The No Pictures Update

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BILL AND DARA!!!!

(Chris took pics last night at soccer and hasn't gotten them "postable" yet.)

Last night Will and Noah had another soccer game. They played the only team that presents a challenge to them. While the score wasn't 9 or 10 or 11 to 0, it was a solid 6-0 win for them. Will scored 4 and Noah had 2. My favorite part of the evening was when we got in the car and Will said, "You know that last goal was off my non-dominant foot!" He also let us know that it was his 3rd one off his non-dominant foot this season. Love it! They also show great sportsmanship so I'm really proud of them.

Ethan has his LAST game of the regular season today. It is a home game. I'm going to pick up his friend, Pamela, to cheer him on. He is excited that she is going to watch. The game is at 1:30 so it is going to be a hot one! Bring on the Gatorade. It is hard to believe that Ethan's season is already ending...even though it started in January! He will still have possible playoffs and tournaments during the summer.

The other exciting new, for me at least, is that my Kindle arrived last night. I have wanted one for a while and saved up all my birthday money to buy one. I love it, love it, love it! The experimental features are the most fun to play with, but reading on it is great. I anticipated needing some time to adjust to it, but it felt natural right away. I read 12% of my book last night before bed. Another cool feature for us reading teachers that don't do math! I have been telling the kids that I work with at school about it and they are super excited to see it. I only wish I could get them each one and load them up with books before summer. It is probably the only way I could get them to read during the break!

I hope everyone has an enjoyable, warm weekend! I will hassle Chris to post pictures from the games tonight!

Soccer Night!

The finished Earth projects!

Will shoots...he scores!

Noah shoots...he scores, again and again!

Happy Earth Day

The boys celebrated Earth Day by sitting in the solar heated spa and making these cool Earths.

Tonight Will and Noah have a soccer game. It is gorgeous out. Good spectator weather!

Another Beach Day

Here is Noah watering our new planter. He has the green thumb in our family and is always looking to plant something. He is happy to have the container and to have the honor of watering it everyday.
The kids were jumping the waves in the freezing 69 degree water! It was quite rough out there today. Bobbie did a sailing cup and we could see them racing straight out into the ocean. Lots of kids from school were at the beach today so they had plenty of people to play with. The spring breakers are mostly gone so it wasn't nearly as crazy there today. Although, there wasn't a parking spot in sight when we left.

Sand toys galore! This isn't even the half of it. Our kids tend to take up a city block of the ocean when we go!

The boys camped out with the girls last night. Melissa promised them donuts and picked them up on the way to the beach.

Oh, Mike posted pictures from the Family Space Day that he took Will, Emma, and Paige to. I'm a bit jealous that I didn't get to go!

Noah the Cameraman

Noah was a bit bored during Ethan's soccer game. Ethan has to get to the fields an hour early to practice and the game got started 30 minutes late, so we were there for quite a while. I gave him the camera to keep him occupied and this is what he came up with.

Sophia watching the girls' team play.
They also had a crayons and coloring pages.

Noah's close-up of Sophia.

Ethan's team during half time.

Ethan is number 5.

Sophia "napping" between games.

Various Happenings

This week has been crazy busy. Some of these pictures are actually from last week. It was right back into full swing at school this week. We were gone every afternoon with one event or another. Today will actually be much less hectic. Ethan's soccer game isn't until 2:00, so we can catch up on some housework and relax in the morning. I have Ethan, Noah, and Sophia here. Mike took Will, Paige, and Emma to Family Day at the Space Center. They are off meeting astronauts and looking at space shuttles. Melissa is taking the general knowledge portion of her teaching exam so I'm sure she is having more fun than anyone!

Here are a couple of pictures of my babies from last week. Abby is no longer a puppy and now is a big, clumsy lab! She is still cute as a button though! (The kids at school were working on similes and one of the simile cards said, "As cute as a bug." I guess that one was even before my time!!!)
Hanzie and Abby often share this big bed. Hanzie usually goes to lay on it and then Abby creeps her way in there.

These were taken at the beach after my birthday dinner. We tried to go to DJ's Burrito Bar, but for the 2nd Friday night in a row they were closed! The first week was for a surfing competition and on my birthday it was closed for catering! No worries...we made our way to Mi Mexico. We had to walk quite a bit after our Mi Mexico dinner. Apparently, we got too far away from the lazy boys since they called my cell phone to tell us to turn around and come back!

The kids loved "the hole." Noah had to go give it a hug goodbye before we left.

Will loves chocolate! Chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate candy, hot chocolate, chocolate milk...if it has chocolate in it, he is all about it. His face usually comes out looking like this!

On Tuesday night, we met Nancy and Carol at Parrot Cay Island Grille for dinner. Nancy and Carol are the cousins of Dad Schrader. We always have a great time and great conversation when we meet up with them. Carol lives locally and Nancy was visiting from Massachusetts. Nancy insisted on getting the boys a lava cake. They were more than happy to eat it!

Will and Noah had soccer games on both Wednesday night and last night. Their team won both games and they scored a lot. Last night's game was actually 9-0. The coach was trying to convince the kids on our team to let the other team score at least one at the end of the game, but just before the kid took a shot, Noah's instinct kicked in and he was having none of that and quickly cleared it out. Ethan is playing an all girls team today. Apparently, their stats are impressive so they are in for a challenge. Hopefully they will come out on the victorious side!

Happy Easter!!!

Yesterday afternoon the boys dyed their eggs. They are very unhappy with Chris' plan to turn their lovely eggs into egg salad!

Can you tell that Noah loves his Animal shirt?

It is Easter breakfast! French toast sticks and mini-donuts...huge hit!

The aftermath of the 137 egg hunt! I'm not even sure they have found them all yet. I definitely liked doing it indoors better. It took them much longer. I think we'll have to keep this tradition up.

Someone got a little rough over the eggs. Just kidding...this is day 5 of Noah's eye.

The eggs soon to be slaughtered and made into egg salad for Chris' lunch! It took lots of self control on his part not to eat them today for lunch!

Tonight we are having chicken divan for dinner. It is one of the boys' (including Chris) favorites so we have it all the time! Last night we had yummy calzones. The boys picked what they wanted to put in theirs so since they had control over their meal they ate it with no complaining. Ethan and Noah had green peppers, onions, broccoli, cheese, and turkey pepperoni. Will just had cheese, turkey pepperoni, and onion. He wouldn't go green!

Science Center

Today we met Chris at Target to buy new lunchboxes and then headed off to the science center. We ended up spending almost three hours there! We walked around the museum and gift shop for a bit and then spend a couple hours in the children's section. After getting all of their play time in, we went to the planetarium to see a kids' laser show on Orion and then looked at tonight's sky to see what constellations we could look for. The boys want to stay up until 1 a.m. so they can see Scorpion chase after Orion. Yeah, probably not gonna happen. Tomorrow is beach day for my birthday!

Noah's eye on day 2.
Working the pizza shop.

They spent quite a bit of time building at the station behind Noah. They have a bunch of pieces and nuts and bolts.

Ethan built some sort of Star Wars ship.

Here they make a run for the ball to fall through.

Noah practices his surgery skills on the glorified Operation.

Now Will takes a stab at it.

Somehow, the boys didn't notice the giant sloth behind them. The fossil of this sloth was found just two miles from the museum.

The boys are off to soccer and I'm off to walk the dogs, again!

Accident Magnet!

Update: Still growing!

We all know that Noah is very accident prone. He is certainly trying to prove that during Spring Break! Yesterday we went to Blockbuster and on the way out he slammed his head right into the little security wall. He instantly got a huge bump on his head. During lunch he spilled his entire gingerale! Then, they were playing outside and he fell into the spa and scratched and bruised down one side of his back. Today he woke up and spilled his cereal. Spilling is a daily occurance with this child. My friend Donna took them bowling this morning and then to her house to play. While playing, Will accidently kneed Noah in the eye and now he has thing. It is just under his bump from yesterday. He may have to stay in a bubble for a few days!

Noah Helps Me Cook Enchiladas!

Noah helped me cook enchiladas for tonight's dinner.

Then things heated up in the kitchen! Surely he didn't learn this from my cooking! I would never break out into dance while cooking...never!

Various Stuff

Well, since Blogger so randomly ordered my pictures, this won't make much sense!

Friday night Will and Noah had a soccer game. They won 8-0. They each scored three goals. Chris even kept them on defense after they scored the first couple, but they were even scoring from back there! The team they played was tiny in comparison and none of the kids on the other team seemed to know much about soccer. Ethan was out and about with his friend, Pamela, so after soccer we took Will and Noah out to dinner to celebrate their win. After dinner was a rocket launch. Chris and Will went to the river to watch it and the rest of us watched it from home.

Saturday Ethan had a soccer game. They tied 2-2. They really should have won, but they didn't look good the first half at all! A kid on the other team got the first yellow card that I have seen in Ethan's league! Needless to say, he was not playing fairly or nicely. He really should have been out of the game. I don't think they like to give kids that age cards, so the ref was finally pushed to his limit. In most cases, the kid would have had two yellow cards by the half and would have been out of the game. Not to mention, if fans could get yellow cards, his dad would have certainly gotten one. After soccer and a nap, we headed to Downtown Disney to meet up with Gina, her sister, Leigha, and Aiden. They were in town to go to Discovery Cove. The boys were very excited to see their cousins.

Okay, now for the out of order chaos. (I DID NOT upload them this way, this is just the mixed up order they showed up in!)

This is the new T-Rex restaurant. It is just like the Rainforest Cafe, but dinosaur themed. We didn't get to eat there because it was just too busy with spring break! We promised the boys that we would take them back there when spring break is over. There is also a Build-A-Dino workshop inside the restaurant so they want to make their own dinosaurs as well.
This is a picture of the rocket launch from Friday night.

Here are Paige and Will during Friday night's big game. (Chris was coaching because their coach was busy with the big surf tournament in town.)

Noah running for his high five after his goal.

This was taken this morning at the beach. The beach looks empty here, but it quickly filled up and was quite busy by the time we left! We ended up staying for almost three hours because it was so nice out!

Ethan, Noah, Leigha, Will, and Aiden outside of the toy store.

These were small sized cones!!!!

The bar area of T-Rex.

The boys and I are looking forward to our week off. It is actually supposed to be fairly cool next week so I don't think we'll be at the beach much. Friday it is supposed to be back in the 80's so I can at least spend my birthday at the beach. We don't have any big plans, but we were thinking of going to the science center, the park, and maybe Merritt Island.

Pictures from Soccer, Part 2

And here are some pictures from Ethan's game. As Jen mentioned earlier, it was a hard fought battle. They lost by one goal, but they did awesome. One of the other team's goals likely shouldn't have counted either (offsides foul), but that is just the way it goes. The missed calls usually even out in the end anyway.

This is Coach Jame's son Blake. He is smiling in 99.9% of my pictures of him. I thought this was funny, because he is definitely not smiling.

This is Coach Jame's other son TJ taking a free kick. James just had his third little girl (that's right, five kids) on Wednesday, but he managed to show up for practice on Thursday and the game on Saturday. They even brought the baby to the game!

Here Ethan and the tiny wunderkind from the other team go up for a header. This kid was all over the place and had crazy ball control for a person his age.

Ally marking her man.

It's our custom to give the kids from both teams "five" after the game. I included this photo because it has Ethan in it (with his goal keeper penny halfway on).

But this is my favorite pick from this group of shots.