It's been a while, so excuse the length. Grab a cup of coffee or glass of wine, sit back and enjoy catching up with us. :)
Wow, I can't believe my last post was the first day of school! I'm really hoping to get better at this, because I want to give you all updates, but also be able to print out my blog for us. I'm not so good with scrapbooking. :) We've had a great year, and although I could go back to the beginning of it, I'm only going back to Spring.
We'll start with Nate's birthday. It was the big 1-0 and we've known for a while now that we would take him to Spring training in Phoenix to watch the Mariners. We're MLB.com subscribers so are able to keep up. We know them much more than the Rockies. He loved it...really can't get enough baseball. In fact, Nate has a practice game this Saturday before his season starts (it's training for umpires) and may also fill in to play 2 other games for a 12U team (he's 10U). Three games after a flag football championship game in the morning. This kid is a bit of an animal!
Yes, it was very hard for Sam to go on this trip with him. I had to practically push him out the door. :)
Got some throwing in...
He got a lot of signatures. This was a happy kid after getting Nelson Cruz's!
While Nate was away, Mac had a tryout with Group Publishing. They make the vacation bible school music videos. He did great! He gets called right before the video shoot if they need him, so not sure what he'll do. Keep an eye on next Summer's VBS videos (Summer 2016)...he just may be in one!
We did some Spring skiing. I may have to go back to winter to get some more ski pictures. Nate moved to snowboarding this year and has gotten it down. Mac stuck with skiing and got to ski free this year. 5th graders ski free and get an ID with the resorts that get punched when you ski. I think he had the goal to ski at every one! He's a bomber on skis and was bummed to be done with skiing for the season.
Mac earned his "Arrow of Light" award with cub scouts! He is all finished and has moved on to boy scouts. He also got the Webelos Super Achiever award for doing all 20 activities in his book. It's pretty crazy to seem him all done. He started in first grade. This picture with Papa Monte was when he was in second grade.
Mac crossed over from cub scouts to boy scouts. He actually attended his first boy scout meeting this night, right after his final cub scout meeting. I'm excited for him! He loves the outdoors and there is A LOT of camping with this new troop! He's already worked on an archery merit badge and will attend boy scout camp for a week in NE this June. He actually just passed a swim test, 75 yards continuous swimming, 25 yards backstroke so that he could take swimming, canoeing and SUPing this summer at camp. Swimming will go towards his Eagle scout award. Not many boys actually finish and get there eagle award, but I'm hoping Mac can do it. He's shooting for that!
Yours truly on Easter. Quite the colorful bunch we were!
We took a road trip to SD with Grandma and Papa!
We hit Mount Rushmore, Reptile Gardens (Elly is our kid who still picks up snakes, but is mortified of spiders!), Bear Country USA, Cosmos (crazy place where you can't stand up straight, Grandma's all crooked in the picture), Wind Caves and Custer State Park. It was a great trip. We seemed to hit everything at the right time and the kids were old enough to enjoy it. :) Papa was a real trooper hanging with us. He had a stomach bug contracted from his sweet grand-daughter :(.
Mac was in a virtual concert through school. The City of Fort Collins has a friendship with a city in Mexico and they decided to do a virtual concert with a marimba band in Mexico, a jazz band from a middle school here and then our elementary school. Our school has an amazing music program. So glad Mac gets to be a part of it!
He just finished his last year of guitar, making it through beginning, intermediate and now advanced. He took guitar before or after school with his music teacher for the past 3 years. I hope he keeps up with it now that he won'd have any more classes. He's hoping to play the trumpet in middle school. Guitar isn't an option right now.
The boys competed in the 4th/5th grade city-wide track meet. Kids qualify through their PE programs, then compete against all the other elementary schools in the city. Here is Mac running the 1600. That's a mile...ran quickly! He finished just over 7.5 minutes. He didn't place, but isn't that fast?! He's planning on running cross country in the Fall in middle school.
He also did the softball throw. He actually was absent the day they tried this and was pretty frustrated this was his event..but he had a great attitude once he got over the fact he was doing it. I gave him the choice since baseball, and thus throwing a softball isn't his sport. He decided he wanted to be part of the track events and did it. He did just fine. He said the hardest part was staying in the ring!
Nate was all running events. He ran the 800, 200, 100 and shuttle relay.
As you can see, he placed 3rd in the 200. He also placed 9th overall in the 800 and we're not sure how he ended up in the 100. He's a fast kid! He told me about a year ago that he thought he was fast because he was little. He said since he was smaller than most kids he had less weight to carry. Not sure if that's still his reasoning.
This is Nate as the anchor on his school's shuttle relay team. This is a fun event the school district does. All the kids get excited for it as it's the only elementary track meet they do. It gets kids excited for middle school track!
And finally...we had a birthday yesterday! I think Elly gets the most excited for her birthday. She had the countdown going! Sam went and had lunch with her at school for her birthday. She was also a Bauder buck winner, so got to wear this t-shirt all week. Kids get Bauder bucks when they're caught doing something good and then their name goes in a drawing to wear the shirt.
Other snippets of her birthday. Her big present was a bike as she had outgrown her old one. This one has hand brakes, so we'll be doing A LOT of practicing! She got some good time on it yesterday. Her party is actually this Sunday, so we'll have more pictures later.
Well that's it from the Eli Crew for now. Hopefully you'll be hearing from me more frequently!
