Ten on Wednesday

1. This guy is getting so little sleep this week.  It is hard to fathom how late he routinely gets to stay up and how many naps he misses.  At 3, his big brother's schedule was still pretty tight and naps/bedtimes were carefully observed.  We, however, do things as a family and I like that even if sometimes he is out late.  Here he is yelling at B to cover 3rd (as was everyone around him).  He does look so big here.  Someone in my office even commented on this today as they had seen the picture and couldn't believe this was our littlest lad.

2.  Even with all the baseball game everyone wanted to practice more during Zane's game.  We had come early to watch the Lake Monsters as we haven't seen a full game yet this season.  It was adorable, simple, and great fun. Everyone gets a hit every time in t-ball at this point so there is so much more action than with the 8yos where hits are still pretty rare in kid-pitch land.  The little boys and M especially loved practice. I tried to capture E in his attempted catcher's crouch as it was so cute, but sadly missed it.  I am terrified that M will decide she wants to play softball..... Can you tell we had games two days in a row and were at the baseball field for 3+ hours yesterday? There are four games left in the season, two of which I will miss so I'm sure I'll make it :)  B, for the record, is generally doing well and scored in the game yesterday. (Ps, thanks to all the Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and Grandparents who join us for these games!)

3. I love this adorable picture.  I found a praying mantis in the bushes and Brent captured it.  He helped M hold it and did a little science time explaining how it captures food, etc.  They are adorable.

4. Our first night to stay up late was for the Lunar Eclipse/Blood Moon on Sunday.  We had our kids come outside and were quickly joined by more kids and neighbors until there were 16 people, many phones, cameras, chairs and our telescope set up to enjoy the show. I love that everyone joined us and it was great fun to hang out together.  Our neighborhood is lovely and I'm glad we could share the telescope fun with everyone.  The moon was pretty awesome too :)

5. My job is intense right now.  The uptick in responsibilities, tons of "new" stuff I know nothing about, and my normal busy season are colliding.  Before one of those meetings I was leading with very little clue what I was doing I decided to blast "Virtuoso" through my house first --- sort of like athletes before a big game.  Decided to at least fake being the virtuoso of project planning for today!

6. Lady M was sick this weekend. It was pitiful.  She is rarely sick and wasn't even terribly sick this time, but mostly curled up in balls on pillows, the couch, or her bed for a day or so with an intermittent fever and stomach ache.  She eventually rallied sometime on Sunday. This did shift all of our plans for the weekend to basically no plans, which wasn't such a bad thing.

7.  B attended his second slumber party -- both with his friend Adam. I think they may have gone to bed a bit earlier this time.  It sounds like plenty of junk food, electronics, and then doughnuts and a movie the next day. I took the littles to see the movie the night before with Audra so everyone got to have some extra fun. He didn't return until nearly 1pm on Saturday so he missed out on the coffee/farmer's market run, but seemed fine with that.

8. E continues to be adorable and loves being outside.  He also continues to dislike potty training.  He has childcare pretty intermittently right now for a variety of weird reasons.  He is pretty excited to get to stay home whenever that comes up and will get to play with Grandma Friday morning, or so I hear. He is a sneaky guy and will find his way outside anyway he can, scarily without telling people.  I love that he has good safe places to play, but really has to still have an older buddy if he is going to be in the front yard as his judgment is suspect.

9. Brent and I now have bicycles, which so far we haven't ridden further than a couple houses away.  In theory, we'll go on rides together sometimes on nights when my mom stays over or ride with the kids in some combination.  E needs a seat or carrier of some kind probably so we can all go on family rides. I hadn't ridden a bike in MANY years, but it seems to be coming right back.  I refused to try it without a helmet though as my brain is probably one of our most valuable family resources at the moment.

10.  We had planned to build a table for the craft space in the new house.  It was already becoming clear that that was not going to happen anytime soon. I discovered a local craftsman who is now building us a table and two benches.  The table is only maybe 10% more than I was planning to spend making it ourselves and will actually (gasp) be here by November.  I'm really excited to get to work with an actual person in Oklahoma building furniture themselves.  It is in no way fancy and we definitely "could" have done it ourselves with some tools borrowed from Zach, but this is much less angst inducing and actually happening in a month or less.  We also ordered a storm shelter last week to get state fair pricing.  It is being installed in about a month too.  Progress all around!