Gooooo BEEF!

Samuel has been enjoying tackle football.  His team, the Beef, just finished their season at 6-0.  They are pretty good and have a great set of coaches.  Of the 5 games I was able to watch only one other team came close to having as good of coaches as Sam's team.  They are good at actually coaching, not just yelling their instructions louder! 
Here's the tough guy:

Oh, wait, not looking so tough in that picture....

They have a bye in the first round of playoffs (yes, playoffs) and then will compete in the semifinals and hopefully finals the next two weekends after that.

A Boy and His Cat

Sadly Tiger has been in need of love the past couple days because Snowball disappeared.  I think our keeping a cat alive record is still less than a year.....

And an unrelated humorous story:
Mommy:  (While buckling Nicholas in the van) We are going to play at the Storm's house for Bible Study today.
Mommy gets in van and starts driving.
Nicholas:  My no want to go to thunder house.  My no like thunder.
M: (wondering where he came up with the idea of a thunder house) No you don't like thunder do you?
5 minutes later while getting back in the car after running an errand.
M:  Okay, now we're going to the Storm's hou....ohhh, the Thunder house, no, Nicholas, the Storm's house doesn't have any thunder.  It's their last name.

Well Played?

Mommy:  Philip, guess who is going to come to your class to teach Spotlight on Art?
Philip:  Who?
M:  She has brown hair......and blue eyes.........
Ph:  (no guesses)
M:  And she's very beautiful....
Ph: (eyes light up) Oh!  You!

I'm just going to believe he wasn't playing me.

Welcome Dylan!

Our newest nephew, Dylan Matthew, was born Aug 21st.  I forgot the camera when we went to meet him so the pictures are stuck on Jeremy's phone until I remember to transfer them to the computer.  He was baptized this Sunday and I am honored to be his Godmother. He makes my collection of Godchildren exactly match my own children:  Corbin, Samuel, Thomas, Max, Julia, Emily, Philip, Augustine, Nicholas, Dylan.  It goes my child, Godchild with matching boys and girls and the same basic spacing all the way down, except Corbin and Samuel are mixed around compared to the others. (Corbin is my very 1st Godson and a student from when I taught way back when-God bless him, wherever he is!  Everyone else is family- or close to it.)  Anyway, back to Dylan! He had a lovely baptism and we enjoyed the family gathering afterwards too.
Here's the handsome Child of God being baptized.  He wore the same outfit as all our boys.

Some of us held Dylan, others of us (Nicholas) are mostly refusing to acknowledge his existence.  (He wouldn't hardly look at Dylan both when we met him and at Baptism.  Weird, all my others have loved babies, for two minutes at least, at Nicholas' age.)

He looks so much like Aliza did when she was tiny!

Philip LOVES baby heads.  He can't keep his hands and forehead off their soft sweet heads and hair. (If you follow the link above you can see him doing the same thing to Aliza at her baptism!)

Welcome to God's family Dylan!

Nicholas, Sandwich Inventor

I asked Nicholas what he wanted for lunch and he replied "Peanut butter and jelly."  So we made one and as I was finishing up I asked him if he wanted an apple with his sandwich. "I want apple in my sandwich."  I didn't really think about what he'd said, closed the sandwich and got out the apple.  He resolutely opened the sandwich back up and said, "No, Mommy I need put apple in there."  So I sliced him up an apple, which he did indeed put in his peanut butter and honey (we were out of jelly) sandwich and he ate the whole thing!

I didn't taste it.

Orchard Fun

Thanks for the orchard fun Grandma and Grandpa!
Most of the fam enjoyed an orchard trip together.

Philip worked very hard to pick these raspberries.  He told me, "A man gave me a tip.  Find a ripe berry (he shows me one on a bush), lift it up and whoop! more!" (lifts berry to reveal more ripe ones underneath the leaves).

Since Julia was going home from the orchard with Grandma Susan Thomas spontaneously invited Augustine home with us.  They had a grand time in boy heaven.  I actually hardly saw any of them Saturday after we got home.  They were out in the yard the whole afternoon!

Happy Birthday Mary!

Nothing like a good cookie Rosary to celebrate Mary's birthday.  Also I notice the cookies get eaten a bit slower because you are required to pray a Hail Mary for every cookie.  Apparently that makes some people think twice about indulging.