February and March

Well, both February and March have come and gone. Either I have been too busy or too lazy to update. I am picking "too busy", it sounds better!

We started February by going to the Renaissance Faire in Gainesville (about 1 1/2 hours from Jacksonville FL). This was a lot of fun and the boys were able to do all sorts of activities. After the Faire, we went to the University of Florida campus to show Chandler where the Gators play football. He was pretty impressed with the stadium.

February 6th is Cooper and Tyler's birthday. Cooper turned 5 this year. What a big boy! Chris had to work, so I tried to plan a fun day with the boys. First we went to Cooper's favorite lunch place, Chick-Fa-Lay (more for the playground than the food). Then we went to Tunnelz and Tumblez, a large indoor playground. We arrived at home just in time to meet Chris. We released our balloons to Tyler. Then we all piled in the car and went to Ollie Koala's (similiar to Chuck E. Cheese, but brand new and clean). This was nice treat for all of the boys, as we rarely go to a place like this for a variety of reasons. It was a long day for all of us, but I think Cooper had a great birthday!

Cooper's favorite gift was a battery-operated four-wheeler. He rides that thing like crazy. You will often see him tearing around the cul-de-sac on it. He loves it!

Chandler was taking a Florida History class in our homeschool Co-op, so we went to a Florida History festival at the Faver-Dyke state park, which is just south of St. Augustine (about 30 minutes from us). We saw Indian settlements, Spanish soldiers (Chandler even got to dress up as a Spaniard with helmet and sheath and go through a military drill), and various other activities.

Later in the month, we had Cooper's birthday party with his friends. We held the party at the Alpine Grove Park in Jacksonville. The theme was Star Wars. We had a scavenger hunt, pinata, and played on the playground. Cooper loves playing with friends and had a great time.

Baseball is officially here. Both Cooper and Chandler started twice-a-week practices, so that puts us at the fields 4 nights a week. I had forgotten how much work T-ball is. It is a whole different game than the fast-paced level Chandler is at. The T-Ball kids are just learning the basics, and sometimes the results can be quite funny!

We did some other things in February, but honestly at this point, I can't remember it all.


March was another busy month.
After all of the hard work at practices, baseball game finally started for the boys.

Cooper was excited to play in his first game and REALLY looking forward to the team snack afterwards. In this league for T-Ball, each child gets two pitches from the coach and if they aren't able to hit those, then they will use the Tee. Cooper has had some pretty solid hits of the Tee. He is a little "lost" out in the field though. I think maybe he daydreams, because even if a ball comes right to him, he doesn't seem to notice for a few minutes. I am confident that his skills will improve as this is his first experience with the game, and already we can see the improvements.

Chandler has been given the opportunity to pitch for several games. He had done well, and struck quite a few batters out. It is nerve-wracking for us though, as he will also get behind the count (thrown more balls than strikes to a batter), and we are biting our nails. He or Chris could probably give exact stats on how many strike-outs vs walks he had thrown, but that is too many numbers for my brain. He has also been playing First Base and Catcher, and does well at those positions too. He has developed into a great baseball player. You can see that aggressiveness come out on the field that he doesn't seem to use in life too much.

Sometimes it is hard to watch the games as we are so busy on the sidelines playing baseball with Max. He insists on bringing his own glove, ball and bat, and then insists on us pitching to him or he will pitch to us. He is a baseball fanatic! One game I forgot to bring his equipment and he was mad (ie temper tantrum from a 2 year old)!!!

Maximus turned 2 on March 16th. Grandma took us all to the zoo for his birthday. Max was really into it and walked along with his brothers for most of the day. I thought he would ride in the stroller, but he was too busy looking at all of the sites to sit in the stroller. The zoo has a new Stingray touch tank, so all the boys were fascinated with that. We had to go back a 2nd time before we left the zoo that day. After the zoo, we came home and did the birthday cake/gift thing. Max was so into blowing out his candles on the cake (which he did before we barely started singing to him), he insisted on doing it again. So we re-lit the candles, and let him blow again. Max was excited to get his own basketball hoop, and was taking shots while Chris was putting it together.

Easter was the very next weekend. I took the boys to a community Easter Egg Hunt that Friday before. Chris was working so I ventured out by myself with the three boys. Chandler wasn't all that eager to go, but the thought of potential free candy changed his mind. Cooper was EAGER to go and of course, Max was just along for the ride. To my dismay, once we arrived, we were told that all ages would start at the same time. My problem was that each of my boys were seperated by their age onto a different field. I knew Chandler would be fine by himself, and I knew I couldn't leave Max, but I worried about Cooper knowing what to do. My neighbor who has a son around Cooper's age was there and offered to watch Cooper on his field. I reluctantly left Cooper in her care (only because I am a over-protective worry wart about these things). I took Max to his field and once the hunt started, he was on fire. He ran out there and picked up his eggs like he had been doing this all of his life. Turns out, Cooper did just fine with the neighbor, and Chandler got the candy he was looking forward too.

The next day, Saturday, the families in our little cul-de-sac planned a Easter Egg hunt for the all of the kids that play here. Each family put in their fair share of stuffed eggs. The adults went and hid them. All of the children got a bucket full of eggs and enjoyed hanging out with their neighborhood friends.

Easter Morning the boys awoke to find a fishing pole, along with various other treats and goodies, in their basket. So after gorging on chocolate, we packed up the car and went off fishing. We went back to the Faver-Dyke State Park that we had went to in February as we had seen that there was a fishing pier there along the intercoastal water-way, as well as a playground about 100 feet away (for those that got bored of fishing). We were there about 2 hours, but I am not sure how much fishing was done. It seemed it was one issue after another. Someone lost their bait, someone's line is tangled, someone lost their bait, another line tangled, someone has to go to the bathroom, someone is thirsty, someone is hot, someone lost their bait, etc. Add into the mix, Mad Max threw FOUR things into the water. I hear a "splash", only to whip around and see my brand-new, bought to make sure we had for this day, had to order online, organic, chemical-free, paid $15.00 a bottle bug spray (can you tell I was mad about this!!!) floating down the intercoastal. By the end of the day, two seperate juice boxes, and a part of Max's fishing pole had joined the bug spray. Unfortunately, the way the pier was built there was no way to get to the water (one reason why we chose this location, didn't have to worry about kids falling in, or gators jumping out). And oh no, these were not accidents, these were all deliberate attempts for Max to find anything he could chuck over the railing. One might ask how Max was able to do this FOUR different times. I can only answer that the kids outnumbered us and it was utter chaos for most of the day.

We finally gave up and went to Grandma's house for Easter dinner. After dinner, the boys decided to try fishing again in the pond behind Grandma's house. We used left-over corn for bait. The fish were fanatics about this corn. Cooper caught several fish, 5-6, and Chandler caught one. Chandler was not happy about this number, and the fact that his little brother caught more than him.

Well, March is over and April is here, so stay tuned for the exciting updates in April!