The Orchard Team Huddle

The last two posts I wrote were about my two birthday boys.  Douglas does not have a birthday in June but has still been very busy! I would like to say that he finished 9th grade with perfect marks but that is not the case.  He still maintained a decent GPA for "most kids his age" as I was often told but parents have a tough time lumping their kids into the "most kid" category.  I know he will excel in 10th grade.  WOW!  I have a kid headed to high school.  It is so weird.  I was so old and so mature and so sure I was practically a responsible adult when I went to high school.  I know Douglas feels the same way but it is CRAZY being on the parent side. Douglas pretty much lives at the baseball field.  He played summer ball where he had practice/lifting/conditioning/field clean-up every morning and games every night.  When he wasn't at the field he was usually napping.  Sometimes he couldn't even make it up to his room before he ...

June is the birthday month in our family.  On the 21st (the first official day of summer and the longest day of the year) Stockton turned 11.  I did not take a lot of pictures to commemorate this event.  Between school getting out, birthdays, and two full schedules of summer ball my June ends up being kind of a blur.  Here he is on Mason's birthday.  It is still a cute picture of him even though it wasn't his special day. We kept this year pretty low key.  He decided to invite one friend to Classic Skating for the day.  The problem was, that one friend couldn't go on his birthday so they went the following day.  No worries, he could stay home and play his new XBOX 360 all day.  One small problem, the one game he was able to get quit working.  To make a long story short, the XBOX 360 that Stockton helped pay for had a rough first 2 weeks and after 2 ruined games and a lot of frustration we were able to take it back for a new system....

I am so seriously behind when it comes to posting.  So much has happened in the last few months that I haven't had much of a chance to sit down and document it.  Rather than chronologically updating (which would be my preference) I will come current with each child.  Maybe that will be a little less overwhelming! On June 5th, Mason turned 3!  This is the first year he kind of got the whole birthday thing and it just so happened that his birthday fell on a Sunday.  So, we spent Saturday doing the fun stuff.  Planet Play was the perfect place to celebrate a fun little 3-yr-old.  Mason enjoyed mini bowling, glow-in-the-dark golf, games, rides, prizes and pizza.   On Sunday, his REAL birthday, we celebrated with white donuts, cousins, balloons, baseball, bubbles, presents and dirt cake.  I had a really great apple tree and some perfect evening light to capture some cute shots of Mason.  The only problem, I didn't have a very cooperative su...

Life is mostly made up of simple moments that make lasting impressions.  As I was flipping through the pictures on my phone today I was reminded of so many instances I felt the need to freeze time and capture that particular tender moment...each picture alone not worthy of a post but together they make up my day to day happiness.   This actually wasn't too long ago when Mason had the best time eating the freshly fallen snow. Another cold day.  Mason couldn't get enough of the giraffes. Stockton not afraid to hula hoop with the girls at school. Every Sunday my job is to make dessert for dinner at my parents.  This particular week my desserts were so beautiful I just had to take pictures.  They were some tasty fruit pizzas. There's something so cute about a tiny little toddler strutting to school, sack lunch in his backpack, excited to sit with his brother and be one of the big kids. And when you find that toddler covered in mascara it is hard to ...