Week in Review

What a successful week! For the first time in 2014, Robbie wasn't traveling, there were no school cancellations due to weather and Jake was able to go to school all 4 days. Success! I am hoping we can get into a better routine. Fall was crazy with football season, then you have the holidays. Usually winter is my chance to get us on track, but this one has just not been ordinary. Jake started baseball though, and the spring always picks up, so we've got to get organized and in a routine.

Jake had his first baseball practice Saturday. Doesn't he look cute? (Which I got in trouble for calling him cute. Evidently you don't call big boy baseball players cute. As per dad & son.)  

How did he do? Okay. He is on the 5-6 year old team. You can tell the kids that played last year. They are a little bit bigger, a whole lot better. The experienced kids were getting a little annoyed at the beginner kids (like Jake), which of course annoyed me and was everything I could do not to give them the stink eye (or cheer when they missed a ball). I've got a long ways to go if Jake is going to play competitive sports. The biggest challenge with Jake, is getting him to pay attention. He wasn't busy playing in the dirt or watching other people. He was standing there, he just wasn't listening to what the coach was saying. So when they get ready to run the bases, Jake has no clue what to do. It's hard to know what's him just being a 5 year old and what's truly a problem that we need to address. But Jake had fun and he seems like he is on a good, nice team, with a good coach that is helping him learn, so, so far, we are off to a good start.

On Sunday, after church, we took Jake to a new restaurant that he had never been to - Waffle House. Growing up, I never ate at Waffle House, so I wasn't introduced to it until college. (And poor Troy at the time, didn't even have a Waffle House, we had the knock off Coffee Kettle, but same concept.) It was frequented in my college & single days. Lately, not so much. If we are craving breakfast, we'll go to a brunch restaurant (aka expensive) or Crackle Barrel (aka busy). Especially if we are going after church. But Sunday, Robbie was craving Waffle House, so we picked the nicest one we could find, and introduced Jake to its goodness. 

We got home and were out in the yard when the ice cream truck came by. Jake still had his tooth fairy money, so we told him we'd help him buy some ice cream. He picked the Spiderman ice cream. 

Um, can we please discuss Jake's outfit? When we got home from church, he asked if he could put on cozy clothes. We said sure and let him pick them out. This is what he came up with... an orange shirt with blue writing paired with red shorts with navy trim. Looking good kid.

Jake's 5th Birthday Party

Jake had his 5th birthday party at the local inflatable jump place. I have a love/hate relationship with outside venues for birthday parties. I love the ease, no setup, no clean up, someone else does all the work. But I hate that they loose that personal touch and all of the cute decorations. Since Jake is 5 now and cares a lot more about having fun than having 50 coordinating decor pieces, we knew he would have a lot more fun having his party somewhere other than our house. (Because his birthday is in the winter, we are limited in any "outdoor" activities we can plan, so basically the kids just sit inside looking at each other (and my very cute decorations that they care nothing about).) So we decided to have his party at Pump It Up.

They did such a great job! You have a private room just for your party to play in. There were tons of inflatables and plenty for all ages. Then we had a private room to have cake & presents in. And when I say they do all the work, they really did. The staff was great!

So now, on to the pictures....



The invite



Group shot

Silly group shot

Goody bags

I mean, I had to thrown in a little decor

Every year, I have Jake's party guests sign a book that coordinates with his party theme. This year's book was If You Give a Pig a Party. It's one of Jake's favorite book, so I thought it was perfect! This was the first year that Jake's actual guests could sign their own names in the book. How cute!



It was a great birthday party spent with very special friends!

Happy 5th (+ 2 months) Birthday Jake!



Addie Comes to Visit

Our best friends from Chattanooga came down to spend the weekend with us, the weekend of Jake's birthday party. We love the S family & always have so much fun when we all get together! There is an 8 month difference between Jake & Addie. So Jake & Addie have been friends pretty much since they were born!

Watching a movie Friday night

2 amazing super heroes

Best of Friends

These sweet babies through the years

When life hands you lemons..... throw up

So far, my goal to update the blog weekly has been a big failure. We just keep falling behind. And the weather doesn't help! We had a nice weather weekend 2 weekends ago. Had we known what the week was going to look like, we would have packed in a whole lot more! On Saturday, we picked up Jake's baseball supplies and gear. Then we surprised him by taking him to the Lego Movie. He loved it!  

Then came the week.

On Monday's, Jake doesn't have school, so he stays home with me. We started getting warning of ice and snow for Tuesday. After the missed forecast 2 weeks ago, you kind of knew that they were going to over correct on this one. And they did. The entire city shut down. Schools, businesses, etc... We sat inside all day to watch rain fall and the temperature to never fall below freezing. The poor newscasters. They were driving around desperately looking for a patch or two of ice. Then came another forecast of possible ice/snow Wednesday afternoon. So once again, everything shuts down.

(Please note - I am no way criticizing the people who have to make the decision to close school. That is such a tough decision and so many factors play into that decision. And it is not an easy one and you are always going to make someone mad. I was so tired of people complaining about it on Facebook!)

So on Wednesday, we once again sat inside to watch rain. Finally late afternoon, snow started falling in Birmingham. Birmingham ended up getting about 4 inches. We live in a suburb about 20 minutes south of Birmingham. We got 3 snowflakes. No kidding. 20 minutes north of us, 4 inches of snow. Us? Nothing but a few flakes. I was fine with that though, because I hoped that meant our school would not be cancelled Thursday.

It was. So on Thursday, we stayed home to 50 degree weather and not a drop of snow to melt.

FINALLY! On Friday, school was back in session. Yeah! Since Friday was Valentine's Day, Jake's class was having their Valentine's Day party. I had the job of providing the meal for the party. We were also having guests spend the weekend with us and Jake's birthday party on Saturday, so I had a ton to get done. Since I wasn't able to do anything during the week, I was going to have to squeeze it all into Friday. But I wasn't worried. I had my day planned out, to the hour, to get everything done. I fed Jake breakfast, got us ready and then we went to head out the door.

And Jake threw up.

Are you seriously kidding me?

I was pretty sure he had just ate his breakfast too fast and was just over excited about his party (& finally getting out of the house). He said he felt fine, he wasn't running a fever and wasn't acting sick. So we headed on to school. Then as we were walking into school, he throws up again. Seriously? I'm pretty sure they frown upon you taking your child on to school when they've just thrown up in front of it. So we headed back home. Jake rested and then about 11:30, he decided he was ready to go to his party. Um, by that time, it was half over. He was fine the rest of the day & weekend, which is great, since we had friends in town & his party. But it was so frustrating to just sit at home with a child running around, after we'd just done that every day the past week.

But that's life. That's motherhood.

Is not always fun and hardly ever goes to plan. But I signed up for it. And I love it and I cherish it.

Minus the throw up part. I don't so much cherish that.



What we were doing, other than dealing with snowpocalypse

Pre-snowpocalypse:

We signed Jake up for baseball for the spring. We didn't feel like he was ready for it last year, so we tried soccer. Soccer was okay. We weren't crazy about the league and lets face it, no one in our family really watches or cares about soccer, so it was new to all of us. Jake liked it okay, but didn't love it and certainly didn't ask to play again this year. We felt like he was ready for baseball this year, so we signed him up! He is very excited. Robbie played baseball his whole life growing up, so I think he has had fun working with Jake when Jake listens.

Okay, so we've got a little bit of work to do

Snowpocalypse:

When the snow started falling last Tuesday and once I got to Jake's school, Jake was so excited to see the snow. He wanted so bad to play in it, but I told him we needed to wait until we could get home (whenever that might have been). He was okay with that answer. After walking a mile in the cold, wet, slippery icy snow to get to a car to take us home, by the time we got home, Jake wanted nothing to do with snow. We got in dry clothes, snuggled under a blanket and watched a movie. Later in the day on Wednesday, once Robbie made it home safely, I could let go of a little of my hatred for the annoying white stuff. By this point, Jake was ready to play in the snow. We just played in the backyard, so I didn't even take a picture of the front of our house all covered with snow.

Barf

Robbie trying to teach Jake to make a snowball

Post-snowpocalypse:

(Basically, I just like saying snowpocalypse)

The snow finally melted away by Friday, and then of course we experience spring like weather over the weekend. How wonderful to experience all 4 seasons in 1 week. Yea, right. On Saturday Jake had baseball evaluations. He was picked for the Pirates team. They start practice the end of February, so we are excited to see how the season goes!

On Sunday, after church, we were wasting some time waiting on the restaurant we wanted to eat at to open. So we stopped by Dick's Sporting Goods. They had a hammock, which Jake thought was awesome. He asked if he could get one for his room to use as his bed. I told him to ask Nana & Gran for their house.

In other extremely exiting news that will keep you on the edge of your seat, Jake finally got a haircut and he lost his first tooth! At his last dentist appointment, his dentist said that his bottom 2 middle teeth were loose and could probably fall out soon. We would wiggle it a little at night, but didn't want to just pull it out too soon. It was finally getting super loose and his permanent tooth was coming in behind it, so we figured it was finally time to pull it. You never know how Jake will handle something. Sometimes he can be so tough and other times, he can be so dramatic over the smallest thing. Thankfully he was tough with this one. When Robbie was trying to pull it, he said it didn't hurt and when the tooth actually came out and there was some blood, Jake didn't freak out. I think he was just too excited about the tooth fairy coming.

Robbie working on the tooth
And do not get me started on Jake's hair. He honestly has to get it cut
every few weeks. We were already a week late making the appointment, then
it got cancelled due to the snow. So his hair has been a stringy mess in his eyes.

Last picture with a mouth full of baby teeth

We finally got the tooth out Wednesday, Feb. 5. And Jake finally got a haircut that afternoon. He was a brand new boy!

Some sport pictures throwback:

Robbie's parents have been organizing some old pictures. They found some old pictures of Robbie. They couldn't find one from the first year he played baseball (when he was Jake's age), but they did find this one from when Robbie was 8.

This was the back of his baseball card

 They also found this picture of Robbie (at age 8). How much does Jake favor Robbie?!?!? Because during the week, most people just see me with Jake, they always comment on how much Jake looks like me. I have to tell them, just wait until you see my husband. Jake favors Robbie so much.