Farewell Infinite Soccer Season

I like soccer. I like my kids playing soccer. I even like the whole AYSO organization at makes it super cheap and possible for my kids to play soccer.
I could just do with about four weeks less of the soccer season. I miss my Saturdays. I really don't appreciate watching my kids play in bad weather. And AYSO should really invest in some heavy duty stakes, because I'm not a fan of having to actually stand and hold the goal posts down to keep them from blowing away in 100mph winds.
With all that being said, I think that being a part of a team was really good for my kids. The other kids and parents on Bekah's and Jacob's teams were awesome. Bekah and Jacob didn't like the bad weather either, but other than moaning about that, they never complained about actually playing soccer. I think they really enjoyed themselves. Here are a few pics from their last games last Saturday.
If Bekah could have had it her way, she would have been goalie for every period of every game. And she was pretty good at it too! There were about three games in a row where she didn't let a single ball past her whenever she was goalie. We called her the brick wall.

But when she did get her turn playing the field, she did a great job. She wasn't really the one to take charge of the ball and score a goal, but she always played her position well and paid attention to what was going on on the field.

 Her team was the Tigers. I took my face paints to their last game and gave them all tiger eyes. They were a super good bunch of girls.

Jacob's game was after Bekah's game. It was late in the afternoon, and we were just doing our best to be there. That's why we arrived with a kid wearing a cape, a giraffe with some worn off face paint, and a girl with tiger eyes. Oh and Jacob had leopard-print arms.
His team was the Decepticons. (He was a big Transformer fan at the beginning of the season...now all I hear about is animals).

Jacob was an AWESOME defender. He loved to hang back and make sure that absolutely nothing from the other team got in their goal. (He's in U7 - they have smaller goals and no goalies). The other teams got past him some of the time, but for the most part he really kept the ball rolling the other direction.

And now for some pictures of the giraffe. Marianne LOVES this giraffe costume, and it was just her luck to find it as we were walking out the door. The weather had turned a little chilly and I figured all the fur was just some extra insulation.
She hugged her dad, (note the crazy remains of face paint),













played with Bekah,

And did some good ol' fashioned tackling with Beau and Bekah.

 We'll be out there again in the fall, but I really am happy to have my Saturdays back!
 

Blessing Baby Maverick

Rus was in shock the night his good friend Clint called him up out of the blue to invite us to the blessing of their new baby boy Maverick. Clint is not really the type to pick up the phone and call an old friend. He's not much of a talker face to face (unless it involves vehicles, guns, or redneck stuff), so phone conversation is really a stretch. So when Rus hung up the phone he said we were going to Safford the next weekend because Clint called and asked.
And we did. And it was a great trip. We didn't want to descend on them with our entourage, and we knew they had a lot of family in town already, so we decided to stay with Rus's parents in Lordsburg (Only 70 miles from Safford). I know I've already mentioned the shooting range in Roger's backyard...we all were able to enjoy a little target practice.
Each kid got a chance to shoot Grandpa's .22

Bekah...

Jacob...

I love this multigenerational pic, these men (+boy) right in their element.

 Beau...

I wish I could explain Beau's face in this picture...

 I even got a turn...I am shooting Louise's single action rifle in this picture. I really liked her gun.

We spent Sunday with Clint and Nicole and their family, going to church, eating good food, and visiting. I had to take Marianne out of sacrament meeting to change her bum, and as we were walking out she loudly exclaimed, "BYE!!" And waived to everyone we passed. I just tried to keep my head down as I laughed embarrassedly, but I heard later that the bishopric got a kick out of her earnest farewell.
I loved holding Maverick. He is a sweet baby. I painted a picture for Nicole of him laying on the floor, sucking on a stuffed animal goose. (Top Gun. If there is a Maverick, there must be a Goose.) I also raided Louise's fabric stash and sewed him a stuffed goose. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of both.
Here we all are...I'm amazed how Rus, Clint, Nicole and I have evolved from four single kids to two married couples to two full grown families. (Ooh - you can see the picture I painted sitting on the shelf on the right.) Jacob is holding Maverick. Marcy is sitting next to Bekah and Merry is next to Clint. A picture of their angel son Marshall is on the shelf.
I dearly love Clint and Nicole. We have traveled quite a ways with them, some roads pretty rough. Our relationship is pretty special.

It was a great trip...hopefully we'll see more of each other in the future!!

 

Easter

The weather was forecasted to be really nice for Easter, and I was just itching to use our brand-spanking new patio, so we invited everyone over for a ham dinner. By everyone, I mean all the family we could possibly claim in the area. Jason and Joy and their five, Carla and Doug and their four, and Jake and DeAnn and their two. (That's a lie, there are more cousins and relations in the area we didn't invite, but they have grown children and wouldn't appreciate the special dynamic that fifteen children under the age of nine provide...) Doug and Carla also invited a coworker and her mother; we were happy to have them over too.
Carla had found a great way to teach about Jesus' resurrection with different types of symbolic foods. She prepared all of the foods and then had the kids come up, one by one, to help her explain how they symbolized a part of Christ's death and ressurection. It was really neat; perhaps a new tradition was born. 

 Of course we carried out the traditional Easter egg hung, complete with "don't touch any cactus," and the requisite pair of tweezers for the children who got poked anyway.

 I just realized that Jacob somehow managed to be absent for this picture. I'm not sure if he's hiding or simply not present...We are also missing Joy's baby Wyatt.

 Joy and Rachel

 It was a really fun and special day, thanks to good family and a loving Heavenly Father.

Our New Patio

I am so sorry for the weird half-done post that has been lingering here the last few days. I wanted to post about our new patio and Easter, and now I have pictures from Clint and Nicole's blessing of baby Maverick, but technology has betrayed me again and so some of that will have to wait.
I'll start with the concrete...
Rus and I have been looking for a van to replace mine for the last six months. We bought (and temporarily enjoyed) Big Mama, but decided we needed something that fit us better. (Not so big, easier on gas...) So we scoured craigslist and the newspaper and the lemon lot on base, but couldn't find a good fit. Then one day while Rus was bemoaning not finding a van and I was bemoaning not having a back yard, he came up with a brilliant idea - I drive his van, he buys a junker, we keep my old van until it dies (but don't really drive it because it's not reliable), and I GET MY BACKYARD!
Voila. He bought his baja bug, and I ordered concrete. We had the talented Armando and his crew come set up the forms and pour the concrete. I would give Armando nine out of ten stars...he lost one because he couldn't speak a word of English and so I had to have my lovely cousin Joy come be the translator. She was so wonderful to have herself and her kids here every time I needed to talk to Armando, and to be the go-between on the phone, and then to hang out all day when the men were pouring concrete.
So our new patio extends fifteen feet further into the yard than the old one. It runs the length of the existing one which is about twenty five feet. We also had a ten by ten pad poured right outside our bedroom windows because eventually we hope to put French doors there instead. We had a three foot wide sidewalk poured down the length of the house in Colonel's dog run so that he won't be tempted to dig up alongside the house. Also it makes it nicer for the kids when they have to clean up his poop.
The actual day of pouring was fun and interesting...just picture three moms (myself, Joy, and DeAnn, who thought she was joining us for an Easter egg hunt), and our collective ten children...then add in four Mexicans, a concrete mixer truck, and hundreds of square feet of "off limits" area directly between the kids and the wide open desert where the kids wanted to play. If you take that all into consideration, maybe you'll be surprised that the kids only stepped on the wet concrete four times. That's when I learned how to say "I'm sorry" in Spanish. Four times
Here are all of the pics of the event:

Here are some more pictures of the finished product:

 Our new patio outside our bedroom windows. I signed "Keri loves Rus 5 more" in the concrete on the right hand corner of the pad next to the house. Someday there will be french doors there so we can actually access the patio from our room. And someday flowers will grow and my sad lilac bush will look like a happy lilac tree.

 Another view of the patio. I would like to insert here that I am the digger of that beautiful trench you see. I spent a few hours a day for a few days digging that trench. I was determined to get it all ready so that Rus would lay the pipes for our future flower beds and fountain.
[And now that it has been weeks since I took that picture, I can happily tell you that the pipes are laid and just today we filled the trenches in with dirt. Raised flower beds - here we come!!]

 Here's a shot of the sidewalk that now adorns the inside perimeter of Colonel's dog run. It's nicer for the kids to walk on to pick up poop, and now Colonel can't dig up against the house. The kids signed their names on the concrete right next to the ac unit.

Marianne! Stop dropping those eggs!!

All I could think of as I cleaned egg slime off of my milk and bagged oranges and tortillas was, "I am so glad this isn't poop!"
I was at Walmart, a place I have frequented less and less because I don't leave happy, buying just a few things and I was almost done...But Beau wanted to look at shorts so we stopped to check them out. Marianne was in the back of the cart, and I thought she was content drinking her milk and sitting on some gatorade bottles. Little did I know that as Beau and I were debating whether he was a size 5 or 4, she was standing up, looking for something to do, spotting the 18-count carton of eggs, pulling up the lid, pulling it up too far, watching the eggs drop, drop, drop, seeing them land on the tortillas, the oranges, crack open on the milk, send slime down to the large box of applesauce on the rack below...
It was an instant flashback to six years ago when Jacob had diarrea at Walmart, while sitting in the front of the cart, and his foamy yellow poop slimed everything in the front of the cart. I was in the check out lane, without wipes, and after cleaning up the poop that made it to the floor with some paper towels, I ran to the bathroom with the cart to cry and mourn in shame. And clean all the poop covered food so that I could later put it on the conveyor belt and pay for it. I have never been so grateful for food packaging in all my life.
So, yes, Marianne needlessly decimated almost a dozen eggs. Yes, it made a mess. Yes, the walmart people had to come clean it up and I had to borrow their paper towels, again, to insure that I wouldn't drip egg-slime all over the store.
But it wasn't poop.

Roadtrip!

Last week I loaded up the kids, kissed my love goodbye, and headed south. This seemingly swift departure was predicated by lots of yelling (on my part), and whining (on their part), and not so idle threats. (If you run through the store one more time, there will be no McDonalds on the drive down! - there was no McD on the way down.)
But once all were happily nestled in the van, watching a movie or napping (Marianne), I felt like a freed bird watching the country go by...like I was experiencing my first glimpse of summer after a cold winter. The kids were really good on the drive down, and when they weren't I unplugged their dvd player.
We are lucky to have Rus' mom and dad live in Lordsburg, which is right on the way to Sierra Vista. It is five hours to Lordsburg and another two to Sierra Vista.
We pulled into his parent's driveway at about 3pm and saw Grandpa out waiting. Louise is the Activity Day leader and was at the church. As soon as we were out of the van, Grandpa had us steered in the direction of his newest amenity, a gun range behind the house. His brother was trying out a rifle at 100 yards, and while he did that the kids happily played in the sand and sticks. When he was done shooting, he let me put up a paper-plate target with a square of duct tape in the middle. I tried out his gun and hit the middle four out of five times. I'll give you a shiny nickel if your in-laws have a gun range. It was awesome.
We stayed the night there and even got to see some of the sights of Lordsburg the next day...a ghost town, an old mine, McDonald's, and - the kids' favorite - a tank and a gun that are on display at the Veteran's park.



Louise wasn't sporting a new doo - it was just really windy.

The kids had a great time climbing all over the tank and gun and wanted to know what every single piece of metal was for. That's where we needed Rus. He's good with random stuff like "what is this metal lever on this WWII tank?"
We left that afternoon for Sierra Vista. My mom had been up in Mesa the weekend before and was actually returning home that night, with Tyler and my niece and nephew Madison and Preston in tow (Amanda's two youngest). Bekah and the boys were so happy to have Madison and Preston to play with! Madison is nine and Preston is eleven. They were both so good and so fun with my kids.

The next day was my mom's birthday! Tyler made pancakes and while my mom enjoyed hers, Marianne enjoyed them more, eating almost her whole plate of pancakes! Sorry Mom for the robe shot...

Bekah and Madison set up a spa on the back porch and gave my mom (and everyone who was willing), foot baths and pedicures and lotion-rubs. They even had a snack case and would happily provide their clients with a snack.
They were so cute, both of them hunched over and painting my mom's toes.

Marianne loves nail polish and she made sure she got a turn, too.

We saved the real birthday celebration for the next day because that's when Amy and Mike and their kids arrived. If you're curious how ten children and five extra adults all slept in that house, well, I guess I'd just have to say that no one had to sleep on the counter...

We went swimming that day and then made a wonderful birthday dinner of hamburgers and hot dogs and roasted veggies. I made some party hats for everyone. Tyler didn't get one because his hair was too short. And I accidentally was short two hats.

We had music playing loudly most of the weekend and that night was no exception. I made my dad dance with me and he took it from there, dancing with Marianne (who loves to dance), and Amy.



My mom had not wanted any dessert on her birthday because she had been treated a lot the weekend before, but luckily Amy didn't know that and brought a blueberry pie with her. Amy and I decided the pie needed ice cream, so we went to the store and picked some up along with a few cans of spray whipped cream. When we got home we had a whipped cream toss (thank you Lindsey!), where I would spray a little whipped cream on my wrist and then toss it in the air and then the kids would try to catch it with their mouths. It was messy and goofy and wonderful, and in the end it turned into an all out war where no one was spared. I would share a picture but all I actually have is a silly video that I can't load.
Of course we played scrabble that night. Marianne wanted to play, too, so we gave her her own tray and "letters." (cereal)

That was Amy's tray in front of hers...and while "groped" isn't an awful word (points-wise...word-wise it is an awful word), she never wound up playing it. She did win though, proving (she said), that she only lost at my house because it was an "away game" and she would never lose at "home." Hmph. At least I didn't lose...Dad did. By a lot.
The next day we all went on a "nature walk" at the San Pedro river. The old ornery people who were really there to see the birds and learn stuff tolerated us for about ten minutes. Or at least the kids tolerated them for about ten minutes. Then we took our own tour of the grounds. Marianne really wanted to walk in the river. She had boots on, I don't know why I didn't let her. Jacob spotted a hawk and a turtle. So far his animal count for the trip was three hawks, a javelina, a turtle and some ducks. He was, needless to say, very happy.
Later that day we left for home. Pollen attacked me and I left in a haze of kleenex and "bless-you's." We stayed the night in Lordsburg again and then made it home the next day.
Rus was happy to see us. He said the house was too big for one person and that it was too quiet. I said I wouldn't mind trying that first-hand sometime...
Are you curious what he did while we were gone? He worked on this, almost 24/7:

And now some happy pics of the original Bug for the finale...

The Cost of Doing Dishes

Dishes are done...yay.

It cost me one container of onion powder, half a jar of red pepper flakes, and a pinch (or fifty) of cayenne pepper...and a slight detour to the broom closet.