A Visit from the Rusaks

Andy's youngest sister Julie came to visit this weekend with her family. We had a great time! Julie was 14 years old when I first met her. Now, she's all grown up and an amazing mom to three sweet boys as well as a cherished friend of mine. We hadn't seen the Rusaks in three years, which means we had never met this cutie pie...


Upon arrival, Jake immediately entered a nerf dart gun war zone. He was quickly trained by his cousins and placed on the front line.


After nerf guns, playing soccer, climbing in the tree house, and much chatting around the kitchen table, we headed down to San Marco on foot for dinner.


Chelsea wouldn't let anyone else near the stroller - she wanted sole responsibility for Cooper. She did a great job of putting him to sleep so that Julie could enjoy a dinner using both hands! Matthew, Henry, and Jake enjoyed having their own table at Pizza Palace.



After dinner the kids climbed around on the statues of the lions while the boring grown-ups continued our chatting. Actually, Julie and my mom were in deep conversation, Andy and Dave were talking sports, and I was eavesdropping on both conversations while taking pictures of the kids.


The more than mile walk home didn't dampen anyone's spirits!


When we got home Matthew gave a little violin concert for the crowd and Chelsea performed some gymnastics tricks. Patrick, of course, wowed us the entire evening with his texting skills.

After a liesurely breakfast and a little time on the wii on Saturday morning, we headed out to Matthew's baseball game. Matthew showed off for his extended family by pitching two scoreless innings that included his throwing a runner out at home, throwing another runner out stealing second while catching, and hitting an impressive 3 run homer. Quite a game for Matthew! Unfortunately, his team (the Knights), went down 9-8 in a hard-fought game.

A heart-felt thanks to the Rusaks for taking the time and making the effort to drive up to Jax to see us during their busy week's vacation visit to the family homestead in Central Florida. We had a blast!! Here's hoping it won't be three more years until we see them again!

Home Run Boy

Well, 3 games this weekend and no wins. But, Matthew had an out of the park home run last night and an in the park home run today. So, he had a little fun :-)

Another Friday, Another Sleepover

How does it happen? Well, first it's just a friend coming over after school.


Then, another friend comes, and there's enough for a football game!


Patrick has some time to text between plays because, well...it takes the littler ones a while to recover from his tackles.


Hmmm...maybe they should be wearing these...


P says we need more big kids....


>

Oh, here's one!

And, if you want to dance, you'd better bring some girls into the mix.


One thing just sort of leads to another and BAM!

It's a party!

Just a Little Ramble

I feel like I'm neglecting my blog. Is it better to blog about nothing, or not to blog at all? We've all been sick around here, so energy levels have been low and nights have been for sleeping instead of uploading pictures! We may finally be coming out of the February funk and the weather this weekend promises to be warmer and sunny, so things are looking up all the way around.

On the sports front, Patrick wrapped up his first season of soccer with his middle school team this week. He's trying to decide between a community soccer league for the spring or trying out for his school's baseball team. Chelsea has moved into a sightly more advanced gymnastics class and is bumping her commitment up to two classes a week (tues and thurs)starting this coming week. Matthew has baseball games both Saturday (rec team coached by Andy) and Sunday (advanced team) for many weeks to come. Andy is not playing soccer these days due to a long neglected knee injury that is starting to demand more attention. I am taking a (VERY SHORT!) break from yoga due to sudden and severe hypertension detected at a routine PCP visit. Exercise is of course a good thing in the long run, but I was told my heart was getting quite the work out just sitting still right now, thank you very much. I'm taking some meds and going back to see the PCP next week and expect I'll be back to my regular activity level after that. Sounds like Andy and I are both getting old, huh?

Patrick brought 3 friends home from school today - all girls. Another boy came a little later. They played basketball most of the afternoon in a neighbor's driveway along with the siblings and a neighborhood friend. After that they headed over to my mom's for a quick dip in the pool. It had warmed up in the high 70s today for the first time in a long time, so they were all starting to long for summer. They were quickly reminded that it was early March when they jumped in the pool - it didn't last long! They came inside at dark for pizza and a movie. Two guests are still here, but oddly no one that doesn't live here is scheduled to spend the night!

Well, that's about all the nothing I can think of to blog about. I'll leave you with a few pix of Matthew and his nerf gun obsession.



Armed and Dangerous

League Champions

It was the Jazz vs the Bulls in the final game of the season. They were tied for first place with 7 wins and 2 losses each. When the two teams met earlier in the season, the Bulls came out on top. But, this time, the Jazz beat the Bulls handily. Final score 43-21.