Signs of spring...

Ahh, spring.  Warm weather, baseball, flowers, storms....here are some pics from the last few days, not much else going on!

It's a bumper crop for irises this year

Another round of storms yesterday...I heard this go around 4 this morning. 

Tee-ball!

A little coaching from Daddy

So, other than the fact that we came home to find our herbs had all sprouted, green beans were coming up and dang cabbage worms were eating our brussel sprouts and broccoli, it's been a non-eventful week.   I'm rather upset about the worms, as we were going to try for an organic garden this year.  But what's the point if you don't have any plants left to get food from?!  

In Brant's words this morning on the way to school, "Mommy, I wish the only day of the week was Saturday!", thank goodness the weekend is near!

Happy Easter!

Easter morning dawned sunny and warm today, a pleasant change from the rain we've had for the last few days. It's always wonderful to wake up on Easter morning and see the weather fit the joy of the Resurrection.

But Brant had to find his Easter basket first, as the Easter Bunny always hides it.  We went on the hunt and finally found it hidden under Brant's bed.  He had lots of fun going through it, and in addition to a Lego City set, the Bunny left him a chocolate bunny (of course), a new jump rope, a Pez dispenser, chick that cheeps and a rubber band airplane.  Some assorted candies thrown in rounded out a very good basket, if I do say so myself.  The Lego set was half put together before breakfast, breaking only for church and lunch, then completed.

It was so hard to stand still for a photo on Easter morning!

Church was beautiful today!  The children had an egg hunt during Sunday school, but after seeing the butterflies they had raised from caterpillars and hearing the Resurrection story.

Listening to Pastor Jonathan, getting ready for a newsletter photo

On the hunt!

Thinking about picking up other colors of eggs besides blue and green....

One full basket!

The pre-school and elementary aged kiddos

Having juice in the fellowship hall and checking out eggs with a new friend

After church the butterflies were released, with the cross of flowers in the background.  We watched them fly out into in the yard, and I mentioned, due to our house being close to the church, that we might see one in our yard.  Don't you know it, about 3 hours later, one flew in!

Looking at the butterflies up close

Fly away painted ladies, fly away!

All in all, it was a beautiful day. we were happy to have Daddy home for the important part of it, and to have him go to church with us too.    As always, we greatly missed our family, especially sitting down for Easter lunch.  Much love to everyone!

Go Orioles! Brant's first tee-ball practice

Thinking we might get at least a week in between soccer and tee-ball, we were mistaken.  Thursday night the Orioles had their first practice.  We met Coach Derrick and the rest of the team.  One of Brant's soccer buddies is on the team as well, so all the faces weren't new.

Determined to sit at a practice and enjoy being a Mom, Daddy stepped in and helped coach the kiddos.  It's definitely different from coaching soccer, as it is a largely individual practice, instead of a team.   The team split their time between the infield practice (gator drills, fielding and running the bases) and outfield practice (batting stations, throwing and catching with the coach and Daddies).  Brant did really well.  He got some hits off the coach's pitches, solid hits off the tee and totally went for the balls when others hit.   Best of all, he loved it!

A little batting practice with Daddy

A hit!

Coach Daddy!

A little help with his stance  from Coach

Swing batter, batter, batter!

Tell me that ain't a ball player

Check out the ball cap, future Bruins baseball player!

So we were sort of surprised, as it's our first season, to hear the rules of the game.  There are two innings, each player gets to bat once per inning, with three coach pitches.  Then, if they don't get a hit off the coach, they put the tee out.  I guess I assumed that it's tee ball, so all the hits would be from the tee.  Silly me!

He's all geared out now, with a new bag for his equipment and baseball pants (I could just eat him up!).  A few more practices and then games start!  Let's go Orioles!!

The North Carolina Zoo

Over the past few years our family has really enjoyed our family zoo membership, but for some reason, it lapsed last summer and we just got around to renewing it.  So today was our first trip back in a year, and we chose a great day to go!  Grandma came too, adding to the fun!

he he, too funny!

There was a special exhibit about the Ghost Gators...rare white gators (never did figure out if they were just albino or an actual breed) which are good luck.

Inside the ostrich egg (over-sized of course).  But for us, they were dinosaur eggs.

Riding the rhino (can't do this in the summer, too hot!  )

At the elephant over-look.  Check out Brant's face!  

Searching for elephants in the helicopter

"Simba's Mommy"

Watching the lioness

Climbing one of the big rocks along the paths in the zoo

Watching the chimps

We loved Lemur Island...can't help but think of Madagascar!

Riding the endangered animals carousel.  Grandma got chosen to ride!

We got to wave at the cutest kid on the ride!

Riding the exhibit to show how energy can be generated by people and  the sun.

When they peddled fast enough, the sculpture moved

At the totally fun garden themed playground

Eating ice cream.  We all had one..quite the bang for the buck, especially for zoo food!

Still eating....

Almost done!  And seriously, only one drop on his jersey!  

Percy's brother (see other blog posts as to who Percy is)

Up close and personal with the harbor seals.

This gator was about the size of the one we saw in Florida.  The real big one was in quarantine after a medical procedure.

So we've had a great family day, and we are loving the weather! We've had a long to-do list that we've been working on, but had to take a fun break!  Lots more to do this week, but lots of fun too!

Storms, egg scramble and a low-country shrimp boil

We've had quite an exciting weekend around here.  I'm sure you all have heard about how hard our state was hit by the storms, and we were very lucky.  But that doesn't mean they didn't scare the crap out of us.  Thankfully, Daddy was still home or I would have been in the bathroom with Brant!   We knew these storms were coming, it's all that'd been talked about on the weather for the week.  We even knew about when they were going to hit. And hit they did.  I've never seen anything like it.  We just paced from window to window, watching nature's fury.  

Trees went down, Mom had about 2 feet of water in her front yard and her swing set was destroyed.   I looked out Brant's window and saw the porch swing going nuts. Telling Brantley we needed to go get it down before it broke the window, he was reaching for the door knob when this big black thing crashed by, and everything on the porch was gone.  A few seconds later and Brant would have been knocked out by our flying, yes flying, porch swing.  It landed about 20 feet away in our side yard, along with all our other porch stuff that didn't get destroyed.   An eyewitness spotted a tornado west of Elon, so that would hold to the scariness of the storm for us.  We are so very blessed and thankful that it didn't cause more damage, like east of us.

I didn't get a photo of the tree on it, or the water in Mom's yard, we were too busy cleaning up!

Neighbor's yard.  Brantley got our stuff cleaned up before I got a photo.

Needless to say, the Easter Egg Scramble got postponed to Sunday.  So after church, but before Mom Mom and Pop Pop got here, we headed out to the soccer fields.  There the Parks and Rec department had spread over 4,000 eggs.  The kids were divided into age groups, go was yelled and it was like a horde of little egg pickers!  It was over in like 5 minutes!  So much fun!

Empty basket...ready to scramble!

This is as close as Brant would get to the Easter Bunny!

Daddy giving Brant some last minute tips to run in front of the group...keep going past them when they stop!

Sooooo excited!

Scrambling!!

His full basket!

Brant moved up an age bracket this year, and was running with the kids up to age 7!  Not too bad for an almost 5 year old!

The most exiting part of the day was the arrival of Mom Mom, Pop Pop and Aunt Brenda, on their way home from Florida.  Brant was so very very excited, as we all were!  We've had a great visit with them, relaxing, playing corn hole and eating very well!  We decided to have a shrimp boil tonight, as Aunt Brenda had never had one, and it'd been a while since we had.  We spread newspaper on the table, and got to eating!

Stuffed now, Brant is down at Grandma's, with everyone, "pending the night."  We've got Maggie, Mom Mom and Pop Pops sweet little dog (as Tucker (Mom's cat) would NOT be happy if she was there!).  Watching the Phillies, getting sleepy...it's been a great day!