I used to skip a lot of the out-of-town games when they were younger, but this year [...]]]> My two little boys ask everyday, “Mom, do we have games tonight?” and they don’t mean are they playing a game, they mean, are we all traveling to a basketball game for their brother or sister.

I used to skip a lot of the out-of-town games when they were younger, but this year I have drug them to all but a couple of games.

Isaac is a boy scout.  He got to hold the flag on Senior night for the national anthem.  He was so excited about it.  I was glad he had something special to do instead of  informing me of how hungry he is every two minutes.

Here’s some of the fans that came out to support the senior girls.  It was such a fun night to celebrate their last season on the team.

I’ve been wanting to get my hair cut for four months and I still don’t have time to schedule an appointment, so I cut my bangs, just thought you should know.

Also, this photo made it very obvious that I haven’t highlighted my hair for over a year.  Would somebody please come take care of my head for me?

My oldest son doesn’t like the jeans I’m wearing because he thinks they look wet, just thought you should know that as well.  What I’m really trying to do, is draw your attention away from how incredibly tall we are compared to the other family on the court.  Clay noticed a teenager pointing to us from the stands while we were out there, she made a motion with her hand of how the other family is small and then jutted her hand up a foot to emphasize how gigantic we are.  Could somebody please tell me why my daughter is so dang short though?  Look at her.  What the heck happened?  The poor little thing.  Despite her shortness, we have given her a list of  three specifications for any guy she drags home:

1. He has to be at least four inches taller than your mother because she wants to wear heels to the wedding and keep them on when she dances with her son-in-law….therefore she doesn’t want her son-in-law’s face to be anywhere near her breasticles, because that would be awkward.
2. He needs to have some color in his skin, because if you mix your genes with anyone paler, your children are likely to come out transparent.
3. It would be best if he was an orphan with zero family. That way we don’t have to share the grandchildren with any other grandparents.

That’s it.  We’re not asking for the impossible, just some simple guidelines.

You know as well as I do, that the first guy she brings home is going to be a pale, red-headed,  5’4″ boy from a huge family.  That poor guy better make me laugh or he doesn’t stand a chance.

Okay, back to Senior Night.   My friend Mrs Mama, was there taking photos.  If she asks me to make a face looking nervous before the game starts, then I am obligated to do exactly that for her…..and then regret it later when she sends me the photo.

This was the little ceremony that was held between the girls and boys games.  They announced the players and the Seniors were escorted out to the court with their parents.  The coach handed the mothers a bouquet of flowers and the announcer read a biography that each player had written.  I thought I would share a condensed version of  Ellen’s with you, because…ehem, it made me cry and one of Ellen’s rules is, NEVER CRY ON THE COURT!

This photo shows a choked up Clay giving his little girl a kiss during the part that she wrote about him.  I didn’t realize all those boys were behind us, I should have reached over and pinched Ellen and Clay’s little butts just for the shock value.

Ellen Phillips #24
Ellen has played basketball for 5 years and has been playing on the Varsity team since her freshman year. Ellen will fondly remember Coach S. as a godly man who puts his faith before his coaching, how he has always shown love toward his team, and how excited he gets about sharing new drills and offensive plays during practice.  She will remember Coach B. as her favorite defensive challenge as he pushes her during practices to perform her best, nobody shoves her quite as hard during a game as Coach B. does at practice.  But mostly, Ellen will remember the cheerleader in the stands, her mom, who occasionally taps her on the shoulder and yells, “head fake!”, and the man who sits behind the computer at every game, his voice heard above everyone else in her ears as he records all her successes and failures, and his half-time coaching that gets her through that second half of the game.  Her dad, the man who has always coached her from the sidelines. She thanks her parents for being there to cheer her on during every game.

Yeah…now you tell me, there’s no crying in basketball!  I was blubbering.

And now, because I can’t help it, here’s some great shots of Ellen during the game, says the proud puffed-up mom.

Breaking away for a lay-up down the court!

Crossing over to avoid the defender, she goes up…

AND SCORES!!!!

Just a few more weeks left until we retire those blue high-tops.

I thought I would share what I just downloaded from my camera and maybe you all can piece together the last few months of my life.

Levi is 7, he has the largest two front teeth in the history of front teeth and he knows [...]]]> I know, I’m sorry….I’ve been a bad blogger.

I thought I would share what I just downloaded from my camera and maybe you all can piece together the last few months of my life.

Levi is 7, he has the largest two front teeth in the history of front teeth and he knows it.  When we make fun of his teeth he sticks them out and starts acting like a monster.  I’ve never seen a kid so proud of his giant front teeth.  He LOVES to play with my camera and the result is usually an hour of  filming everything in the house and about 85 pictures of himself making weird faces.  I spend a lot of time deleting his stuff, but making sure I don’t delete all of it because he’s pretty funny.

Then I have about 5 billion of these photos on my camera.  This is one of Clay’s jobs.  He snatches my camera from time to time and takes photos of his job sites.  I hate deleting them because sometimes they are of beautiful buildings and details that only an architect’s wife could appreciate.

After I cleared all the photos from Levi and Clay off of my camera I came to the few photos I snapped during Thanksgiving.  That very small woman sitting next to Clay is Carmen, my childhood friend.  She lives in the same town as my parents and her husband’s business intercedes with my mother’s business on a daily basis.  That means Carmen’s husband owns a FedEx route and he picks up the puppets my mom is shipping out to her customers.  Carmen’s husband adores my mom and my mom likes Carmen’s husband more than she likes me, so it was a winning situation to have them at my parent’s home for Thanksgiving.  Carmen and her girls taught us how to play a dice game called Farkle.  Guess who lost?

Yeah, that would be me. The loser of Farkle has to complete a task that is decided before the game begins.  I had to go to the same house that Carmen and her family had mistaken for my parent’s home just a few hours earlier. With all their Thanksgiving food in their hands thinking they were at my parent’s the older gentleman that answered the door thought that maybe my parents did live there, so Carmen and Charlie went in and quickly realized they knew absolutely nobody in that house.  The loser of the Farkle game had to take a pumpkin pie and basket to the door of that house and ask if my parents were home.  It was very embarrassing to say the least, but we got a years worth of laughter out of it.

Many of you have asked,”How’s Salt?”

Here she is helping to decorate the Christmas tree.

And here she is helping to decorate Ellen’s leg with a few puncture wounds.

Never has a kitten been loved so much by so many people as this little fluffy-wuffy-kitty-witty.  I swear we worry about her far more than we worry about our children.  And if that’s not enough to make you hurl a bit of stomach acid, then you should also know that we call her, “The Baby” and periodically use The Baby as an excuse not to help others, “I can’t fix dinner, I’m holding The Baby”  or “I can’t do my homework because The Baby is sleeping on me”  or “I’d love to help you do the laundry, but The Baby doesn’t want me to leave the room.”  You can understand how difficult life is when you have a baby in the house.

I made my yearly batch of beirocks or beirochs or beer rocks.  We ate them for four days.   I found out my oldest son was giving them away at school and then I asked him why he hates me so much.

This is Levi taking a snooze at our second home, aka the basketball gym.  My friends, I have a serious case of Bleacher Butt, it has caused my butt to be big, flat and also…ginormous.  I could use a good drug to cure me of this awful disease.  Here let me show you how I got it.

*All the DECENT basketball photos are courtesy of my sweet and talented friend Mrs. Mama.

I’m the mom that says (and by says I mean yells) things like, “DON’T TRAVEL!”  and “HEAD FAKE!!!”  and “DON’T FOUL!” and the more than occasional, “USE THE BACKBOARD!!!!”  and then my daughter’s favorite, “MAKE YOUR SHOTS!”  I know, it’s almost like I’m a coach with all my helpful input.  Honestly, I don’t understand how my kids can play the game without me there.

This is her senior year and I promised I wouldn’t miss a single game.

Nothing could keep me away from watching #24 do what she does on that court.

Or watch her coach the girls from the bench.  And in case you didn’t see him, that’s Clay up at the score table taking stats…..for every single game home and away for the girls and boys varsity teams.  He takes his job very seriously.  And yes, I love this picture of Ellen’s coach.

This is Big John, he’s one of our home court refs.  He looks really scary until he smiles, and then fahgetaboutit the whole room melts under his charm.  I love this photo of him.

Oh, how I am going to miss this next year.

Are some of you wondering why I’m all, “Ellen this and Ellen that…doesn’t April have a son that plays basketball too?”

Well, yes I do.  So, let me show you the great shots I got of him playing and the reason I posted my friends photos instead of mine.

I think I might put this one in his baby book.

I love this action shot of him.

This one is worthy of some sort of award.  I’m there people.  I’m am right there getting the best shots of my kids on the court.

I let my kids request what kind of cake they want.  I used to spend an entire day building and frosting complicated designs and then I had a 4th kid.   Isaac wanted a gold dragon on a two layer cake.  I frosted this in about 10 minutes and we ate it all gone.

We took Ellen to Build a Bear for Isaac’s birthday.

We told her it was Disneyland.

And now she can cross that trip off her bucket list.

Her enthusiasm was not to be dampened by her father or brothers who quickly grew weary of her.

I tried to take a fun Christmas photo of my family.  But……yeah.

My family doesn’t do “Nice Family Photo”.  Look at Levi’s feet.  Yes, his shoes are on the wrong feet.  I can only do so much people.

We love the show Parks and Recreation.  I gave this t-shirt to Seth for Christmas.  He thinks Ron Swanson is the perfect man and quotes him much too often, “I like dark haired women and breakfast food.”

Seth helped me turn this floral atrocity into….

This very vanilla landscape.

And uh, it still looks like that minus the broom in the shower.  I know, I know, I suck at finishing projects.  I promise I’ll get it done before I die.

And that my friends has been my life according to my camera for the last several months.   You’re welcome.

Clay has been on vacation since Christmas.  It’s really great having him at home, except for the massive piles he creates.  Like this pile of Andes mint chocolate chip cookies, it’s not so bad, but it’s HUGE!  The bad thing is that I will eat a lot of them. (Sorry for the blurry [...]]]>

Clay has been on vacation since Christmas.  It’s really great having him at home, except for the massive piles he creates.  Like this pile of Andes mint chocolate chip cookies, it’s not so bad, but it’s HUGE!  The bad thing is that I will eat a lot of them. (Sorry for the blurry photos, my phone takes very suckalicious photos….and let’s not forget that I own it, which means it’s going to be a pretty bad photo regardless.)

After he was done with the cookies I handed him this pile.  It’s his In-Box.  It drives me crazy.  He knows exactly what’s in it….so he says.  I shuffled through a few papers in it and guess what I found?

That would be a parking ticket.  Clay looked at it and said, “Well, would you look at that.”  Yeah, it’s been paid and then went in his In-Box where it promptly got buried.

I’m trying to organize our tiny office, so he’s sorting through his pile and I’m just looking at the little room wondering what the heck I should do to make it more functional.  Clay has already proclaimed that his In-Box will most certainly look bad in a few weeks so I shouldn’t put it anywhere visible.

Here’s what a I need for that room and it all needs to be as close to free as possible.  Hahahaha!  I’m serious.  I need drawers or at least a filing cabinet, but it has to fit under the counter top which is too short for a regular file cabinet.  Okay, now discuss this amongst yourselves and then tell me you have the perfect answer for my office space.  Until then I will be sorting through piles of crap.

I hope you all had a beautiful Christmas and I wish you all a very happy and organized 2012!