Soccer and Holidays

This awesome kid rocked the soccer last spring.  Something about his hair made him look the part.  I can just see him running around in a soccer jersey on television, can't you?  He looked pretty awesome out there.

Especially when he was measuring distant things with the space inbetween his fingers. A new favorite hobby.

Also, I usually don't pay much attention to the coaches, but this one was just so darn handsome that I couldn't keep my eyes off of him.

Doesn't he look all coach-y?

Guys!  Save the flower and nose picking until after the game!

The Scorchers.  They lost almost all of their games.  But they sure had fun.

Also, Easter happened again this year.

Teek thought he had landed in a dream.  CANDY?!

Every time I looked at Miles, he was either stuffing candy into his mouth, or posing like this for me.

Something about looking through the basket handle was incredibly addicting.

What a great bunch of kids.  They make this mama heart so happy.

Speaking of my mama heart, my favorite part of Mother's Day?  This paper that came home from school:

The funniest thing about it is that, if you look really closely, you can see that he actually wrote 39 in the slot next to pounds first.  And then took the time to erase it to make a better prediction.

I'll miss these years.

Parents have birthdays too, ya know

Sometimes I get so caught up in thinking about and writing about and taking pictures of and celebrating my kids that I forget that Brian and I exist, too.  And that we need a little celebrating every once in a while.  Even though our own birthday celebrations smell largely like a kids' celebration, what with a party tablecloth and a tacky banner displayed in the background and all, we both find little ways to grow it up a bit.  This year, for Brian's birthday, it was in the chocolate.  Well, okay... not really real chocolate, but chocolate that he loves and adores just the same.  For the kids, you see, I would have made the cake out of the much less expensive skittles, hard candy, and gum, with a few pixie sticks for flare.

But for Brian?  Chocolate.

This man deserves a gold sticker star for the way he carried us through the last year.  The whole story will be explored in its own post, but the important thing is that he has been so wonderful as this Adjusting To The Desert event kinda knocked me down.  So I was happy to celebrate him for an entire day.  We did the whole birthday thing, you know?  Presents, (candy-bar) cake, a popular song that has a whopping total of five different words... you know the drill.

And then we finished out the evening with a wild and awesome performance of The Newsies with the two oldest kids.  

The next week, it was my turn to celebrate my time of birth.  I took a nice, long walk in the morning with my favorite podcasts and my favorite walking companion.

Then we had fruit cake with some more of my favorite people.

That night, Brian showed me up and took me to a real grown up dinner in a stunning restaurant that sits at the top of one of the hotels downtown.  Looking out the windows, you could see all the impressive lights of Vegas... and the food.  Oh.  The food.  I don't think I've ever had food so flavorful and delicious.  All of it.  No chicken nuggets....  No cheap plastic toys...

It was fantastic.

But the best part about it was the company.  Don't be jealous, but I got to stare at that handsome face for the whole night.  Turns out growing up is a pretty sweet deal after all.

Party at the Pad

Last spring we traveled a lot.  And we had a lot of visitors come to play.  But in between all those festivities we also had a bunch of Fun Around the House moments.

*The kids got really into making forts out in the driveway.  They would pull all sorts of things from the garage and the closets in the house to construct their abodes and were always surprised when the end of the day came and I asked for it all be put away. It's just that, it didn't seem like a good idea to leave it all out in the front yard overnight, ya know?

One day I looked out the window and the whole scene looked like it belonged in a story book.

Discarded bikes, a makeshift fort, a captivating book, guitar music coming from the grass underneath the tree, and a small red headed boy playing with rocks in his own little world.

It was McKenzie's idea of a fabulous afternoon.

And Carson's.  Magical.

*Another fun thing about spring was toting Miles's friends around to and from homes and school and parks.  Miles had some great friends in our last area and we dearly miss being so close to them.

Something about rolling around hills of grass together brings a strong bond, you see.

*When we were considering moving out to this little town, we packed the kids in the car one afternoon and decided to drive around to see what there was to see. We wore swimming suits, of course, because we're in the hot desert and knew that if we wanted to be outside, we'd have to be in the water.

The splash pad did not disappoint.

*McKenzie and I look forward to the Father and Sons campout every year.

Even though we always seem to have an extra tag along.  This time it was this adorable kid. Next year, I bet he'll be old enough to go along with the other boys, but this year we had fun with him for a couple of hours before putting him to an early bed.

We celebrated with TV dinners (I must be getting older because they used to just make things fun... but this time they were quite gross), Ben and Jerry's (never gross), and Paddington (cute).

I sure love this girl.

*Perhaps one of the most fun nights in our own home came along with the NCAA Championship game.

The Larson's came to party with us and, I don't know how it happened, but somehow our two families have grown so much that we ordered all of Dominoes to feed us.

Oh how we cheered for our Duke team!  Brian found himself pacing back and forth behind the couches, Teek found himself yelling "Go Doot!" over and over and over and over, and Becky found herself on her hands and knees, scrubbing every inch of my kitchen floor with wet paper towels.

"Becky, what are you doing?!"
"Managing my stress."

Thankfully Becky and I are close enough friends that I just laughed at her, took her picture and went back to sitting on the couch to watch the game.  I told her she could come over any time she needed to manage her stress.

Also, I wish I managed stress that way instead of eating chocolate macadamia clusters.

Visitors Footfalls

The ornaments of your home 

are the people 

who smile upon entering 

time and time again. 

~Maralee McKee 

One of the very best things about living in Vegas is that people come here.  A lot.  It's a great stopping point for people traveling from here to there and from there to here, and it's also a pretty good destination point in and of itself.  Plus, it's relatively central to all sorts of things... and so people come.  And when they come we try to bribe them into staying with us.  We love visitors, and it turns out we landed in a pretty great place to feed that love.  

*Mom and Dad
First up this spring were my parents.  We always love to have them come because they are super laid back and happy to do whatever.  This time, we took them to the marina to feed the gross fish.  

But mostly we just sat to chat.  Which is exactly what my soul needs sometimes.

*The Birdno Family

Next, the Birdnos came from Arizona.  We took them to hike over the bridge that overlooks Hoover Dam.

Cute little feet.

It was a good thing that no one was afraid of heights - because there were some serious heights.

The lizard below is quite inspiring.  I think I'm going to go buy a whole new wardrobe in Couch Color so that I can sit really still on my couch when the kids are swarming around asking for things.

Camouflage, you see.

After hiking around in the awful hot sun and super red dust, we stopped by the 'beach' to cool off.  The beach in this sentence means the jagged, rocky incline that leads down into the lake that will cut your feet if you don't wear proper foot attire.  But the kids didn't care that they didn't have water shoes. They didn't even care that they didn't have swimming suits. We only had one tiny little blip in the fun when Teek decided he wanted to try swimming by himself.  Thankfully Merrill was close enough to save him.  Unthankfully, Merrill was quite wet after his heroic act.  Thanks, Merrill.

We finished off the Birdno visit by filling out brackets.  Yes, we are talking March here.  I realize that we are now in September and closer to next years March Madness than we are to last years.  But, moving, remember?

*Michelle and Jake
Boy these two are fun to hang out with!  We took a grown-ups night out on the town and saw all sorts of odd and wonderful things.  We also saw some odd and not wonderful things (we are in Vegas, after all), but we won't give those any more attention.

The M&M store is highly entertaining.  And, interestingly, it's even more entertaining when there are no children around. The children just don't realize that $8 plus any future children you have is too much to pay for one bag of M&M's.  They just want and want and want... but the grown-ups?  We just played.

Spinning, swirling vortexes (vortices?) of water and light?  I'm in love.  And I want one. In my closet. And purse.

Notice the bottom right picture in the above collage - Brian really tried hard to be a part of our night, but March Maddness was going on, you see.  And if Brian were to make a priority list of Most Important Things, March Maddness would be etched into the top spot with his own blood.

But Michelle, Jake and I had fun!

During the light hours of one of our days, we took the kids down to the strip (a risky move that involved an impromptu discussion of Why People Would Even Want to Look at Pornography and of the importance of keeping your eyes straight ahead. Don't look down sweetheart.  Oh!  Don't look up too high, either! But really.  Really don't look down).

This next picture just makes me laugh.  

In a far more family friendly outing, we drove out to the red rocks and hiked around one evening.

Such interesting landscape.

And then we went to the park where McKenzie showed off her impressive monkey skills.

*Tessems and Burtons and Walshes

These two family friends pictured above did not come together (nor did they even come in the same month), but they all make a very happy impression in my life.  Everyone like me (who tends to take things a little too seriously), needs to have a handful of friends like this who you can count on to simply make. you. laugh. I love these people and was so happy that they stopped by on their way from their comings to their goings to say hello for a few hours.

Not pictured is a fun family called the Walsh family.  Spencer was one of Brian's old high school buddies and I met and became friends with him in college.  We hadn't seen Spencer for probably a decade, so it was awesome to have him come stay with us for a night on his way back to Utah from California with his super cute wife and awesome kids.  

*My Family

My family is highly impromptu when it comes to traveling.  Sometimes it drives me crazy since I get rather stressed and nervous if I have to travel without a fair bit of warning myself (love you guys!), but this time it was awesome because they all came to me! (Which I could do impromptu any day of the year.)  The weekend before my brother flew in for a visit, the whole family decided that they'd like to come, too.  We were sad that Amber and Caleb couldn't get work covered on such short notice, but it was fantastic to have the rest of the family there.

We filled some of our time with the Blue Man Group and laughed until our insides burst.

We also ate at the shake shack.  Twice.  In one evening. It's true.

One day, we went to the cactus gardens where we saw tons of different kinds of cacti - and instead of showing you any of them, I'm going to show you a picture of McKenzie resting in the patched shade instead. I only had my phone with me, you see, and it was mid-day, so none of the pictures were all that impressive, anyway.  The heat makes us all rather prickly at times, so it works.

Though, I did love this one.

My heart felt rather heavy this past year, missing green things and drying up like a prune and all.  But thank goodness for the happy people who have come into my home to make me smile and to cheer my heart.

Visitor's footfalls are like medicine; they heal the sick. ~African Proverb