Spring sports

Spring is our busiest sports season but for good reason......I'm mean HELLO, it's BASEBALL AND SOCCER SEASON!!!!!

Aleeya plays on a travel team and gives 250% every game.

She still earns her nickname "Wheels" with her speed. I seriously love watching her play.

As a child Iris was always a cautious little thing and avoided confrontation (and body contact in sports). Well, this little thing became a force on the field scoring goals quite regularly too.

She takes the smallest little quick steps when she runs. I love it.

Iris has upped her TOUGHNESS levels too!!!! 

One of her games I was down by the goal hoping to catch on her goals on video. And this is what I caught instead.

I mean WHAT are the odds?!

She was so tough she didn't even ask to be subbed out....and she got CLOCKED!

All four boys played baseball......Emerson (the self-proclaimed-team-captain-and-caller-of-all-things-on-the-field) and his team made it to the tournament championship game and lost. But man it was a fun season.

Royce (or "Po" as we call him mostly) played up with the 8 year olds and was 2 grades younger than the oldest kids on the team......yet he RARELY struck out and did so well. He ESPECIALLY increased in his out field "flossing" (the current popular dance with kids).

Royce was on the "Mudcats" team. I thought it was an usual name and wondered what kind of "cat" that was muddy. He came home with his team hat and I couldn't help but laugh. #ofcourse

Poor Camden was put on a team where some kids hadn't even played since tball days! He was definitely the best or second best player on the team and thankfully he wasn't ever disrespectful or acted all better-than-everyone.

I love seeing his cute skinny body up to bat.

This kid keeps growing yet doesn't put any fat on before! Even with toothpicks for arms this kid can pack a mean hit.

Bronson was on the high school baseball team and one of their fundraisers was collecting $ to have your name put on a banner. And of course any chance we get to make Bronson smile or get embarrassed we take. Cutest sponsors ever.

I think Bronson pitched in maybe 3 Varsity games but he always played on the JV team pitching, first base or outfield. Here he is with his close friends on the team.

I took this picture from his yearbook when they interviewed Bronson. :)

Bronson's induction into the National Honor Society happened to be DURING one of their games. So the school accomadated, let them stay in their uniforms (while everyone was dressed up) and ALSO let them go first while typically it's in alphabetical order (CURSE you "S"!)

Bronson REALLY didn't want to take a picture with the principal and me.

Here he is with that grin on his face. He said everyone was staring at them NOT dressed up. Right before they walked up front they were told to remove their hats....so much for baseball-hathead.

He just has shot up over his friends this year in height.....but it also makes him easy to see. :)

Easter

Easter weekend happened to be General Conference weekend. LUCKY US! So between Saturday sessions of Conference I took the younger kids to an egg hunt.....which we don't usually do because we don't want to take all the eggs at someplace. But as you can see there were plenty.

They divided it by ages, but that age group in the fenced in area and let them go. You should've SEEN those parents coaching their kids to hurry and pick up the eggs. There were some eggs with red tickets in them for prizes so it wasn't just smarties they were wanting their kids to find.

Even though they had never been to an egg hunt they remembered they didn't need to be told what to do. There are 10 kids in my family sooooooo well, let's just say they have learned to grab what they can when they can. They were pros. haha

Three of the kids got tickets. Royce actually won a remote control car!

Kellyn and Aleeya won a pack of Skittles. 

It was so fun......AND since the egg hunt used the nice NOT-Dollar-tree eggs I was able to use them and have enough of the same colors of eggs for our family egg hunt.

Saturday night these three went to Priesthood session......but FIRST out to Sumo's to eat.

 I stayed home with the kids and was introduced to a new show called Relative Race....that every episode left me in tears as these teams run around the country finding their long lost relatives and puzzles to their family tree. I know, it sounds lame but we are now probably that show's biggest fans (and "Random Acts""

Easter was on April Fools so that worked out for me. (insert evil laugh). TRUST me I wanted to do more, but just settled on some disappointing eggs. In our family egg hunt everyone looks for different color of egg for them filled with jelly beans. THEN we go in the front yard and eveyone goes crazy looking for three eggs with money in them. The kids were SO excited that THIS year I did 8 eggs! Well 5 of them were filled with the paper saying "April Fools"......and when Royce is the only one that ends up with the eggs with money and Aleeya, Emerson and Camden find out their's are empty.....let's just say I wished my camera was going.

Between Easter baskets, easter hunts and General Conference Concession stand my kids get SO sugared up! 

The Easter bunny gave these two some bunny suckers and sunglasses.  I couldn't resist making their hair look like bunny ears.

Easter dresses 

The whole world just needs a bottle of Kellyn.....if nothing else just to pull out and use when the day MIGHT need a little pizazz. 💓

St. Patrick's Day Jellybean Race

With the boys gone for March Madness over St. Patrick's Day the annual Jellybean Race was done the week after.

With a skinny front room we opted to having a bracket style race with just two competing at a time.

Camden won this one.

Royce won

Depending on your size is where we put the starting point.....which is why the tape measure was there. Also a random drawing of names determined your competitor. Everly is all smiles in the above picture but once she tried to move the jellybean with her nose twice and it was too hard, she grabbed the jellybean, threw it in her mouth and stomped off saying she didn't want to play anymore.

Sooooo, an automatic win for Emerson.

Bronson won in this one.

Aleeya......well, let's just say isn't the beeeeeeeest loser. And darn it all she ended up losing this race too. So she was (very unhappily) out.

Brooks and I don't count towards the winner but we always race to see who will win. For the past bazillion years Brooks has beat me and man oh MAN was I so excited to claim my superiority in this department over him!!!!!!

Camden beat Bronson....and I love this picture.

and in a surprising turn of events Royce beat Emerson!

So in the finals were Camden and Royce! With Royce being under 8 he can still use his hands for support on the floor, but still it was kind of unfair being against Camden since he has had so many more years of experience, a point-ier nose and a few Jellybean Race titles under his belt.

I took a video of the final race to determine WHO will pick where we go eat dinner!

video

That video showed what could VERY well be the BEST finals race we've ever had.....and most definitely the best reaction by the winner (and the fans) AND the loser. hahaha.

The winner handshake.....

And Royce picks Dairy Queen to go eat at.

Seriously?!?!?!?! 

Random Smith

Here's a glimpse into some Smith life during a week or so span.

Check out these "wacky" hair styles for Wacky-hair day at school.

YES, I cause quite the scene at the grocery store every time I go. This is a normal cart full of stuff for a week's worth of dinners. (DEFINITELY doesn't count all my milk/egg runs)

My kids LOVE the snow and we really didn't get any this winter. so my kids fixed THAT and PAINTED some bushes white by their Girl's "clubhouse" they made on the side of our house.....that you can see from the road.....in a ghetto kind of way.

Brooks likes to pay the boys to do things around the house for them to learn how to do them. Here they are learning out to change out a toilet and install a new one. (and me at the bottom of the stairs saying, "you better have drained it all the way! No leaking on my carpet!")

I mean, let's be serious here.....this is REALLY what I need to invest in!

Emerson caught a bird in our house. Not an usual thing.....animals seem to find our house...even the human-kind.

Case in point....THIS dog. She's huge and showed up on our doorstep one morning.

The little kids loved and loved on her that first day that she was there during the whole night (barking by our front door for us to let her in and waking us up......no, we didn't let this giant in). Come morning the kids were willing to go out in the chilly weather to still run around with this dog, make it crowns, pet, share blankies with, snuggle and sit on.

I couldn't get RID of this dog and no one knew whose it was! We would leave and she would run in our garage, we would play in the back yard and the babies would just sit by the gate and stick their fingers through.

Now I'm all for dogs....but this thing was a BEAST. And both Brooks and I are allergic. The babies would open the door to let her in. Neighbor kids would do the same. I was going crazy because I believe there should be a RULE that you can NOT keep a dog that makes its way into your house and yet is too big to push out. 

Yes, a VERY strict rule because when Lola (it turns out that was her name) wants to stay inside she will drop into 400lb deadweight and slippery wood floors are my only chance to get her back out.

#whateverLolawantsLolagets

Bathrobe or NO BATHROBE this dog HAD to be pushed out....even if I end up heavy breathing afterward and we have to hide in our house and not let anyone in or out for fear of her breaking in and permanently adopting us. (like the cat did that had to learn the hard way we didn't want it around)

We DID find Lola's owners and they live neighborhoods away....with a broken back yard fence. So we found her on our front porch a few times after returning her before they could fix their fence. 

The pump has been treated as a church microphone (raises and lowers like a church microphone) since Aleeya was little so it's nothing new around here.... but the look of intensity in Everly's song IS!

We may not have gone anywhere for Spring Break but it doesn't mean that awesome and amazingly entertaining things can't come to US. Like the city crew that was re-doing all the sewage pipes on our road out our front window!

WHY did it entertain my kids for so long you ask?

Well there was a special worker in a red hat that either didn't CARE he was showing 2 feet's worth of bum-crack when he bent down or he liked an extra breeze. Regardless, it was a good hour's worth of belly laughs from all my kids.

Probably the worst case of crack I've seen in public. The kids just kept hoping that he would bend down again and not the other workers.  Then when he would, the gut-laughs would begin.

Does it make me an awful mom/person to admit it was making me die laughing too?

See? Who needs to go looking for entertainment when it's all in-house for me!