It's My Birthday!! And Other Things About Me....

This has been an adventure packed couple of days!  When I last saw you, I had just found out I had a broken bone in my foot.  It was a small avulsion type break at the base of my little toe.  We got right in to see the pediatric orthopedist Monday afternoon.  Turns out, he is the same one I saw when I was three weeks old with a right hip click.  He checked it out to make sure it wasn't a dislocating problem.  Mom loved him then and we love him know.  He explained how the fracture happened (When kids roll their foot like I did, the peroneous brevis spasms and pulls off a part of the base of the 5th metatarsal where it attaches.  When adults roll their foot, it breaks the ankle.  In case you were wondering.)  I ended up with a cast and I got to pick the color.  It was a hard decision but I went with highliter yellow because it would be easier to see all the signatures.  I can walk on it, I only have to wear it until June 10 and I can swim in it too.  The only real bummer is that I was going to softball camp the week I get my cast off and the Dr. didn't sound too excited about me going so we had to cancel that :(.  Other than that, we are happy with the outcome.  And I'm happy to be off crutches- that was a major pain the armpit.

That little detour didn't stop any of my birthday related fun.  On Tuesday, mom brought in Otter Pops and Hawaiian leis for everyone.

This picture is a little blurry but it's hard to keep 17 nine year olds corralled long enough for a picture.

It's hard to beat Otter Pops for a good time but beat it we did.  We had our end of year class party on Thursday at the Tucson Racquet Club.  We got swim, run around, play games, eat pizza all day long.  The teachers gave each kid a special award and I got a Remarkable Reader award.  Ms. Stalkfleet said I always had a pile of books on my desk to read- and not just little skinny books but big, thick books. Mom knows that because I usually made her carry them to class for me because they didn't fit in my backpack.

It was such a fabulous day that I almost didn't mind the obnoxiously itchy cast.  Amazingly enough, it was dry by the next morning.  Perfect!

Friday was our last day of school and that was pretty great.  We cleaned out our desks and I came out with two huge back packs full of stuff.  Both are still sitting on the dining room table waiting to be gone through.  I think mom is waiting until I'm gone for a few hours because I like to hang on to a lot, ok, everything if I lay eyes on it.

Saturday was even better, if you can believe it!  My friends Claire and Lily came over for my birthday sleep over.  We decorated up the inside of the RV (AKA The Party Bus!), put some movies on, got some snacks out and headed up to Dave and Buster's in Phoenix.

Dad was our fearless driver, navigating us through the holiday traffic and picking up the bill....

After a fun filled few hours there, we headed back into Tucson.  The three of us proceeded to lock our selves in my room for most the night, only coming out to get cake-pops.

We finally got to sleep around 10:30.  (At least that's what we told mom.  She and dad went to bed at 10 and our only instructions were to be quiet.)  We did OK until someone got up to go to the bathroom at 2:30.  We then decided we couldn't sleep so we turned on the lights and kind of woke mom up.  She wasn't overly excited about that and let us know.  In hind sight, she probably could have been a little nicer but she doesn't think too clearly at 2:45 in the morning.

After everyone went home, we spent most of Sunday laying around watching movies.  It was a beautiful day outside but we were all a little tired and couldn't imagine much more than pressing play on the remote.  We did manage to eat dinner out on the patio.  It has been a unseasonably cool and pleasant May here- only 84 degrees on Sunday.  Unheard of for this time year!

After hitting the hay early on Sunday and getting a good night's sleep, we were able to properly celebrate my real birthday.  Grandma Sue came over and took us to IHOP for my favorite breakfast, then we went to see a movie AND THEN we went to Cheesecake factory for dinner.  I really wanted to go there because I love their Oreo milkshakes and I wanted to do some shopping at the mall where it is located.  Yes, me.  I wanted to do some shopping.  We headed to the Children's Place and mom turned me loose.  She was looking for summer clothes for me and I came back with this look.  I totally love it.  Mom thinks I rock the head band and sunglasses but was a little taken aback at how grown up I look.  A preview of things to come.....

To sum it all up, I had a spectacular week and I should have end of school/birthdays every month!

Well, It Was A Good Weekend.....

Oh my goodness- the end of school is so close, I can taste it!  5 more days but really we can't count even that many since my class party is all day on Thursday and Friday is a half day.  Woot woot!

We had a nice, easy week.  Nothing to exciting to report and that is good.  Dad had his off Friday and spent the morning bike riding and the afternoon relaxing.  Mom and I got home from work/school and we headed out to dinner.  Because we go out to eat at the  geriatric hour, we were done in time for dad to head out for a night ride and a beer with some of his friends.  Mom and I held down the fort and kept Ginger company.  It was all good.

I had my last game of the season on Saturday.  We lost by one run but I did OK.  I got two hit- not big home run hits but good, solid ones.  One would have been an RBI but our runner didn't step on home plate as she crossed.  Oh well- so goes our season!

Saturday night, we met my friend Simon and his parents at Playformance for a fun night until.....

Playformance is a super fun kid's gym with big foam things to climb on, walls and ropes to climb, dodge ball to play.  They are also conveniently right next door to Borderlands Brewery.  So Saturday night, they had a Parent's Night Out so Simon and I hung out there and wore ourselves out while the grown ups went next door for beer and grown up stuff.  The fun was over about 9 and the parents headed over to pick us up.  I mentioned that I had had a collision with one of the other kids and now my foot hurts.  Because I have been known to be a bit dramatic on occasion, mom told me to sleep it off and it will be better in the morning.  In mom and dad's defense, there was no swelling and I said it only hurt when I walked, not when I jumped or run.  So there's that.  But when morning came, I had a nice big bruise and swelling so off to the urgent care we went.  9 AM on a Sunday morning is a nice time to go to urgent care if you have too.  Pretty quiet.  It turns out I have a Salter-Harris Type 1 fracture of my 5th metatarsal.  So now, I am on crutches with a referral to an ortho specialist.  It's kind of a crappy time for this- our softball playoffs are next week, I have the UofA softball camp in three weeks and fun times coming up with Nana D and Mr. Walker in 4 weeks.  We'll see what the doctor says before we get too bummed....

Happy Mother's Day!

Well.   This has been a pretty spectacular day ( a pretty spectacular weekend, come to think of it) for mom but we'll get to that in a minute.

We had a pretty lowed keyed week- no softball games this week and only one practice.  Mom did have snack bar duty Tuesday night from 6-8 but that wasn't too bad.  And it saved us $200.00.  At the beginning of the season, we have to write the league a check for $200.00 and if we don't do a shift of snack bar duty, the check gets cashed.  Tough stuff!  Mom kind of likes doing that sort of stuff and she got to meet some other moms so it was all good. 

We made it through the week and mom had a girl's night out scheduled so Dad and I headed out with Uncle Brian and his kids for dinner and a little shopping.  Mom had a great time catching up with friends and I know the dad's had an equally fun night with the kids!

Everyone had a kind of late night and unfortunately, we had to get up bright and early to get to my 9AM softball game.  We did all right- lost by 1 run.  No hits for me because that's because the pitchers were not good.  It's really hard to hit home runs with the ball rolling across the plate.

Mom and I spent the day relaxing on the couch while dad was busy with Mother's day prep.  He surprised mom with a chaise lounge for poolside!  This has been missing from our backyard for forever and now mom can "watch" (read: take a nap) while I'm swimming.  Saaaweeet!

We all went to be early Saturday and slept in Sunday.  Mom went out for a run and while she was gone, dad and I were little house elves.  She came home to find the beds made, the kitchen cleaned up, the laundry done and floors vacuumed.  It was pretty spectacular.  We even managed to have breakfast waiting for her.  I convinced dad that mom REALLY wanted doughnuts for breakfast and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I have been wanting doughnuts for the past several weeks.  I was pretty positive that she would want a croissant doughnut too so that is what we got her. And since we were there, I decided we shouldn't wast the trip and got me a doughnut too.  And it was good.  And mom loved it because she can never break down and buy them for herself.

We then headed out to see Grandma Sue for a little bit and then up to the fancy mall for some shopping.  After that outing, we left mom to her lounger while dad and I went to Toys R Us to look for some new Skylanders.  We came home to find her snoring away in her lounge chair with book on her chest and drool on her chin.  Told you it was a fabulous day!

We wrapped up the evening with dad making mom's favorite chicken dish.  I told her she could watch whatever she wanted on TV for the evening like Survivor or Top Gear.  Again, just because those are my favorites had nothing to do with my suggestions.
It was a super great day all around and we hope everyone had a great day as well!

This Week in Sports

We had a pretty uneventful week this past week and that is a good thing.  It was finally warm enough to get into the pool for a bit so I donned my eye protection and got my speed boat out onto the water.  It was pretty awesome.

I had a softball game Wednesday afternoon and we weren't sure how it was going to go.  I had a huge meltdown right before the game because I think I should be a professional player and mom and dad keep telling me I have to practice more.  I don't know what this practice thing is exactly but I'm pretty sure it's not something I want to do.  Anyhoo- after a screaming, door slamming fit, I got ready for my softball game and proceeded to hit a huge home run.  It wasn't a "ball through the left fielder's legs, error" home run.  It was a real, honest to goodness,  over the head of the left fielder home run.  And there was someone on third so I got two RBIs out of it to boot.  I'm thinking practice is not the answer but throwing fits....

On Friday night, my school had our Art Expo night.  This is the night when all of our art work from the past year is on display.  It was a really cool night and mom and dad were really impressed with everyone's artistic talent.

We made these really cool silk paintings,

and a wire sculpture horse among other things.

Even though my best friend Claire and I were supposed to be docents for the evening, we spent most of it running around being goofy but it was all good.

I had another softball game Saturday night.  I was expecting big things hitting wise but our ump had other ideas.  We try not to say anything bad about the umps because they are essentially volunteering their time. But.  Our ump was about 110 years old and couldn't stand up straight or bend down so his strike zone was whatever he could see out of his one good eye.  He was calling strikes that rolled across the plate and that the catcher had to fall over to catch.  Oh well.  I did have a fairly good night in the field with two good catches at third and at second base.  We did win so that was a good thing.

On Sunday, my friends Max and Claire came over for a few hours and we Minecrafted, Skylandered and swam for the afternoon and it was good.  While the kids were busy, dad cleaned the fish tank and mom made salted caramel ice cream and brownies.  And it's dang good ice cream if she does say so.

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

The Blog is Up!

Whew- we made it through the week and it was a tough one.  After a great but sleepless weekend last weekend, mom came down with my cold.  She has decided I am a little machine when it comes to cold viruses.  Although I didn't feel great, I was able to take some medicine and keep on trucking.  Mom on the other hand was completely wiped out by my little bug.  She missed work on Tuesday and went home at noon on Wednesday.  Lucky dad didn't even catch a sniffle.

Thankfully, everyone felt better by Thursday because dad was headed to Prescott, AZ for a mountain bike race and my best friend Claire was coming for a sleepover on Friday.  It was Claire's first time for a sleep over so mom was a little concerned we'd be making midnight run back to Claire's house but she did great.  She and I spent most of the evening locked in the guest room playing Minecraft.  It was a totally perfect night for everyone- Claire and I were totally occupied and mom had wine.  Meanwhile, up in Prescott, Dad was totally being taken care of by our friends who also went up to ride.  He got to feast on baked ziti and enjoy adult company.

Saturday was a quiet day. Claire went home about 11, mom and I ran some errands and then I took a good long nap.  I had to get rested for my 6PM softball game.  We did fairly well, only losing by one run.  I walked once and got a super nice, hard hit single.  I played second and actually remembered to cover first when the time came.  All around a good game.  

While we were napping and softballing, dad was racing his heart out in Prescott.  He actually spent some time riding with the women's 5 time world mountain biking champion.  It sounds like she was pretty impressive (as you would expect).  He finished with total ride time of 3 hours 16 minutes, not including the 1/2 hour bottle neck to go pedal up the first hill.  A good showing overall by team Goedel.

And while mom was drinking wine and eating cookies for dinner, dad was enjoying a well earned prime rib dinner.  Mom is really going to make an effort to be on this trip next year.

Dad came home on Sunday and mom and I headed out to see Newsies.  We switched our original tickets from Saturday evening to the Sunday matinee at 2 PM. We left a little early and stopped to get some ice cream and enjoy a relaxing afternoon.  We arrived at the theater, smile, smile, happy, happy at 1:30, plenty of time to get settled, go to the bathroom etc.  Only to find out the show started at 1.  Bummer. Undaunted, we headed in, snuck to our seats and watched the rest of the show.

I liked it but there was too much kissing in the second half.  Gross.

We got home earlier than expected to find out Grandma Sue was bringing us dinner.  Homemade lettuce wraps with sticky rice.  It was a two-fer.  Mom didn't have to cook AND we got a super yummy meal out of it.  Mom and I took advantage of the extra time and headed to the park to enjoy a perfect kite flying afternoon.

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

All Around Fun Weekend

So not only are we getting the blog done on time, we are actually early.  It is 11 AM Sunday morning and mom is gettin' er done.  Mainly because we are pretty tired and she knows comes 5 o'clock tonight, there will be no blog writing.

We started our weekend with my school's spring play called "Rats!"  It's a really cute musical about a town overrun with rats.  I got to play Wendy Krinkle and although I only had two lines, I pulled out all the stops.  Everybody did a great job and mom is always amazed at what Ms. Faltico is able to coax out of us.

We worked so hard and for so many weeks on this.  I had such a great time that I was sad when it was over.
Because my softball game was moved from Saturday evening to Friday evening, we had a whole free weekend and decided to take advantage of it and go camping.  So after my play ended, we headed home, got our jammies on, loaded up Ginger and took the RV up to Rose Canyon Lake on Mt. Lemmon.  We made it to our campsite about 9:30 that night and it was a little hard to settle down so we didn't actually crawl into bed until about 11.  Ginger was a little (OK, a lot) restless and spent most of the night pacing and panting in mom's face.  We were up and going fairly early on Saturday- see previous sentence.  Dad made us awesome pancake and bacon breakfast out in wide open outdoors while mom took Ginger for a run to wear her out a little.

Once we all had full bellies, we walked down to the lake to do some fishing.  We thought it was going to be our usual of fishing all day and catching nothing but we found a pretty sweet spot and managed to catch two trout!  It was pretty awesome and I was so looking forward to watching mom and dad eat the trout for dinner.  ( I sure wasn't going to put that anywhere near my mouth- ew.)  But.  My parents disappointed me once again and gave the fish away to the family fishing next to us.  They already had about 8 so we figured they were actually going to do something with them.  I think dad was secretly glad he didn't have to clean them.

So despite the sadness of having to give my fish away, we had a really great day.  We all took naps, mom actually read a whole magazine, cover to cover- you know all the good stuff in life!
We headed home fairly early on Sunday morning and it's back to the grind.  We hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Springtime Update

All kinds of good spring time things to report.  And we figured if we waited much longer, it would the summertime update.

Spring is always so pretty in Tucson.  If you can deal with the obnoxious amounts of pollen from the Acacia trees, the Palo Verde trees and the Mesquite trees, it's almost paradise.

This is the view from mom's work- she just loves all the different shades of green.  

She calls this picture "50 Shades of Green".  See how clever she is.....

We headed  to Albuquerque for Easter.  We never go back at Easter but we had to see Uncle Adam and Aunt Erin's new house.  They moved down from the mountains and have rejoined civilization.  It's a great house and we spent all kinds of time there.  We also spent all kinds of time at the new Dave and Busters that just opened up.  That almost makes Abq. worth it for dad.  This D&Bs had a new Star Wars game that was awesome.  It made all of us a little motion sick but it was totally cool!

After a fun afternoon there, we headed up to Uncle Adam and Aunt Erin's to color Easter eggs and decorate the bunny cake.  This was Sophia's first time with both of those and she had an awesome time (we think).  She was all hands in on the egg decorating and showed a good liberal hand with the jelly beans on the cake.  Just how it should be.  I was a pretty good Big Cousin and tried to show her the ropes the best I could but kids are a lot of work......

( Guess which side is Sophia's?)

Easter morning, we all headed back down to the house for the egg hunt.  The Easter bunny did a great job hiding all the eggs and the whole gang got into it- even Moufasa.  I showed Sophia and Brendan the major "how to's" for hunting and Sophia got it like a champ.  Brendan had his own plan but had fun none the less.

 ( Could I look any more like my dad in this picture?  I don't think so.....)

In the afternoon, Dat dat and Mr. Walker headed out for a mountain bike ride and Nana, mom and I went for a walk to enjoy the sunshine.  We ended up at mom's favorite oak tree.  It's so pretty back there now- too bad there are houses and big PRIVATE PROPERTY!!! signs everywhere.

Everyone came up for Easter dinner and we got a few family pictures.  Nana and mom took turns closing their eyes during the pictures so none of them turned out totally, 100% good.  I think that's why they invented photo shop isn't it?

  (This is how dat dat made through a weekend with the Walkers)


We headed back home Monday morning and on the way into to town, we stopped to pick up Monkey.  We love sending her to this boarding place because she comes home so exhausted, she sleeps for 3 days.  It's awesome!  I was kind of tired too.....

It was back to the grind for the week.  Dad headed up to Prescott, AZ to test ride a course he is racing on in 2 weeks so mom and I were on our own for the weekend.  I had a softball game on Saturday at the beautiful fields in Oro Valley.  While I was warming up, mom took Ginger on a walk around the area and found this huge, flowering Palo Verde.  All those teeny, tiny yellow flowers.  That fall off.  And usually land in the pool.  But they are pretty trees.

Mom then found a sweet spot in the shade with a good view of the game and was able to watch us actually win a game.  We are now 1-3 which isn't too bad considering we have no pitching and no one has really hit a ball yet this season.

Dad got home Saturday night and we all slept in Sunday morning. In the afternoon,   I went to my friend Shelby's birthday party and had an awesome time.  I was the only one tall enough to drive the go carts so I was pretty popular for awhile.

After that fun afternoon, Grandpa Vern and Grandma Sue took me out to dinner.  It was a perfect way to end a pretty darn good weekend.  Hope everyone has a wonderful week!