Small Town World Champions!

Photo credit: Mike Barrett of The Times Herald

Our little town is celebrating BIG tonight as our Girls Little League Team just won the World Series! These same girls, who have been playing softball together for half of their lives, came in 3rd in the World Series in 2009 and now, after a 10-0 win over Tampa, FL, are #1 in the WORLD! I'm sure the whole town will be celebrating such a big win for quite some time.

CONGRATULATIONS CROS-LEX PIONEERS!!

Wordless Wednesday: First Egg!

I found the first egg from the kids' Easter chicks this morning...obviously the chix have grown! :-) Blake is excited about it and wants to keep it :-)

Waterball Tournament Fun 2011

Rich's fire department decided to host a Waterball tournament during our town's annual festival this year. Although they didn't win, they had a lot of fun!

Rich's team is on the left and they're just starting their 2nd match.

This is a point where Rich's department was doing really well. (They are on the right now and have the ball over on the opposite team's side, which earns them points.)

The kids and I hung out in the bay quite a bit during the tournament, where it was a little cooler. Plus it was fun playing on the trucks. Here they are on the department's antique. :-)

After the tournament was over, an officer (the coach during the games), who used to play a lot of waterball in his time (20-25 years ago), asked the best guy of the winning team to play against him!! He did well, but couldn't beat the guy! :-)

Before that one-on-one match started, one firefighter thought it might be a good idea to get out the defibrillator....just in case! ;-)

They then turned down the pressure and let the kids play!

They're starting to get wet...

...okay, now they're drenched.

Blake had dropped out, but was all smiles...

...and even got up the courage to go back out with another firefighter.

Of course all that water being sprayed ends up pooling somewhere...and the kiddos found it!

Blake didn't think it was necessary to take his boots off, which ended up FULL of water.

It was really a fun day! We then spent the afternoon/evening visiting with Rich's brother who returned home that morning (from Afghanistan) and later that evening was the festival fireworks. We had the best view from Rich's aunt's place....right underneath them! Couldn't have been a much better day! :-)

Blueberry Picking 2011

My mom and I had planned to take the kids blueberry picking and had a morning that would work all figured out. When we left home, it was sunny, yet cool, and it felt like it was going to be perfect....until we were a couple miles from the berry farm and the dark clouds rolled in. It rained on and off for a while. We had other things to do planned, so we did those first and ended with blueberry picking. Thankfully we only got rained on a little bit while picking and the rest of the time we had fun....especially the kids!

Blake enjoying the ride out to the berries.

Morgan with her Oma. Look at ALL the blueberry bushes behind them...and the dark cloud!

Blake wasn't off the wagon for 5 seconds before going to work picking every berry in sight...including the green ones and reddish ones. (When I told him to only pick the blue ones, it wasn't as exciting anymore...lol!)

Morgan did an awesome job! She picked quite a few and kept running back to me to show me her bucket.

Eventually they got tired of it and we headed back to pay for what we picked. The kids and I ended up with 4 lbs of blueberries in probably 45 minutes of picking.

Then we had to get some pictures in the cutouts.

Morgan and Blake make some cute blueberries, don't they!?

Now I have some work freezing some berries and maybe doing some baking...Blueberry Buckle (aka: Blueberry Boy Bait) is sounding really yummy! ;-)

Home

After being deployed to Afghanistan for 8 months, my brother-in-law is HOME! It's so good to have him here after praying for his safety each day. YAY! :-)

I wanted to share this picture of him, taken by photojournalist, David Goldman. A friend of the family found it on The Sacramento Bee's Photoblog "The Frame". (Click on the picture to see it better.)"U.S Marine Cpl. Derek Newton, 21, of Jeddo Mich., with Delta Company 1st Tank Battalion out of Twentynine Palms, Calif., waits to board a helicopter home as he wraps up his deployment Sunday, July 17, 2011 at Combat Out Post Shir Ghazay in Helmand province, Afghanistan. AP / David Goldman"

Stop by the link above to see some more amazing pictures of the lives of our soldiers in Afghanistan.

Random Summer Pics-2011

Our Goofy Animals

Bear sun bathing.

Busch guarding the kids' castle...kinda like a dragon (and about as mean as one too! LOL!)
Leinie a little pink after rolling in the kids' sidewalk chalk.
"The Boys" shortly after getting out on me while Rich was at work and going for a walk down the road to visit the brown cows (Jerseys). They are back home here and eating from their new feeder for the first time. (Little things excite us and we take pictures-LOL!)

My 'Cool' Kids

Blake modeling his Eli's Lid despite the warmth....and Morgan just modeling-LOL!

Rich as a big kid staying cool playing Waterball with his fire department.

More water play to stay cool in the sprinklers...

...down the Slip 'n Slide...

...and at the Splash Pad. They've also had a lot of play in kiddie pools and a couple big pools, including a salt water pool! (Tried getting a picture of the kids in the salt water pool, but realized I left the camera's card in the printer! Bummer!)

The Uninvited Guests

These little ones' parents decided to build a nest on top of the weather station (the white thing) on our front porch. The weather station hasn't worked since.

They're growing up though.

And leaving the nest. When they stop coming back to the nest at night we'll have our weather station back....and we'll kinda miss watching them too :-)

Our $20 Garage Sale Find

This corner cabinet is built really well, fits perfectly where our little TV stand was and has a lot more storage for our little house. We were really excited to find it!

Some Creative Play

I saw Blake had put this together today. It's his Daddy laying in the grass under the tree....exactly what Rich likes to do after working hard outside or in the barn! (Morgan helped a little too by putting up the tree.)