Take me out to the ball game

Proof that you are never too old for balloon animals

Our friends have their cute little 5 year old boys on a baseball team. They won a chance to go out to the 'big boy" baseball game and be out on the field for the national anthem. The rest of us jumped at the chance to go to the game and hang out.
It was Memorial Day, so we decided to BBQ first and make a fun day of it. Unfortunately, mother nature decided we had our day planned out too well. She decided to DUMP rain and cold temps on us. Our BBQ ended up happening in the garage, with us eating inside the house. We weren't sure there was even going to BE a game.
We all looked like we were set out for a winter event with the amount of blankets and heavy winter coats we brought. The game was delayed almost 30 minutes, and the stands were almost empty, but we had a BLAST!
The kids had the run of the grass next to the stands, and could pretty much roam however much they wanted to. They all got their arms and various objects signed by the mascot. Crazygirl bought a baseball, and had half of the team sign it. Like I said, there was almost no one there!

choir concert

Here is proof as to why these three skipped dance practice last night...they really were at the concert!
Dancingqueen's choir concert last night was a '50's theme. They were supposed to dress in poodle skirts or in clothes that resembled the 50's as closely as possible. This picture is of her and her two best buds! They did really well. It was as entertaining as a jr high concert can be... !!!!!!
She had a great time in choir this year. Her teacher is in the mo-tab, so that is now a new goal for her. It never occured to her that real people could be in it!!!!

"Someone" got a hold of the camera again

Apparently Bug likes closeups. I went to download a picture I had taken and found these on my camera.
This is perfectly representative of how our weather has been. My poor children have no idea how to dress anymore. In 24 hours it dropped from 93 degrees to in the 40's. This is how Bug came downstairs today. I'm not sure what is going on with the film over my camera lens...I'm sure it has NOTHING to do with the obvious fact from previous pictures that someone under the age of 7 has been playing with my camera lately. Anyway, I was going out to do yard work and told Bug to get dressed to help. She came down in a skort, t-shirt snow hat and gloves. Nice. At least she covers all of her bases.

Monday Night Soccer Smackdown

Pregame psych-out poses between the families, notice we are in jean shorts and dance clothes? That's called reverse psychology, people...we wanted them to think that we really didn't put hours and hours of practice and stratagy into the game.(okay, so we didn't, but the girls sure stratagized a lot!)
Obviously we all survived, since you are now reading my blog about it...Some VERY UNFLATTERING pictures were taken by dear, dear friend, which she will delete immediately from her camera's memory...right????!!!!! Because I know where you live...
We had a blast! We played two 20 minute halves. We were ahead by one at the end of the first, then they came back and scored two back to back at the beginning of the 2nd. Crazygirl answered that with another goal for us. At the end of the second half we decided on a 10 minute overtime. We both scored again, and at the end of the 10 minutes, decided not to go into 2nd overtime...much to the dismay of the kids. Dan wants you all to know that one of those goals was his all powerful cornershot that curved right into the goal. Even David Beckham is jealous of bending it like that!!!! (hey, it's my blog and I can tell the story how I want to!!!!)
We ended up all buying our own ice cream at Artic Circle.
It actually shocked us both how evenly our two families were matched...that made for a much more exciting game!!! We had a blast, and hope to do it again soon!
After the game the kids decided to make up and be friends again...until the next gauntlet gets thrown down
See why we get along so well? We are both raising a bunch of coneheads!

nationals

"I'd like to thank all of the little people..."

This was dancingqueen mocking any beauty pageant she has ever seen, after receiving flowers from her choreographer on Friday. My mission companion Cheryl would be so proud...the torch has been passed!!!
Dancing queen and Bug did really well. They took first and second place for their solos. Not too shabby for Nationals!!! The award ceremony didn't begin until about 11:15 pm Friday night, so we were pretty dead when we had to be at team competition Saturday morning at 9am. Who says dance isn't brutal?

Bug and her larger than life trophy. I am going to regret this when she does soccer instead of solo's and sees the size difference of the trophies.
Here's a little shout out to Cafe Rio, and their salad extraordinaire. We hit this for lunch Sat. with a teammate of Dancingqueen's. Yummmmmmm
Dancingqueen is in the middle. As you can tell, they spend their time backstage concentrating and truly working hard to get ready for the next dance. NOT! She was so lucky this year. They had a great team who all got along so well. (which is important when you spend 5 hours a week together 11 months out of the year)

Competition season is officially over now. The recital and tryouts for next year are in June, then we have a break until August. We are pretty proud of the girls for how hard they worked this year. It's been fun to watch them all progress!

I've been tagged

The Hubby Tag
What is his full name? Daniel
How long have you been married? 15 years in August
How long did you date? about 4 months
How did you meet? We served in the same zone on our mission for about a month and had to trade cars once in the WAWA parking lot. Obviously sparks didn't fly there. We started dating about a week after I came home.
Who eats more sweets? me
Who said "I love you" first? he did
How old is he? 36
Who is taller? He is
Who is smarter? He lets me think I am
Who does the laundry? I do
Who pays the bills? I do
Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? He does
Who mows the lawn? He does, unless I get to it first...I love mowing the lawn!
Who drives? He does
Who is more stubborn? me
Who kissed who first? He did, but he'll try and say I did. I say my second kiss was so good, he forgot about the first!
Who has more siblings? I do. there are 6 of mine versus 3 of his
Who wears the pants? He wears the pants, but I tell him which ones to wear!!!!!
I now tag Sarah, Ali, Sheila, Kristin and Kelli

This may be my last blog...like EVER. Not because I don't like to blog, I actually LOVE it! No, the reason goes much deeper and much more complex than that. You see, a soccer smackdown is about to happen. Crazygirl and Crush(remember Dancingqueen's Crush?) both play soccer and like to talk smack in church to eachother. Somehow a gauntlet was thrown down, and now it's family soccer smackdown Monday night for FHE...losers buy ice cream. They have 4 boys, we have 4 girls, it should be interesting. So how does that relate to this being my last blog, potentially forever? Because in about 72 hours, I may be lying on a soccer field, gasping for air like a fish out of water, unable to crawl home. The term "you're going down" has a whole different meaning when one is turning 38 in a few months. Oh the adults are going down alright, we just may never get up.

Week in Review

So in between laundry, and posting all of the Disneyland pictures that you can sit through without having your eyes glaze over, we actually had life happening over here also. Dramaqueen finally got to sign up for gymnastics. We went last Monday to just check it out, and they let her do a free trial class. She, of course, loved it and made a new friend in about 2 minutes flat, and has been counting down the minutes until she gets to go again. Dancingqueen and Bug also signed up for 3 private lessons each. They are one on one with the gymnastics coach for 1/2 hour each. This is to help them in dance.
Soccer for Crazygirl is over (yea!!) Competition soccer is intense, with a lot of driving around the state for games. I am still debating on whether she is going to sign up for next season or not. She has a spot on the team, but there is one closer to home that we are looking at having her try out for. There is always the city league option, where all of the games are at the soccer complex close to our house. With gas prices the way they are, we might do that. She also wants to take gymnastics, now that her sisters are doing it, so we might scrap soccer all together, who knows. Too many choices!!!
Dan was released from Bishopric yesterday. It was sad and good at the same time. He loved that calling so much, but he had also been in the bishopric on and off since Emily was 1. We know what his new calling is, and are excited about it! The new counselors are incredible men and really good friends of ours, so we are excited for the new changes, they are going to do fantastic!
Dancingqueen ended up in Urgent Care on Friday night. She has had a really bad cough since Disneyland and got to a point where she was coughing so hard she was having trouble breathing. She is now on hard core antibiotics, cough syrup with codeine and an inhaler. She is in the middle of end of year testing at school, so is pretty stressed about being sick. I tried to tell her that it's not like it's going to keep her out of college if she falls asleep during the test, but she didn't find that so humorous.
Mother's day was wonderful. The girls and Dan made me breakfast in bed and made homemade cards( which I will take any day over store bought). The girls got me a beautiful necklace from Disneyland. Dan got me a necklace, bracelet and earrings from Cookie Lee. Wow! What a nice surprise! At church, the men did everything so all of the women could just go to class. Dan was in charge of sharing time and the primary chorister. It was funny to come home Sat. night from running an errand and see him cutting out construction paper and using glue sticks. Mom, Dad, Kelli and the kids came over for dinner. We BBQ'd and ate lots of Brownies and ice cream. It was fun to just let the kids play.
We are starting construction on our basement this week. We chalked it out on the concrete last night so we can start framing in the next few days. We are hoping that it goes pretty fast.
I gave my notice at work. I will finish out the end of the year, but am not going back when school starts in the fall. I will miss the extra money, but we both feel like I should be home. I am going to take some classes to finish my degree so I am not so bored, but after lots of prayer, we both feel really good about me being home.
Later this week promises to be just as busy, with our last dance competition and the state PTA convention. Then the girls go back to school Monday. Maybe life will slow down then!

More Disney fun

isn't this a sweet picture of the kids on the train? Oh wait, what is that smut in the background? OH yeah! Disneyland really is the happiest place on earth, just ask uncle B. I can post this, because Aunt K. doesn't have a blog of her own to post the other incriminating pictures, so we are safe for now...phase 10 anyone? Bwahaahaaahaaa!!!!! Love ya sis!
We love our cousins!
my super fun sis taking a churro break with me and Bug while the others were on splash mountain. Are we the only two smart enough to look at the people getting off the ride soaking wet and saying "no thanks, we'll pass on chafing today, thank you"
These two are all about the high adrenaline rush rides. hey now, don't knock riding the flying fish around in circles until you have tried it.
Last night before the cousins left for the beach "please don't go!!!!"

Disneyland...part four

Wahoo, looks like we have a fun day ahead of us!
Day three of Disneyland, as we were walking TO the park from the hotel, Bug tried to sit at every park bench along the way. She was already complaining that she was tired. We decided to head off any drama since we had a good 14 hours of fun in front of us and rented the stroller. That turned out to be the best decision we made all week. It held all of our crap,errr important trinkets and she loved it. The other girls fought over who got to sit in it whenever she was out.
imitating Dad's driving on the way down maybe??????
Dramaqueen found a mirror while we were in line for one of the rides and daddy got this picture.
I fear for whatever gets in her way.....

Disneyland part three

At the animator's palette performance Dramaqueen was chosen from the crowd to come up and pose for them. She also got to sing into the microphone "you've never had a friend like me".
She was on cloud nine for the rest of the day
After meeting the princesses on the princess walk, we sold a kidney to get the girl's hair done so they could fulfill their lifelong dream of being princesses. Remember, since they weren't able to pull out the sword in the stone, it's not going to be handed to them on a silver platter, so we got to pay for the experience. We may not be eating for a month, but they were cute.
Crazygirl decided last minute that she would rather have a "baby Stitch" than fake curly hair and a scalp covered in glitter and flowers. smart move, Crazygirl, smart move.

Disneyland...part two

okay...so none of our children will inherit the throne. We are okay with that...I don't think I want anyone who can't decide between a cheeseburger or chicken nuggets to make major kingdom policy changes.


Getting your hiney soaked on Splash Mountain can really give you attitude
Awwwww... this is what it's all about. Getting some face time with Minnie

Disneyland...part one

Tradition in the Foster household states that the first ride of Disneyland must always be the train ride around the park...we aren't sure when that became law, it just is. Here we are waiting for said train and still blissfully optimistic that we will walk onto every ride without any wait, not have any meltdowns and that the sunscreen will actually work. Hey, shoot for the moon and you might hit the stars, right?
Here are the cousins and the honorary cousin ready and raring to go...notice everyone is still smiling... Boy, do I have some pictures to contradict this happy scene! I think I will save those for another day...after all, I did take 221 pictures over 3 days at Disneyland, you will be reading about this for days to come!
hmmmmmm...where do we go now? This picture, by the way was taken about 15 minutes after mommy and dancingqueen took dramaqueen on the tower of terror, telling her it was a fun ride. She rode it, then took off her seatbelt, turned to me and lost it. LOST. IT. She was bawling for a solid 10 minutes. That sure didn't help my argument to try and talk Crazygirl into going on with my fastpass. When we came off, and Crazygirl saw her sobbing at the top of her lungs, it cemented for life the decision to never go on the ride. Dancingqueen, on the other hand went on it about 6 times. We love it!!!! Anyhoo, this picture was actually them looking for a more sane ride while daddy and dancingqueen ran back onto the ride with the extra fastpasses.
We actually got to see Mickey Mouse and get a family picture with him for the first time in almost 15 years. Thanks to Bug who wanted to see where Mickey lived, in Toontown. Who knew that he is actually at his own house? We have always been too busy going on rides to find that out!
This was too fast of a trip for us. We want to go back! We had a blast! We only got a little sunburned, had relatively mild meltdowns that were few and far between and the lines were only bad on Saturday. We have some fun stories to share, so stay tuned...!!!

Avril's tour bus

This is how we entertain ourselves while driving through the desert.

The girls thought they had died and gone to heaven when we got cut off by Avril's tour bus in Vegas
We could have turned around right then and gone home and they would have called the trip a success.