Hilda's Hope

The Mason County Cancer Relay was this past Saturday and we had tons of fun. The kids and I were on the Hilda's Hope team with some of our neighbors. Ashlyn, Colten & Jayde competed in lots of the contests and the rest of us helped some, too. Ashlyn, Jayde, Connie, and I got first place in the suitcase relay, Jayde & Ashlyn got 2nd in the Lasso Laughs contest, Ashlyn & I got 2nd in the horse apple tossing contest, and last, but certainly not least, Colten won the John Wayne Look Alike contest... he was tooooo cute!!!

Here are the tons of pictures we took...

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Kittens

We had some excitement Monday when John discovered the location of the missing kittens. Our cat Pearl had been obviously expecting and when she dramatically lost weight, we went searching for her kittens. We managed to find them not to long after under a big thorny bush. We didn't touch them, but I guess she didn't like us knowing because she proceeded to move them to an extremely secret hiding place. We weren't even sure she knew where they were :)
But, John found them while cleaning up in the jeep garage inside a box on the top shelf that contained some fake ivy that I probably need to get rid of. John said Pearl shot out of the box and almost made him fall over before he realized what was going on. So we kidnapped them and put mom & babies on the porch where we can watch over them and make sure that the kittens like us :) Pearl was a little leery about this at first, but after getting fed milk and getting lots of attention, I think she realizes she has a pretty good spot. Any way she has four cute little ones (3 mostly black & 1 orange) that the kids already named. Hopefully we can keep them around awhile. We were down to 3 cats from the 5 we had at the beginning of the year.

In other news, Ashlyn went to the district 4-H livestock judging contest yesterday and her team got 4th place for one of the contests... great job! And, today Colten's class is going on a field trip to Sea World. Busy, busy! This week Colten has two games and then Saturday the kids & I will be participating in the Mason County Cancer Relay (basically a Relay for Life but not exactly the same). Should be a fun time!

They WON!!

Colten's baseball team had a game last night in Menard and they won 7-3!!!! YAY Boys!!! Unfortunately I had to miss this one so that I could get ready and cook stuff for Hilda Club which is tonight... which will cause me to miss another game since we're hosts :( I'm just happy that they got a win under their belts... this will definitely help their confidence levels :) Hopefully it's the beginning of a streak!!!

Also, I had to show off my rose bush... I've been wanting to plant a rose for a long time, but have been putting it off b/c I always hear how hard it is to grow roses and I haven't had much luck growing easy things, much less difficult ones. Anyway, I read about this type which has less problems then most (Belinda's Dream) so I thought I'd try it and so far I have two beautiful blooms! With more about to pop open. Guess there's hope for me yet!


Here's one more fun pic for ya... my Star Wars fanatics battling it out with double light saber force... or whatever ;) Don't you just love their outfits for the battle?

More baseball & some 4-H

Unfortunately, Colten's team lost their game again last night, but it was still fun to watch. They get things going much better toward the end... starting at 9-0 again, ending 14-5. Colten got a good hit in, but got called out at 1st (I really think he was safe, but what can you do?). He actually had to run after the ball in the outfield in this game, too. They're slowly getting the hang of things. Hopefully they get it figured out so they can win a game before the end of the season.

Here are a few pics from the game Tue where he scored a run. You can see the boy that got the homerun right behind him at home in the third pic. And then of course, my two boys in their uniforms :)


And now for some exciting news... Ashlyn's team got first place in the District 4-H consumer decision making contest yesterday! She was so excited. From what I gather, they have to make decisions on which are the best deals in certain situations and order them from worst to best. YAY Ashlyn!

0-2

Colten's baseball team lost their second game last night, but they seem to be getting a better handle of things. At one point the score was 9-0, but they finally got some good plays and runs and ended 11-5. Colten was the first one to make it home, but he had a little help from the batter who came after him when he hit a home run. Colten was almost passed up at third base by that boy, but we made sure they stayed in order :) Colten also got taken out of the game with his friend for messing around in the outfield when they were supposed to be paying attention... boys! It was definitely a fun and interesting game to watch!

Exhausted

The past week or so has been pretty crazy. With baseball practice, tennis lessons, and practice for 4-H consumer decision making, we were already running around a lot. Since Friday, we also had the cub scout banquet (where Colten got an award for his pinewood derby car for carving quality), the opening day of baseball which included a parade at 9:00am Sat, booths with various games, BBQ lunch, and then a game at 1:15, a wedding, the tennis-a-thon, livestock judging practice, pictures to get ready for the 4-H photography contest (which we had to turn in late since our printer ran out of ink), and an art auction for the 1st graders to be able to buy T-shirts for their field trip to Sea World. Whew that was a lot to remember! Then Colten got sick with the stomach bug Sunday, so we're just counting down the hours until the rest of us catch it and hope we get over it quick. Colten has two baseball games this week and Ashlyn has the consumer decision making contest Thursday (and practice Wed). Next week will be interesting as well since Colten has three games, two of which are out of town (Menard & Junction). I'll try to get some pictures up of some of this stuff soon, but work has been crazy for me as well. I'm definitely looking forward to things settling down a bit!!!

Easter Weekend

I took off Thurs & Fri last week and was able to attend Colten's Easter Egg Hunt at school and get a lot of cleaning done around the house before our annual Easter BBQ and Hilda Church's Sunrise Service. The Easter Egg Hunt was fun to watch and I got to hear that Colten keeps his teachers laughing with some of his comments. His teacher mentioned that while they were making aprons with hand prints for their art auction, he asked if the aprons were for the lunch ladies. They said that no, they were for the auction, but he thought the lunch ladies could really use them... how thoughtful!

Here's a picture of the kids getting ready to snag up some Easter goodies. Colten's in the middle somewhere!
The weather was beautiful almost all weekend and we enjoyed pretty much every minute of it. Of course it had to be chilly while we were sitting outside at 7am Sunday morning to watch the sun rise, but that's to be expected. At least the rain held off although we really could have used some. We had to chuckle a bit at the sunrise service when they set up the tomb for their program over our septic tank. Everyone also got a kick out of Rusty running around in the pen and stopping every so often to watch intently. The speakers they had set up had plastic around them in case of rain and were really noisy and that seemed to spook him.

Here's what the sunrise looked like Easter morning from the upstairs front porch. The light in the bottom corner is the church.