a glimpse into what it is like to live in our home just this minute.













Intentional Outdoor Hours: 81+ hours (of 1000)
We had a very Spring-like week that bounced between rainy, chilly, sunny, cloudy, hot, and windy.  Everyday was a new experience with weather over here.  I am loving the beauty of all of our trees and bushes in high blossom.  Our hours this week came from my half marathon training, mowing the yard (for a full three hours yesterday which awarded me the ever-trendy farmer sunburn), and racking up time at the baseball field, of course.

Reading not much of anything this week!  As a suggestion from my dearest Kate, I started listening to the Serial podcast during my 12mile training run this week and what a difference that made to my run!  And well, now, I'm hooked!  I realize I'm two years late to the Serial craze, but I'm full in now and looking forward to my training just to get in an episode or two!

Celebrating our beautiful, sweet goddaughter for her first holy communion on Saturday.  The littlest two and I skipped Opening day for Baseball and headed out towards Pittsburgh to celebrate Mallory on her special day.  We enjoyed the mass (especially since the church had an awesome 'children's chapel area') and then got a chance to chat and play with our cousins at their house afterwards.  I got to snuggle our newest baby cousin Claire (only a few days old!) and laugh about Rusty and Blake (heretoforth named "The Brute Squad") as they started their long friendship/cousinship of wrestling and teasing each other.  (they are only three weeks apart in age). It was a beautiful and special day.  We bought Mals rosary beads from this Etsy shop that I love so much! A great baptism or first holy communion gift!

Supporting and praying for our friend and soccer teammate Inez who had a big, incredible Princess & Superhero party before she heads off to Children's hospital next week for heart surgery.  She is such a sweet, darling girl and we were happy to be there to give her our love before her operation.  I explained to Gem why Inez was having the party and she started getting pretty emotional about feeling sad and worried.  I told her not to feel sad, but excited! That this surgery was going to help Nez feel better and strong and that it was happy - and the party was going to be all the people that love her and are saying prayers for her.  At the party, Gem whispered to me, "Look at all these people that love Nez, Mum!" Please feel free to send prayers to our sweet teammate Inez this week! xxxox

Baseballing five nights of these past seven.  Teeball practice for Gem, Opening Day on Saturday with games for both kids (Grey had an in-the park homer and a fly catch at the pitcher's mound!), Monday and Wednesday night games for Gemma and a Thursday night game for Grey (in the rain!)  The little kids are starting to get into the groove of finding things to do while we are at the fields.  I keep Rusty strapped to me (as Dugout Mom for Gems' team and just watching Grey's games) and Violet is pretty good at making friends.  She wandered away from the dugout to find my sister at Gemma's game the other day and got all turned around and instead found herself over at the machine pitch game!  Luckily one of my friends recognized her and brought her back - just as I glanced over at my sister and thought, "hm...I think I've lost one." Another of our friends said afterwards, 'oh yeah, I saw Violet over here, I had my eye on her, I figured you were in the dugout over there.' That's the blessed thing about small towns and schools - everyone knows everyone and watches out for each other.  (so grateful for that always..especially when Violet decides to go for an adventure!)

Planting our mini garden near the back patio.  Bud and the kids dug out and lovingly planted green and yellow summer squash (our favorite!), sweet peppers, and jalapenos (because B and I have a real obsession).  I've also started in our kitchen green onions that we've transplanted and I have some celery getting started now that we'll move to the garden when it's ready.  We got our seeds from tractor supply and don't even play - the urge to scoop up some baby chicks was real.  We held back, but it was a close call.

Making Cheesy Chicken and Rice in the slow cooker (big hit!), Sloppy Joes, Chili served over noodles, 3B Ranch porkchops (boneless, breaded, baked), and making lots of pre-baseball field snacks.  I think that's going to be my method this season - load the kids with high carb/protein snacks before we go to the game and then we can eat when we get home.  Which puts our dinners between 8p-9:30p some nights, but we are all pretty late eaters anyway and I'm such a stickler for family-around-the-table meals that I'm willing to deal with it.  Our pre-field snacks this week were Pumpkin/chocolate muffins (so easy! only 3 ingredients) and these flourless monster bars (delicious! we kept them in the fridge for grab&go!)  Also - honey pretzel twists, squeezable yogurt, apples, and mozz cheese sticks!