Celebrating Lindsay

With three children, we decided early on that our kids didn't need to have a birthday party every year. It would be too much time, effort, and money to throw three parties a year, so each kid gets a party on an even birthday. For Lindsay, this was her year, and she was super excited. But, with her in soccer, Cole in karate, all three in church activities, and on top of that both J and I playing for two softball teams each, we had to push back her party a bit this year. She was also having a hard time deciding where she wanted to go for her party, but after changing her mind a dozen times, she finally decided on Build a Bear workshop. She helped me make invitations and we invited five girls to come along with us. Then she got all dolled up and waited anxiously for her friends to arrive (she even let me fix her hair and put bows in it and everything!).

Finally the girls arrived and the celebration could begin. They began by checking out all of Lindsay's toys in her room (and dumping all of the Littlest Pet Shops out all over the floor under the guise of admiring her collection).

Then it was time to gather around the table and sing happy birthday to the birthday girl (notice Bailey at the table, but Cole was MIA for the home festivities. He did not want to be around so many girls and even gave up having cake and ice cream to escape).

She also had a hard time choosing her cake, but she ended up with a Tinker Bell cake that she was really pleased with.

What a goofy smile!

Then the girls piled in the car with me and Bailey and Cole piled in with J.

 

Cole continued to have a hard time being around all the girls, and the girl running the party was trying to get him involved. So when Cole refused to rub his bear's heart on his muscles so it would be strong, she had all the girls rub their hearts on his muscles so they wouldn't be scared when he was around. Needless to say, Cole was extremely embarrassed and we were laughing.

 Both Cole and Bailey had fun celebrating their sister's birthday and both ended up with animals that made them very happy. Bailey named her hippie bear Rayne and Cole named his....Anakin (shocking, I know!).

I'm not sure what all the girl's named their animals, but they sure did have a good time.

Best of all, Lindsay had a great time, and that's what was most important to us. Being the youngest, I think she sometimes feels like she has to remind us to not forget about her--as if we ever could. But I know that having a special day just about her is one of her favorite things in the world. She's such a special girl and we love being able to show her how much we love her.

New address

Hopefully I won't lose anyone by doing this, but I needed to change the blog address so that I could line up all of my business things under one name. It was hard telling people to go to three or four address, so I'm trying to make everything easier to find under my name. So thanks for staying with me.

FYI

Next week the address to my blog will change. I'm trying to have everything line up the same so all my addresses everywhere are the same and make things easier for me, so next Sunday I'm changing the blog to www.jessicamauss.blogspot.com

The love of my life

Recently J was talking to a woman he plays tennis with about the slow pitch softball league we have here in Surprise. Turns out that this team she plays on needed more women for their team, so I was invited to join their team. I went out the first week, had a little fun, but I miss really playing ball. Slow pitch just isn't the same. As I'm trying to dust off the cobwebs, I decided I needed to find some batting cages nearby so that I can work on not popping the ball up (a sign of being anxious in the box and swinging just a little too early as the ball is coming down). As I searched for cages, I came across a park in Glendale that is not city owned and they have their own leagues. The first thing that caught my eye about this website was one of my favorite words: fastpitch. As I'm reading over the information on the website, I'm getting more and more excited--they actually have a women's fastpitch league, something so rare and precious I can hardly believe it. After poking around on their website for awhile, I found a place where you can post as a free agent or find postings for teams that need more players. So this past Wednesday night, I spent a couple hours doing one of the things that I love most in this whole world: playing fastpitch softball. As rusty as I am, I was able to contribute defensively and offensively, so I had a pretty good game. And I found that my muscles seem to remember how to do most of this, even if they don't do it as fast or as well as they used to. So now I'm working on getting out there and clearing out the cobwebs, using muscles that have been dormant way too long, and trying to get competitive again. And all the while, having so much fun that I don't care how far I have to drive to get there (40 minutes one way), or how sore I end up after. It's all worth it to have re-discovered my life-long love of the game.