Basketball

This is the first year that we participated in basketball.  Many children are over loaded with after school activities and sports and we have generally taken the "hey, you want to try it, sure, but you have to finish your commitment" track.  Mostly the children decide if they want to do some after school activity and once they do we require that they follow through with the activity until the end.  I think that it is safe to say that at least for the foreseeable future, basketball will not be in our line up.  While both children really seemed to enjoy themselves at the games, it was a pain to get them there with all the complaining they did, especially our blond child and it was all her idea from the start.

I have to say this was definitely an eye opening experience.  It is the first time that we had participated in a team like sport where we didn't know the coach or hardly any of the other families that were on the team; and well, I have decided that I kind of like our little bubble of friends and as far as I am concerned could live in it for the rest of my life.  There are some strange people out there and some strange parenting techniques going on.

JP's experience was better than Shelby's.  He was so cute and looked so little out there running up and down the court.  I loved how the boys played defense without tearing each other's faces off and how intently they listened to their coaches.

This is JP in his defensive stance.  He mostly stayed out of the pack and stood in his spot where he was safe from harm. 

 After he made a shot during warm ups.  He was always so proud after every game announcing how many rebounds, assists and points he thought he had.  Of course he had a tendency to exaggerate, but for now as long as he was having fun who were we to correct him.  We just told him he did a great job and we were proud of him.

I should have known we were in for a ride when Shelby's first practice ended with three suicides.  Her coach was SERIOUS!!!  He totally kept track of the score during every game (there is no official scoring this young; the idea is to get the children exposed and for them to have fun) and always left in the best players while the others rotated in and out each quarter.

Here is Shelby doing her favorite thing, sitting on the bench.  I can hardly blame her for wanting to be there safe from all the girls.  These girls were totally crazy and very physical!  Shelby loves her personal space and was quite content to stay out of all that clawing and hitting that was going on around her.  I am serious, they were out of control.



This is Shelby playing offense.  She usually hung back around center court and would sort of hop over the line to the other side depending on where the ball was, but never jumping in on the action.  She was a true point guard in that she brought the ball up, set up the play and then watched from the safety of the top of the court while the other girls duked it out with each other.

It was a wild ride but I am so proud of both of my children.  They did great and despite wanting to quit they both stuck it out.  By the end JP was really enjoying it and Shelby, well, at least we got her to finish the season.

Yearly Check-Ups

The stats:

Shelby Brennan Reed
Age: 7
Weight: 54 lbs (67%)
Height: 49 in (67-70%)
Blood Pressure: 114/78
Pulse: 95

John Pratt Reed, III
Age: 5
Weight: 45 lbs (75%)
Height: 44 in (69%)
Blood Pressure: 104/57
Pulse: 86

Both of our well visits went great this year.  Shelby and JP are right on track and growing into wonderful, healthy children.  We are so thankful for a wonderful team of doctors and nurses to care for our children.

Flying Time

They say that time flies when you are having fun and they (whoever they are) couldn't be more right. Seven years ago the Lord saw fit to bless Pratt and I with our first sweet and precious baby girl. I don't think we could have dreamed of anything more wonderful if we could. These past seven years have brought many challenges and we have grown immeasurably through the good times, but mostly through the tough times. It is hard to remember what life was like before our precious girl and it is hard to see how there was purpose to our days before we had Shelby to love and care for.

We knew you were a girl who operates on your own time when you were born lighting fast, surprising us, but mostly the doctor who raced in to just barely catch you as you entered this world.  Then you made sure that everyone knew that you had arrived. 

I miss this little tush:(



Now as you grow and learn we are exploring a whole new world that involves sleep overs.  I hope that you enjoyed your first sleep over and I am so excited for many more to come.



Happy Birthday my sweet girl.  You will always be my baby and I will love you forever and ever!!!  I can't wait to see all the wonderful adventures God has laid out for your life and am blessed beyond measure that I get to experience them with you.

Genetics

One day a long time ago (well, okay, not that long ago, but over half my life ago) this man, who was a boy

met this lady, who was a girl.  And their teenage "love" grew and grew. 

They were totally different in pretty much all aspects of life. She was quiet, nerdy, liked blending into the wallpaper and bordered on perfectionism.  He was loud, kind of obnoxious (only sometimes), loved having all attention on him, and didn't care about being perfect, just did the minimum to get by.  The odds were stacked against them and all bets were placed on when they would call it quits.

But, God, in His infinite wisdom had different plans for them.  From before they were born He had planned that they would one day be husband and wife.  He knew that the boy would pull the girl out of her shell and give her some confidence and that the girl would reign in the boy and encourage him to use his energy to serve and bring glory to God.

So as the poem goes-

First comes love

Then comes marriage

Then comes the baby in the baby carriage

And along came the first.....

Wait!!!  What?!?!?!  Blond hair, blue eyes???

Where did that come from??

When boy and girl were dating and during their first years of marriage they would often laugh together saying, "Watch our first child have blond hair and blue eyes."  Well, the joke was on them as the Lord saw fit to give them just that.

After a year, boy and girl, decide to have another child.  They dropped all preconceived notions that they would have a child with brown, thick, wavy hair and brown eyes since their first one seemingly defied all genetic odds.

And they got just that,

As baby boy grew so did his hair.  It went from baby fine to curly fine to thick and wavy.

So, moral of the story, don't assume that you know what life is going to hand you.  God is in control and He knows exactly what He is doing.  He will carry you through and give you sweet little surprises along the way.

Christmas, Christmas time is...Gone?!?!?

Befor I get to the nitty gritty of Christmas I feel like I need to make a personal reminder and warning to all y'all out there....If you find yourself needing to walk around, it is never a good idea to do an intense strength training workout one day and then run 8 miles the next!!  Please help me remember this as I am sure that by Sunday I will be feeling good enough to have forgotten and try something similar the next week (don't tell Pratt, but I can be kind of hard headed about stuff like that)

Now on to Christmas!!!  Can you believe how fast that came and went????  I mean seriously, we are already approaching the back end of January and I know by the time tomorrow comes around it will be Christmas again!

Anyway, once again we had a super fabulous Christmas season celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus!  I just really love this time of year.  The candle light service at our church on Christmas Eve is one of my favorite (tied with the sunrise Easter service on the beach).  The children love that they get to hold a lit candle and do fairly well sitting through the service.

Here we are all ready to go.  I am not quite sure about the forced smiles in this picture, but it was the best one I got.

This year we were super excited to share our Christmas Eve traditions with our dear friends Erik and Rachael.  This was their first Christmas together as a married couple and of all the things they could have done, they chose us to spend their evening with us!  We are so blessed to have such wonderful friends:)

 I can't believe it, but I totally forgot to take a picture of the milk, cookies and diet coke we left out for Santa.  It was a momentous occassion in this house and I totally failed to capture it.  Oh well, sometimes it is better to live in the moment then live behind the camera.  At any rate, Shelby was super excited and tickled to death when she got up the next morning to an empty plate of cookies, an empty diet coke can and half a cup of milk.  It was priceless!!!

We hit the ground running around here on Christmas day.  

A quick shot before things got started... 

I was definitely more excited about Shelby's pink bb gun than she was.  My grandpa had a hobby of building (crafting?) guns and as I got older one of my favorite memories is going to Wyoming with the family, driving a few minutes out of town and shooting up anything and everything we could find with all sorts of guns...ah, those were the days:)

After we were done at our house, we got ready and headed to Meme's, from there we drove down to my family's, and after a quick afternoon nap (which was definitely needed by all, especially a certain "young" lady with brown curly hair who goes by the name mom) we popped on over to Papa and Grammie's to finish out our day.

I can't believe JP's eyes are closed in this shot:(  It had such great potential.



We all crashed into bed that night and slept rock hard.  It was a wonderful day!

Four No More!

Happy Birthday to my baby boy who turned 5 on Friday! It is hard to believe that 5 years can be so short.  I feel like just yesterday you looked like this

But every time I see you, you look like this.



 How did that happen so fast????  Where does the time go?

I hope that you enjoyed your day and had so much fun at your birthday party!  I love watching you grow and explore the world around you.  You are my little buddy and I will always love you!

You Are My Sunshine

Once again I am apologizing for the lack of posting lately:(  It is already half way through January and I still haven't done much about Christmas and our trip to Boca Raton and JP had a birthday last week...oh, I get an epic fail on starting off this year full blog ahead!!!

Anyway, just something real quick before I forget about it.  This is a moment that I want to remember forever and so I need to document it before I forget and then hopefully sometime before the end of this week I will get my blog on and finish 2011....hopefully (fingers crossed)

When time permits and usually it does, I love to sing to JP after we are doing reading at bedtime.  Shelby long ago let me know that it wasn't "cool" anymore, but JP still lets me so you better believe that I take full advantage of that.  I typically always sing the same songs in the same order and every once and a while I will throw in an extra, but I always sing the three original songs-You are My Sunshine, Jesus Loves Me, Love Him in the Morning.

So last night we were all snuggled up in his bed and I started with You are My Sunshine and at the end I sang, "Please don't take my sunshine away" and over me JP sang at the same time "Please don't take my mommy away."  (tear)