Endings and Beginnings

Well.  This has been quite a two weeks here.  We finally wrapped up our softball season with a three game series against the other Tanque Verde team to determine league champs.  It was a battle of titans.  Not really.  Both of our teams were really bad.  Unfortunately/fotunately, we lost two of the games.  We say unfortunately because it's always a little sad to see the season end, no matter how bad you are.  We say fortunately because the city tournament was being played in Oro Valley which is an hour from our house and games were at 8 o'clock at night.  So whew, we kind of dodged that bullet!  So now that softball practice is over, it took dad until Thursday night at 6 for him to announce he was bored.  Mom has lots of home projects for him so that'll keep him busy.

The following week happened to be my birthday week.  As I am learning from the master of birthdays (mom) I am prolonging the fun as much as possible.  If you remember, Nana D and Mister Walker came out at the beginning of May to celebrate early because it's never to early to celebrate.  Then Tuesday before my birthday, Grandpa Vern and Grandma Sue took us out to my favorite steak place for dinner.  It was super fun especially when the whole place sang me "Happy Birthday".  I wasn't even embarrassed and stayed sitting up in my chair instead of crawling under the table like I normally do.  I guess turning 11 brings a certain maturity.

On Wednesday, I brought in donuts to school to celebrate and it's always good when donuts are involved.

Thursday was my actual birthday and also the second to last day of school and the day of our class party.  I'm not sure a birthday could be any better.  We spent the day swimming, eating pizza and Eegees and running around all day.  The parents managed to corral the girls ( also known as the 5th Grade Girls Squad) for a picture.  No one except the parents wanted the boys in the picture so there are no boys in the picture.

Thursday night, mom made me birthday quiche which is my new favorite dinner and then I went for a birthday swim because I couldn't help myself!

Now, onto Friday.  That was the official last day of school.  Mom dropped me off and then met some other moms for a long, leisurely breakfast with mimosas and bloody marys to celebrate.  Although, I don't know what they were celebrating for.....
They were at breakfast long enough that it was time to pick us up from school since it was a half day and then a few of us went out to lunch so the real celebration could start.  These are just a few of my friends and this time, we even allowed a boy into the picture.  But we all like Jack so it was OK!

After a relaxing start to our first Saturday of summer, dad talked me into cleaning up my room/closet.  Mom has been bugging me for months to tackle it but I steadfastly refused.  Dad had the magic touch this weekend and we spent about 3 hours chucking and organizing stuff.  Even I think it's awesome to walk into my room and be able to see the floor and close the closet doors.  We could actually vacuum the whole floor and not just around stuff.

That super fun morning was followed by a true super fun afternoon- my birthday slumber party!  Mom has a low tolerance for craziness but she caved and let me invite three of my friends for a sleep over.  We started at Dave and Busters which has now opened in Tucson.  We had a fabulous time!  We hit the jackpot on tickets and ended up with 5600 tickets.  That allowed us to spend an exhausting amount of time in prize store.  Mom and dad think it was about 15 hours.  We finally got out of there and headed home for swimming, cake and .......

group Minecraft.  This is how we spent a good portion of our evening but at least we were all in the same world.

 Everyone finally headed home about 10:30 and then we were onto our next party.  We invited the Goods over for a last minute cookout/swim.  Madeline and I swam not stop for about 5 hours so needless to say, I slept super hard that night.

Monday was pretty quiet- we all slept in, did a little exercising, a little shopping and a lot of hanging out.  It was a great weekend and I don't think anyone is ready to return to the real world yet.  Happy Summer!

Happy Mother's Day!

This week in review:

We had my final two regular season softball games.  Same story, different night.  We did show a little more awareness on the defensive end of things and had some pretty good, almost outs.  We have league playoffs this week, best 2 out of 3 against the other Tanque Verde team.  They are having almost as bad a season as we are so it should be a heck of a series.....

We moved onto better things on Saturday.  It was Mother's Day weekend so we headed out to do a stay-cation at Tanque Verde Ranch which is now about 5 minutes from our house.  It was a perfect weekend- hot enough on Saturday that we could take advantage of the pool and cool enough on Sunday we could eat our breakfast outside.

We got there about 3 on Saturday and headed right for the pool.  After spending some there, we headed over to the saloon and then down to the evening bar-b-cue.  This is the same one we go to for annual Christmas party so it was fun to eat when it was warm this time.  We didn't even need jackets so that was kind of cool......(See what I did there?)

On Saturday, we got up bright and early Sunday morning so I could get in my horseback ride.  It was a breakfast ride but mom and dad aren't really riders so they walked up and met us a little later.  We had a good breakfast of blueberry pancakes, sausage, green chile eggs, biscuits.  It was deeeeelicious!

Even Santa Claus made an appearance but we didn't see Mrs Claus.

Productive Weekend

We had ourselves a semi productive, semi fun weekend.  Nana D and Mr. Walker came out for a visit so that was the fun part.  They come every May to celebrate my upcoming birthday and to watch some of my softball games.

We had a nice relaxing Friday night, starting with margaritas and chips and guacamole.  And then home-made spaghetti.  It was an international kind of night.

On Saturday, mom, Nana and I had a super lazy day.  Nana actually got to sit in the backyard and listen to the Cleveland Indians baseball game all day.  Mom just puttered around all day.  Dad and Mr. Walker however kept themselves busy most of the day.  Our pool equipment has been on its last legs since we bought the house and then the pool water turned a beautiful shade of green and wouldn't turn blue.  So dad decided since we had some free labor that this was the weekend to replace it all.  He put Mr. Walker to work cutting out old pipe and removing equipment and then they put all the new stuff in and it works like a charm.  The pool is blue again and the pump is so quiet- you can't hear it half way down the street anymore!

Saturday afternoon, we headed out for my softball game and we put Nana and Mr. Walker to work again helping mom out with field prep.  This involves a lot of dust and dirt and chalk and they were all kind of a mess after.  And unfortunately my game wasn't any better.  Once again, my team was kind of a mess and I had not a stellar night in the field.  I did hit a legitimate home run though so that was a bright spot.  I think it was all the pressure from my audience....

We had some pretty cactus flowers open up over the weekend- always pretty in the desert!