Catching Up: Sam

 Sam wrestled again this winter, and did great until he had to cut the season short due to injuries. I was only able to see him at a few home tournaments as I was dealing with morning sickness his whole season. Fortunately a local woman does a fantastic job of taking pictures for school sports and events so I was able to get some of her pictures to share. Sam is in the blue.

                              

Sam's class did the Living Stations of the Cross this Lent. Sam and his cousin Ian were Roman soldiers. They all did a great job as usual! 

Sam was also in the play this Spring. He played Bing - that search engine no one uses. He was very good at acting pathetic as I'm sure you can see in the pictures (also from Reba who took the wrestling pictures). It was a small part but one of the crowd favorites. It makes me wonder how often he tricked us with his fake crying as  kid.

"Google" shoving Bing offstage

Begging to be given a shot to seach something

And more begging...

And still more begging...

The photographer got a few shots of Sam goofing around offstage as well.

Here he appears to be nonchalantly poking a cast member in the face with a bag of chocolates while they greet the crowd.

That last picture has our nephew Ian on the left. He also had a few of the more entertaining roles, including this guy:

Sam was able to enjoy a return to sports this baseball season, and we were able to make it to most of his games. A better weather would have been appreciated as we were still bundling up in our winter coats for most of the games. One tournament was played in wind so intense, we had a tough time walking to the field while carrying our chairs without getting blown over. I can't imagine what it was like to play in that. Another game ended just 15 minutes before a huge storm hit the area causing damage all over town. Seth and Sam saw the roof blow off a building on the drive home from that one. I had to rely on another mom for these pictures as well! They are of Sam pitching.

Here is a picture I took of Sam with the delicious steak he had prepared for breakfast one morning before school. Unfortunately he had forgotten it was a Friday during Lent so he had to put it back.

And Elena caught this little video of Sam (jamming out to You Spin Me Right Round - though it's hard to hear). This might be why I can never seem to find my sunglasses.

Catching up: Elena

Now that school is done, I have a little time to play catch-up on the things I didn't get around to posting here during the school year. I'll give you the low down on the last 6 months or so for each kid, starting with Elena.

Elena has continued to be a big sister extraordinaire, helping with her younger siblings and doing an occasional photo shoot with them to make sure their childhoods are documented. She also keeps busy babysitting other people's kids, and since they pay better than I do, I have been having to give up her help more frequently lately. As evidenced in the photos, she does most of her sibling care with Olivia.

Taking Livi out to play in the snow

Painting with Livi in her basement "studio"

Doing a photo shoot with Frank

Elena was in the Spring Play at school, which was about how distracting the internet is. She had two parts - the first was a make-up tutorial fan. Our nephew Ian filled in at the last minute as Rachel, who was giving said make-up tutorial. She also played Facebook - personified as a middle-aged "Karen" character - and she nailed it. Many people didn't recognize her at all in her costume (which she just pulled straight from my closet).

 

Now that Elena is a full-fledged teenager, she doesn't go to bed so early any more. Seth and I usually have an hour to two at the end of the evening to catch up or relax after the kids go down. We now often have a side kick stay up with us, which Elena thoroughly enjoys. 

She also finished her driver's training classes. Now she just needs to take her test and she'll start driving. Yikes! 

Lastly, she created a new instrument. She just doesn't know how to make it sound good yet.

Conversations

Seth captured the video below of his evening conversation with Livi. It's so much fun when kids can express themselves well at 2 years (less frustrating for them as well!!)

It's long but pretty cute, in my opinion. 

But before the video, I will share a few recent quotes and Livi-isms.

"Buddy-buddy": Liv's word for anybody, everybody and somebody.

"Can I hold the baby?......I'm not going to eat her."

"I'll say yes and you say no." This is Livi's favorite game with me recently. She just smiles and nods her head yes and wants me to shake my head and say no. Apparently it's very entertaining for her. I don't know this is some sort of rehearsal for my future years of parenting her or what.

And one from Frank: "Mom, how much do you have to pay to work at McDonald's? " 

Me: "You don't have to pay to work at McDonald's. They pay you to work there."

Frank: "What?? That's awesome!!"

"Perfect"

Olivia learned a new word and has been trying it out. She loves to play house and give out roles to people. The other night she said, "I will be the Mommy, Frankie will be the baby, Coco will be the kitty, you (to Seth) will be the Daddy and Charlie will be a perfect Grandma!"

The next day I was upstairs, and she came looking for me. She was calling out, "Mom! Mo-om! Mother!...Perfect Mother!" 

And to go with these quotes, here's a video of Olivia singing. 

Cheap entertainment

 Olivia wandered into our bathroom the other day while I was getting ready. When I went to check on her this is what she was doing.

Movie Theater Adventures

 Back in January, Seth brought the older 4 kids to the new Spiderman movie. I haven't seen it yet and I apologize if this is a bit of a spoiler alert, but at some point something sad must happen in the movie. Right at that moment the movie (as well as the whole theater) got really quiet. Also right at that moment, Charlie farted. And it wasn't a "silent-but-deadly" or just a little "squeaker." It was a long, drawn-out, staccato type fart. 

On top of that, there was a couple sitting directly in front of him, and as the fart dragged on, the man kept leaning farther and farther over as if doing so would help him get away from it. Of course, all of this sent Sam and Elena into a fit of giggles. And I suspect that that scene from Spiderman will forever be a little bit funny to our family.

 

As long as we're on the topic, here's another Charlie moment. Sometime in January, when I was stuck on the couch with morning sickness, Charlie casually walked by in this getup. I couldn't resist taking a picture. 

More Quotes!

Frank: Can I have another syllable?

Me: Do you mean truffle?

Frank: Oh, yeah. A truffle.

Elena had made truffles earlier that day and gave one to Frank. At the same time, Charlie was writing a Haiku for his homework so we were discussing how many syllables are in each line. Frank wasn't really part of the conversation, but I suppose Frank was hearing both words at the same time and forgot which referred to the delicious chocolates in our freezer!

Me: (to Seth) Does it look like Olivia has pink eye?

Seth: Maybe...

Olivia: I don't have pink eyes! I have blue eyes!!

As we were saying prayers tonight, Charlie prayed for Grandpa at one point. Frank asked, "Which one?" "Grandpa Decock," Charlie said. Frank replied, "Oh! But we also really need to pray for Papi, too, because of his burning ears." (He seemed quite concerned about Papi's ears when he said this.) Luckily for me, I had overheard the same comment he must have heard earlier that evening when we were at a Fish Fry. Our priest had stopped by our table and said to my dad, "Your ears must have been burning earlier today because I was talking with Seth about you." Frank must have overheard this as well and took it literally. I tried to explain what it meant, but it took awhile. I'm still not sure he gets it.

Side note: Charlie found his new favorite job to do at fish fries: washing the dishes. It's tough to beat an industrial dishwasher that sterilizes dishes in about 30 seconds flat. He and Reed ran the dishwasher for a solid 2 hours, and I think they were a little disappointed when the dishes finally ran out. Here's a picture:

Best breakfast ever!

 Frank decided to have a bowl of yogurt for breakfast the other day. The only issue was that he grabbed the yogurt container I had used to store whipped cream. 

So Seth came down to find Frank eating a bowl full of whipped cream for breakfast, saying, "Dad! This is so awesome! We made whipped cream out of yogurt!! It's so good!"

Seth had to break it to him that it was really just a bowl of whipped cream and he would have to pick something better for breakfast. 

And this has nothing to do with his breakfast, but here's a video that Charlie and Frank made together that they wanted me to share: 

Flip-flopping Luck

Sam has been back and forth on his luck lately. A few weeks ago, his right MCL (knee ligament) was either sprained or torn during wrestling practice. After meeting with the physical therapists, they determined that he will have to be done wrestling for the season to allow his MCL to heal.

Not long after that we had the miscarriage. On the same day, St. Edward's had their Mardi Gras party (which was a nice distraction for the boys) and Sam won not 1 but 2 of the gift card trees - worth $55 each. The next day we went to the Flurry of Fun and Sam was there as a server. There were raffle tickets for a .22 cricket rifle single shot that he wanted - I don't know what any of that means, but apparently it's a good gun for youth. We weren't going to buy a ticket, but he wanted one so he said he would pay for it if Seth got a ticket. Lo and behold, he won the gun with just that one ticket!

And then a few days later, he dropped a 45lb weight on his left foot. He was weight lifting since he couldn't wrestle and someone didn't take their weights off the bar when the were done, leaving it for the next person who happened to be Sam. He was already limping because of his knee so I'm sure that didn't help. After 4.5 hours in the Emergency Room, they said he shouldn't put any weight on that foot until the orthopedic doctor has checked it out. So now he's on crutches, using his right leg again (which fortunately is feeling quite a bit better) with a boot on the left foot. 

(Update: his foot is not broken just very badly bruised. So he's still limping around on the boot, but we'll take it over a fracture!)

I don't have much for pictures of Sam other than this one I took of him and Elena after their Xmas concert. He decided to go with the "I'm too cool for a picture with my sister" look.

A few more Frank Quotes

Most of these are quotes I jotted down a year ago and forgot to share. The last one is more recent.

Elena: "Hey, Franks!"  

Frank: "Hey....Lance!" (his attempt at adding an "s" to Elena's name)

Me: "What did you have for breakfast?"
Frank: "Grupe-frate."

"I want spagarius with supper!" (It took a minute for me to figure out he meant asparagus)

Sam: (noticing some bumps on Frank's skin) "What's that on your neck, Frank?" 

Frank: "I think it's diabetes." 

All of us, laughing: "That's not diabetes."

The next day, Frank found another little bump on his stomach and asked me: "Is this diabetes?"