I am so late in posting!! I have really neglected my blog, but honestly, there's nothing that I can really say! There is something HUGE that I am dying to share, but I'm not ready yet. (UGH!!) It's soooo hard to not share!! Once I do, I'll be full of posts full of stuff. :o)

BUT! In the meantime, my husband Mark had a birthday! Happy Birthday, Markie!! He absolutely HATES having his picture on my blog, but that's too bad - it's my blog and I'll put pictures here if I want to! (Sorry, Markie! ...get your own blog!)

He had a pretty good birthday, even if he felt really miserable all day, poor guy. We woke him up with breakfast, cards and gifts and finished the day with a delicious supper with a sloppy dessert cake!

Poor guy! Gets woken up, eggs shoved under his nose, and is expected to smile for the camera!!

I think we can all relate to this song. Michael W. Smith hits the nail on the head with this one, for sure.

Ah, springtime!! Springtime around here means hours spent on the ballfield for Reese and hours spent on my derriere on the bleachers. But this year I have someone to sit with - Erik! He's a great little bleacher-buddy and such a good pal. (Sometimes Nikolai comes, sometimes not.)

Below are self-explanatory photos of Reese playing and Erik spectating. I need some off-topic advice though: I can't seem to keep Erik's teeth very clean. I brush them every day and even floss them once in awhile but they don't look very good at all! He sees the dentist regularly, and has an appt. in 2 weeks, but for some reason, it looks like he never gets brushed! Can anyone help me with this?? What am I doing wrong? Or NOT doing??

Anyway, here are the pictures!!

Reese won the election for next year's Sophomore Class President!! What a relief!! He put a major effort into it, with posters, flyers with funny sayings, and he gave an AWESOME speech!! I'm just so proud of him I could burst!!

CONGRATULATIONS, son!!!!

This has got to be the best Mother's Day gift I've ever gotten from one of my kids: Reese presented me with a folded piece of loose-leaf paper. I opened it, and in his chicken scratch handwriting, written in pencil, was this poem:

Today was a fun day: Reese had a Little League game, and afterward I took Erik to the YMCA that has a GREAT pool area. I got him set up at the zero-depth entry area by the kiddie fountains and he was thrilled (no surprise there!). After a time, I got up and walked with him near the bigger fountains and he was a little overwhelmed, but in love. He found a spot by the edge in which to sit and I went back to my lounge chair to watch him. As I turned around to sit down and see how he was doing (man, my eye only left him for these few seconds the whole time we were there!), I saw him get knocked over by one of the big fountains. I jumped up and, in incredibly slow motion, ran through the pool, through the fountains (I was fully dressed!) and over to my boy, who was face down, and not moving the entire time I ran to him (several seconds which seemed like several minutes). There was a kid of around 10 or 11 right near Erik that I hollered at to get him, but the kid either didn't hear me or didn't comprehend what was going on. I eventually got to my precious son, still motionless, face down in the 2' water. Terrified, I grabbed him and pulled him out of the water and so I could see him!! He coughed, cried and gasped - he was okay! My legs went limp but I was able to check him over and carry him back over to the zero-depth area which was far safer for him, and he didn't leave that area for a SECOND until we left!! I don't know why the lifeguard didn't see anything, but he didn't. There is only one lifeguard for the whole pool, so I'm sure it is hard for him to scope out EVERYTHING all the time, and this happened within just a few seconds. But still...

After that excitement, we went and got him a new haircut! No, Amy L, it's not too short (I like it long, too!) but I think I made the lady so nervous last time with all of my picture taking that she didn't really do that good of a job - this lady this time did a great job. ;o)

I took many pictures today of Erik in the pool, but because it was so bright outside, I couldn't really see the settings on my camera and I ended up taking nothing but short, choppy stupid little videos!! I'll show you one, so you can see the set up of the pool area, but I warn you - you'll get a HORRIBLE shot of my legs at the end!!! I can't believe I'm posting this, and I hope my brother doesn't see it (I don't think he ever looks at my blog - whew!)!!

So it was a big day, and it's only 2:00!!

I found these hilarious glasses with a red nose at the dollar store, but the red nose doesn't seem to work with the glasses. Anyway, I was playing around with Erik and Daisy the dog, putting the glasses on them and it was so hilarious I laughed until I could hardly breathe!!

Here are pictures of each of them with the glasses on: Which one is funnier?? Leave your answer in the comments section and we'll see who gets the most votes!








Afterward, I put the red nose on Erik and, while he wasn't as tolerant of it as he was the glasses, he looked SO cute!!!

I have SO much on my mind lately (a lot of it good!) but this post needs to be about Reese! This weekend (we only had the weekend!) we spent multiple hours preparing for Reese's campaign to run for Sophomore Class President for next year. I'll admit, I had a good time! Reese is SUCH a great kid and so much fun to work with, and he and I just really, really blend well, that we got a tremendous amount of work done and tomorrow morning, we'll head for the school very early to hang up his flyers and posters!

He has about 6 different flyer designs, but I won't share them here, as that would be a pain, but I WILL show you the posters - he was allowed 3 posters and 20 flyers. Here are the three posters:

This is my favorite one (above). The only thing about it is that he used an original 11X14 portrait for this poster as we had no way of getting a big enough copy of it!! He'd better bring that one home after the election is over!!


I think this one is just plain fun: Reese is great at laughing at his "differences" and he highlights that by having six (instead of 10) reasons to vote for him. We made little "quote bubbles" and put in one characteristic for each finger, and each bubble points to a finger. ;o)


He thought this one was a fun play on words. You can't really see in the photo, but the word "Russian" has quotations marks around it, so that you read "rush in" as well as "Russian".