Sports Obsessed - Video

When I say that Brooks is sports obsessed...well, I mean OBSESSED. It's his overwhelming desire to conquer every sport he hears about. Even ones that are beyond his 3-almost-4-year-old abilities, like ping pong. Can we just throw a ball? Yah, thats kinda old news now. What we really want to do is throw it like "a man does". Like an actual baseball pitcher. I'm not really sure of the talent level here, but the determination is something to behold:-) Being such a good mom, I video him, so he can watch and see what he looks like. He likes to say "Excellent technique!" when he feels he's done a perfect throw. LOL. This kid is too much!

Spring Cookies

{back story} Brian's work has him as a superintendent on a job at the World Trade Center. Yes. There is one here. No. I did not know that before last week. Strange. Now I wonder if all cities have one and I am the only one not to realize this, making me, once again, (as I've always been), a bit of a ditz. In any case, it's a rush job for whatever reason, they need to be in and out really quick. Which means he works 'round the clock. They will be done any time now, tonight he said all the workers were willing to stay until it's done. He's been working on this schedule: 20 work, 4 hours sleep, since last Friday. Naturally, now he's sick, has almost no voice, and will not answer his phone (distractions!). I haven't seen him before 2am in what feels like ages, but has really only been less than a week. I'm telling you, that man is a hard worker. My goodness. He's not the type of super that hangs around babysitting a jobsite, he works hard and does anything, and everything along with the subs. I know he hates the long hours and can't wait to be home (same here!), but his dedication and work ethic are more than admirable, that is for sure!

{the actual important story} Since Brian's been gone for a few nights in a row, I've been doing girl stuff. Chick flick every night, doing my nails, Kitchen Boss, Cake Boss, House re-runs. I've recently gotten 2 requests from friends to do a cake for their little girls birthdays. One on the 23rd, and one on the 5th. One of the cakes is going to be a castle cake. Of course I am up for the challenge, but petrified of things looking terrible. I decided for the one cake, I would need to learn how to do royal icing flowers. Just the simple ones, the teeny little stars. So I decided to bake sugar cookies last night. We decorated them today, with my very first batch of royal icing! Turned out very well. I practiced lots of flowers. This is going to be fun!

So pretty! Almond sugar cookies, with royal icing piped around the edges, dried, and then "flooded" in the middle

It makes a pretty big mess in the end!

Yummy. Very very yummy!

Birth Days! - Video

Yesterday was my Dad's birthday! Happy Birthday, we love you!! Here's a little birthday song.

...little did we know that some one else was having a birth day too!! Lauryn (my sis), hit my little brother Lehman's birthday last month with the birth of Kayla, and my sister in law Chantelle hit my dad's birthday with the birth of this little man...

Keaton Asher, 8lbs 6oz and 20in long

Dad and Brent...add another generation of Kennedy men with little Marshall and Keaton!

So congrats to Brent, Chantelle & Marshall, and happy birthday to Dad and Keaton!

Chubs!

I gotta post it! Before he gets as skinny as a stick. He's been slimming down rapidly, as did the other two at a similar age. He's still a tank, don't get me wrong, he's just losing all that baby chub that I/we/everyone loves so much. With the weather being so great, he has discovered the joy of outdoor play and he loves it! It means lots of dirt and lots of baths though too. Nothing like running around naked after a tubby!

A fun way to start a Monday? With a bouncy house! Thanks to a friend from church, we have this little gem, which is very perfect for the younger kids. Sonny was in heaven. Clapping and laughing his head off! It's a lot safer for the littles than our big trampoline is. I'll have to set it up outside this summer for Grey and Sonny, only.

It looks like I have them in a cage. Not far off really:-)

Kennedy Shea

Another installment of my lifelong obsession with names!

I love a hundred boys names. I've loved only 3 girls names as long as I can remember. Actually, not true. When I was really young (10-12 years old), my fave names were Delanie and Danette. bahhah! I like to say I've matured. So we'll say, "as long as I can remember" starts at 15:-) I've kept a running names list since 1997, when I was 18 years old. Every year, I add to it, as I hear of a new name I like. For 4 years in a row, there are only 3 names on that list on the girls side:

Shaughnessy
Kennedy
Laken

I didn't know/had barely met Brian when I was 18. I certainly didn't know I would marry him. Or that he was such a stick in the mud. When it comes to naming people anyway. I really had my heart set on these names!! Thankfully, he was good with Kennedy. It was my maiden name for goodness sake, so it would have been especially cruel to take that away from me, right? But not quite as cruel to dash my other hopes and dreams...Laken. Out. Shaughnessy. Out. He is 100% Irish. I thought for sure he would have some appreciation for my beloved Shaughnessy.

Apparently not all the Irish are fans of their propensity for strange spellings and words that sound shorter than they actually are...

I've had a few middle name choices for the other names, but I was stuck with Kennedy. I didn't have anything I both loved, and/or thought sounded great with it. Enter Brian. He jumped a thousand cool-name-notches in my book when he solved that dilemma. And it only took him about 2 minutes. What about Shea? Love. It's Irish, it's a family name on his side. Perfect. And the Mets played at Shea Stadium (his baseball team). Even better:-).


So our firstborn daughters name was determined before we were even married. And now we have a little girl with three last names. And they're all Irish. (Aside from the side note that "my" Kennedy line is more Scottish than Irish, but whatever, it's both Scotty and Irish, and most people automatically think of the Irish Kennedy's). And we gave her a nickname to feminize it, cutesy it up, and make it baby girl-ish...Kenna.

More about my belovin' Shaughnessy in another post, stay tuned! (My kids say belovin' instead of beloved in a few of their memorized Bible verses, I think it's cute)

Teach Your Children Well...

I came up with a really "fun game" today. Kenna was asking for a Cadbury Creme Egg (girl after my own heart!)...I said she'd have to wait until Easter. She said she wished she could buy her own. Idea is born:

Do you want to make some money to buy whatever you want? Of course she does. Is it really ever too early to instill the value of a dollar?

Here is what you have to do. Fill up this bucket with pinecones, and I will give you a penny for every pinecone picked up. They loved this idea and got straight to work...

Notice Jack is the only one not pausing for a photo op and continuing to work:-)

I might insert here that this idea is not original to me. However, I do consider myself *slightly* kinder than my Mom, as I am not asking them to pick up roofing nails from the grass and flowerbeds in the blistering summer heat (after getting a new roof). Nor am I asking them to remove rocks, in a yard that is completely bedrock (after getting a new septic tank). And all for a penny per. Granted we were older, but that nail thing was killer:-)

Hard at work!!

They filled up a bucket! We went to throw the pinecones out, and practiced our counting...107 pinecones! So I determined that they would get $1 for every bucket filled (mostly to save me from counting/handling each pinecone again, since they are too young to reliably count their own). They filled 3 buckets, for approximately 300 hundred pinecones, and $1 each. Good job kids!!! You can't even tell however. They could pick up 300 pinecones every day of their lives and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. We have thousands and thousands of pinecones...with thousands more, ready to drop. If they could pick them all up, I'd be broke!!

Just look at all those pinecones up there (click to enlarge, you can see them)!! We have 14 of these massive Virginia pines on our little lot.

So my kids will probably have horror tales someday of the literally never ending 'pick up the pinecones game'...and all for a penny! But I'm sure that Creme Egg will taste so much sweeter after all that hard work! They are ready with their money in envelopes for the trip to Walmart! (We also had fun learning and counting all our coins out to one dollar. Lots of skip counting practice:-)

I promise you, if I ever buy another house, it will have NOT A SINGLE TREE ON THE LOT. Not even a pretty one. Nothing. I am over trees in every way possible:-)

Today

Look who's almost done her kindergarten reading program. Only 8 more books (& stickers) to go!

Playing outside!

Hitching a ride, notice Kenna off to the right, pulling the car with a rope:-)

Everybody loves throwing balls at the strike zone target for practice. Boys are so fun!

Jack was really peeved that Sonny couldn't make it go with him in the back:-)