Merry Days

Things have been very cheery and fun around here the last few days. Dain got Thursday and Friday off, and it's hard to remember the last time we all had four days together with little to do (relatively speaking, of course) besides play and enjoy the each other's company.  I couldn't have asked for a better Christmas!  [Okay, okay, if I'm being totally honest, it would have really been perfect if I could have transplanted all the Ballard's and Sutton's in addition to the Hammerschmidt crew.....but that seems a bit greedy, right?]  Anyway, we had a wonderful Christmas.  Here's the condensed version: Laid back Thursday and Friday~Christmas Eve church~Pizza with Lloyd & Cheryl~EARLY morning opening presents~Hammerschmidt farm for lunch & gifts~Fun afternoon with family~Board games at home that night~Lazy Sunday before Dain heads back to work :)

Perfectly Imperfect

I love everything about the holiday season: the decorations, the gifts, the cheesy songs, the cookies and candy, and the fact that everywhere you look there are signs of Christmas.  I do not like the stress that comes with the season, because the truth of the matter is, I tend to get caught up in creating the "perfect holiday" for my family.  You know: the perfect tree, and beautifully decorated house, and plates of goodies, and cards out on time, and shopping done weeks in advance so I can attend holiday parties and create Christmas crafts with the kids.....all of which generally leave me tired and ready for the new year.

The truth is, I haven't mailed my Christmas cards yet, and we did make cookies, but they were misshapen and doused in a pound of sprinkles.  I think I'm almost done shopping, our tree has random "groups" of ornaments, and the house looks more like a kindergarten classroom than anything found in the pages of "Better Homes and Gardens." 

But you know what?  I'm okay with that, because my family is happy.  My husband doesn't seem to mind the slightly dried out cookies with store bought frosting and 1/2 a bottle of red crystals on top.  My son thinks our tree is so wonderful, we should keep it up all year, and my two year old is thrilled that her holiday artwork is on display. Furthermore, after much practice, she has FINALLY figured out that the correct lyrics to the song "Jingle Bells" do not include the words, "Tinker Bell, Tinker Bell." The baby even used the presents under the tree as her motivation to start crawling.  Me? I'm on track to get the cards mailed out tomorrow (or Wednesday at least), and I've fallen in love with peppermint mocha creamer in my morning coffee.  Perfect?  Not quite...but happy nonetheless.

And so, as December 25th fast approaches, I hope you are filled with the Wonder of Christmas, and that you are blessed with holidays that are as perfectly imperfect as ours.

Merry Christmas!
~Katie

I Am Thankful...

...for the fact that my son LOVES kindergarten and he'll proudly sport his Thanksgiving costumes from school.

......for my sweet little baby who has teeth coming in and a stuffy nose, but still beams at me when I rescue her from her crib each morning.

....for my spirited two-year-old who has Cinderella and Dragon and Dinosaur days.

Halloween 2010~AND~Baker Basketball

Thursday night we went to our first official Baker basketball game to watch my brother, Brett in his head coaching debut.  That morning Kale was excitedly talking about the game at the breakfast table...

Kale: "Mom, is Uncle Brett the REAL coach?"

Me: "Well, yes...he's in charge of the team and the other coaches."

Kale: "What about the building?  Is he the boss of the building?"

Bailey and Kale also into a yelling match (yes, at the breakfast table) about why we were going to Baldwin that night:

Kale: "We're going to a basketball game!"

Bailey: "Noooo!  We're going to a coachin'!" "Un Ba Brett's da coachin'!"

 

After all that pregame drama, the game did not disappoint!  It came down to a last second nearly half-court shot....and Baker won 53-52!  The really cool thing about the game was all the people who showed up to support Brett: my parents and his best-friend, Bryce drove up from Hutch, Kelly's dad flew in from Texas, and there were MANY other friends and family.  Truth be told, we really could have used an on-site daycare facility...there were 4 babies and 5 kids running around our group!  I'm thinking since I have an "in" with the head coach, I just might be able to make that happen ;)

I Don't Know How You Do It

Ever since baby number three graced our home, I get that comment all the time.  It's funny, because my response is almost always the same:

"WE do the best we can.  Some days are good, some days are not so good, but we just do the best we can."

And that's the truth.  Dain and I work together and make choices that we think will best serve our family.  Sometimes things go great....and sometimes they fail miserably, but we work together as a team to keep things running smoothly.  Furthermore, we have AMAZING friends and family (both near and far) that offer helping hands, moral support, and shoulders to lean with no strings attached.

Look at that sweet face! It's not so much a matter of "how do you do it?" but "how could you not do it?" :)

Signs of Fall

A visit to the pumpkin patch...soccer games...and sweet potatoes for dinner...

Around the House

Bailey has followed in her brother's footsteps, and has started telling jokes.  Well, she actually only has one joke right now....when you ask her to do something, or get something she says, "with a pee-pee diaper butt?"  This is generally followed by a mischievous laugh.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure two-year-olds are not supposed to be attempting stand-up-comedy.

Kale had a soccer game yesterday.  He scored all five of his team's goals.  On the way home I tried to talk to him about passing the ball to his teammates more.  Kale said, "But they aren't very good and so the other team gets the ball."  "Besides, I like to score."  Dain suggested that we re-adjust our goals for next week since the passing the ball seemed a little too hard.  Instead, Kale agreed to working on not taking the ball from teammates who were already dribbling the ball.  One step at a time, right?

Kale has also been learning about Johnny Appleseed in school this week, so yesterday when I was making lunch, he asked if I'd cut the apple sideways so we could see the star and get the seeds.  After lunch he proceeded to "plant" apple seeds all around the house.  He's quite certain that by next fall our yard will be full of apple trees with juicy, red apples for us to eat.  He's also quite certain that we'll have enough left over to sell and "make a little extra money."  I'll let you know, and perhaps he'll be willing to offer a "friends and family" discount ;)

Miss Shay has started on solid foods, but doesn't seem impressed by the vegetables I've offered so far.  I think she's holding out for the pudding and ice cream.  She also has started babbling "da da da da da."  It's not looking good for me to finally get one of my kids to say, "mama" as their first word.  Shay's also figured out that she can roll her way around the room to reach objects, and has pushed up on all fours in attempt to crawl despite our best efforts to stop her. Say a little prayer for our family; when all three are mobile things are going to go from crazy to down right insane around our house :)

The Staaaate Faaaair

We're not quite sure how, but Bailey's picked up a nice southern drawl, and now everything she says has extra syllables.  Last weekend we went back to Hutch to visit, and as Bailey would say with a little twang in her voice, "we weent to da faaaair."

Kids loved the rides and animals, and Dain and I loved the food.  In addition to our "normal" fair favorites, Dain decided we needed to branch out and try some new things......hence, we also ate alligator (I'm still not convinced it wasn't just chicken) and cheese curds.  They weren't bad, but I'm sticking with funnel cake and a pronto pup next year :)

We also got to hang out with my parents, and my grandparents (the kid's Great Grandparents) got to see the kids, too. 

The car ride was long, and the piles of laundry we returned to were large, but a weekend with fried food and family made it totally worth it!

Soccer

Today was Kale's first soccer game.....
and he scored his team's first (and only goal).
The parents started cheering, and I don't think Kale's grin could have been any bigger.
After his grand first goal (only a few minutes into the game) he quickly began to tire out from sprinting up and down and up and down the field....
and I'm pretty sure he fell at least ten times....
and I'm also pretty sure about seven of those times he was tripping over his own teamates.
But, there were a lot of smiles and a lot of laughing, and treats afterwards....
so all in all, I think Kale would tell you it was a pretty great game.

On a side note....
Miss Bailey was my "special helper" at the grocery store today and got "pretty princess pink nail polish" for doing a good job.  She kept say, "Oh, Mom, it's bu-la-ful-a," which is how two-year-olds say "beautiful" :)

Our Roly Poly

First Day of School

I didn't think I'd feel  so much emotion about Kale's first day of kindergarten.  I thought that since he was so darn excited, I'd just be excited, too.

I swore I wouldn't be one of those parents who gets all worked up about the whole thing. 

At least, yesterday I did.

Today I feel like we've suddenly hit the "play" button and there's no pausing and no chance to rewind.

And that makes me a little sad.

But you know what?  He came home today and said, "Mom, it was even more fun than I thought it would be!"

And really, who could be sad after a comment like that?

So, don't worry.

I think I'm going to be okay :)

Out And About

Dain and Miss Shay dancing....we have a dance party just about every night.  The kids take turns picking songs, so our play-list generally includes a lot of the Zach Brown Band and Justin Bieber.

Kale's showing off his tooth (and note for the tooth fairy).

A fun night at the Douglas County fair.

Royals baseball game (that unfortunately got rained out).  My cousin, who is in charge of food services at the K, let us share a suite with some other family members! (I know, I know, we're spoiled)

Kale's Blastball games....soccer practice starts this week!

Changes

Lots of things are changing around the Hammerschmidt house, and to be perfectly honest, I'm having a heck of a time keeping up!  Let me start by issuing a disclaimer early....there will be no pics with this post because I don't have time to wait for them to load.  Maybe I'll upload some tomorrow (but more likely it will be a few days).

Mr. Kale is all geared up to start kindergarten in a couple of weeks.  He finished up blast ball last week (thank goodness....blast ball in this heat would have been AWFUL) and he starts soccer in September.  Over the last few weeks he's lost not one, but two teeth!  It really helps him look the part of of a kindergartner ;)

Bailey never ceases to amaze us with her hilarious antics.  This morning she crawled into bed with us and not-so-quietly read stories, sang songs, and did everything in her two-year-old power to make sure we did not get to sleep past seven.  Miss Shay has taken to rolling and officially entered the "if I can reach it, then it's going in my mouth" phase.  Both girls will be starting daycare tomorrow.  They'll spend 3 days a week there and the other 2 with Grandma Hammerschmidt because.........

I'm headed back to the classroom!  I'll be teaching fifth grade at the oldest school in Lawrence (built in the 1920's).  It is a "charming" building (that's a nice way of saying we have plaster walls and window air conditioners), but in all seriousness, my room is huge and in a lot of ways reminds me of my Grandad Sutton's house in Greensburg, which I love :)
Despite all the changes to our schedules, we've found time to do lots of fun things as summer draws to a close: a trip Hutch to visit the grandparents, walks on nature trails, a trip to the Gardner pool and the Douglas County Fair to name a few.  Dain and I even when out for a little date night yesterday and stayed up until ELEVEN THIRTY!  That's unheard of around our house :)

I'll try really hard to get pics posted tomorrow....or at least this week....hopefully.........ah, who am I kidding?!  I'm sure they'll get posted eventually :)

A Little Church Story

This week I've been helping teach the kindergarten/first grade religous education class at our church (3 teachers for 7 kids....it's fantastic....and some thing that we only dream of in the "real" teacher world........) but anyway, we've been having lots of fun, and they wear Bailey out in the toddler room, which is pretty cool, too!
So, a funny story about Kale....


His class is learning about the seven Sacraments we celebrate in the Catholic church. Yesterday we were discussing the sacrament of baptism, and one of other teachers told the kids they were going to act out a "pretend baptism" and they could take turns pretending to be the priest and blessing a classmate pretending to be a baby. She assigned one kid to be the priest, one to be the baby, and told the others to pretend they were at the baptism. The kids immediately starting calling out things like, "I'll be the dad!" "I'll be the mom" "I'll be the sister" and so forth. In the excitement of the moment my sweet Kale called out, "I'll be God!" :)

Go big or go home, right?!

Summer, Summer Time

Kale finished up swim lessons several weeks ago.  One of his favorite things was going down the big slide at the end of each session...the ear-to-ear grin on his face when he got to go by himself the last day was PRICELESS.  He also got to jump off the diving board (into the instructors arms) one day.  You should have seen the majority of the moms' reactions on the side.....sheer panic.  One lady actually took off around the pool to stop them from sending her daughter in.  I probably would have panicked, too, but I was too busy trying to corral a certain wild, I mean spirited two year old that I'm pretty sure would have led the charge off the diving board if I'd given her the chance ;)