie today because they were up 9-2 and he had a sweet save). I'd like to say a ball knocked out his tooth, but...It left an awesome gap and I smile whenever I look at him. 

It's been fun to watch G work and play so hard and get quite good this season. He had offers to play on 3 different travel teams this Summer. After thought and prayer (and a little angst) we decided to keep it low key. He's such a wonderful dichotomy of a little boy who has big dreams and a scrappy athlete who is ready to train. Favorite quote of the season- he pulled his jersey (which I have to sneak out of his bag to wash b/c the sweat makes it lucky) out of his bag and declared,

"smells like awesome".

Matts working it at basketball.

Matts has progressed so much this season in basketball. It's his first experience with real ball and he got off to a tough start. But, he's really stepped up. He spends hours in our driveway, cleaning up his shot. And he and Reed have spent hours in our driveway working on boxing out and learning to use his body. He even made player of the week- Mattson did a great job of taking care of the ball. He rebounded on both offense and defense. He moved without the ball on offense and was a menace on defense by getting into the passing lanes. 

As you can imagine, Reed is ridiculously please with Matts' new interest.

Visitors

We've decided that we should always live near a major airport. 

Because of our proximity, all sorts of fun people pop in and out. 

We got to celebrate Grandma Diane's birthday with her (a week late :)

Introducing her to the newest family member.
That's a whole lot of boys.

Uncle Matts got to stop by for the evening and we filled it with some excellent hoops. Little Matts is already planning his next challenge that he can move up in the Newell family rankings.

The Treehouse

Whenever we feel the need to connect to the great outdoors, all we have to do is look out our back windows or walk out our backdoor. Because our main floor is 2nd story from the back, when the trees are in bloom, the view is a wall of greenery. Our backyard is a fantastic mix of grass (for playing) and woods/creek (for exploring).  We've seen a fox, a blue heron, moles, deer and a Mama bear and her cub visited our street last fall. The boys have caught  baby squirrels, salamanders, fish, tadpoles, frogs, a turtle, crawfish and even a snake!

Introducing Jupiter to our swimming hole

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And...4!

The little beauty (banded watersnake). At times like these, it's incredibly handy to have a running buddy who's also a naturalist. She quickly reassured me that this little guy was NOT poisonous.