Moving Backwards

Hunting. Eating. Celebrating. The activities of Easter Weekend.

Saturday Brunching and Hunting and Nana and Grandad's:

( cause we all know the Easter Bunny hides eggs on the ceiling?)

Sunday Morning: (clues from the Easter Bunny as to where there might be baskets...)

Looks like the Rabbit may have taken advantage of the nice weather!

Found!

And a new potting table made by these two bunnies, complete with tulips, just for mommy!

Dinner here....

And a birthday celebration for Mimi!

All in all, a very full weekend as we worshiped the One who left empty a tomb.

At the moment

I am sitting back in the recliner recovering from 3 whirlwind weekends...Phew! I'd love to get you all caught up in one itty bitty blog post, but I just can't do it. I can't. So, I'll start with the magic of this weekend and work my way backwards. It's what's comfortable for me tonight.

Yesterday, was the pride and joy weekend of our little rural town. We call it: Opening Day. Yep. Little League. Our town is all about Little League. It's all we've got, really. That and horses. And one traffic light. And apple and peach orchards, and, well, never mind.

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The day starts off with pretty much the whole town gathering at the school to decorate the team floats. The kids are giddy with excitement, with absolutely no clue to how cold it is with the 40 mile an hour winds.



They are geared up for an awesome season and couldn't wait for the parade to begin.

As soon as all floats were decorated, all non-team members rushed down to the park to await the parade (of floats that they just decorated...)






My guys are on this float. Hi guys!!! Feel free to wave to your mom who has been standing here for 20 minutes freezing her you know what off just to get a picture and a smile, Noah. Or Don't.....






Emmy didn't care. She was having too much fun with friends. Parade? What parade?






Our town even went upper echelon this year with a REAL marching band, " The Orignal Hobos". Yep, we go all out here.







On a serious note, our favorite coach, Jeff, was honored by being chosen to throw out the first pitch. That's his dad, who did the actually "throwing" for him. Jeff's daughter caught the ball with her team all standing behind her, many of which have been on Jeff's teams in past years.



We sure do love that family. It was VERY emotional. That's all I can say about that right now.




Before we knew it, all of this year's teams had been announced, honors granted, National Anthem sung, safety rules read, and the words our kids had been waiting for - finally spoken:

Play Ball!

And my boy, for one, couldn't be more elated!

The Minor Boy's Team played a round robin game/s of 3 innings each. After hangin' out with the River Sharks mascot, (searching for the pictures of this!!!) though, Emmy and I had to book it over to her outdoor soccer game. All of our outdoor activities ended late in the afternoon, much too late to go home and cook...so we headed out for Brick Oven pizza with some of our favorite peeps and prepared for today's Championship Indoor Soccer Game for Emmy...

Yep, this has been an all winter endeavor that I never reported on. Em's team had a phenomenal season of indoor soccer, which was a great change over their outdoor fall season....

There's my girl.... so much like her mom at that age - NOT!

I was wearing a tutu at this age, preparing to throw up because the instructor not only wanted me to do pliats, but cartwheels, too. In front of people at that!


Today's championship game was a lose, but that didn't dampen our spirits. The beautiful afternoon was spent helping daddy-0 do yard work.

followed by our first dinner grilled and eaten out on the deck this Spring.

The End.

The Votes Are In!

I know you've been putting off buying more chocolate chips until you heard from me regarding my chocolate chip contest, and I apologize for the delay. But wait no longer will you, because the results are in!

After blind taste testing each of the 5 different chips, my highly trained judges made their choices by secret ballod.

And it was unanimous! I couldn't believe it. Actually, you wouldn't believe how different the chips can taste when tasted one brand right after the other. I was very surprised.

My judges? Well, of course they were the people who will eat most of my chocolate chip cookies - Keith, Noah, Emily, Me... and Em's BFF who was over here for the afternoon.

The winner? Trader Joe's Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips got all 5 votes! So, I'll be headed back out to Trader Joe's at some point this week to purchase many more bags of chocolate chips. But the Chocolate Chip cookie recipe Throwdown will have to wait til next week. I'm off to Arizona!

Happpy Spring!

or as Emily would say....

Yeah, those legs need some sun! We've got plenty of it today! Yeah!

Hope you are enjoying a beautiful day!

Meet The Contestants

The contestants have gathered in my kitchen and are ready for judging. Now if I could just coordinate my judges' schedules, we could get on with this "Throwdown"!





Nestle, Hershey, Trader Joe's, Ghirardelli, Essensia. Semi-sweet, every one.

May the best chip win!

It's In The Bag!

A few months ago I found a blog website that is full of inspiration, creativity, humor and great photography. The author, Brooke, doesn't post everyday, so it is an easy site for me to follow along with. I like that in a bloggy website. And unlike my own blog, this one is "professional", with sponsors and giveaways and stuff. Anyway, I commented on one of her posts recently and WON a giveaway!! I was thrilled as I never win anything, and since I received the item this week in the mail, I wanted to share both the blog and my prize here with you.

The Prize:



An insulated lunch tote. Trendy, practical, pretty and fun! It looks like I could pack at least 3 pints of Chunky Monkey Ice Cream, 6 chocolate chip cookies, 4 chocolate bars, 2 cupcakes and a diet coke, easily. Not that I would do that. I don't drink diet soda.

And as if I didn't love the stylish patterned wet suit material enough on it's own, it's called the "Gourmet Getaway". Yes, please. Let's book that right now.




Okay, maybe that won't be happening right now, but I can cart all of my HEALTHY, gourmet snacks to soccer and baseball games, and be able to offer refreshing alternatives to all of my soccer/baseball mom friends from my new trendy bag! Now I just need a pair of shoes to match. Hmm...

Check out Brooke's site, but after you fall in love, don't forget to come back and visit me every once in awhile!

And you can get one of these bags, too. Visit Land of Nod here!

Two Very Unrelated Things, Now Related

(last year's photo - it was raining and he was too far from the house today!)

Chewy crawled up from under the shed today and showed his ugly mug!

In honor of this Super Springy tradition, I am having a chocolate chip throwdown next week.

See, related, yet not.

First, my highly trained panel of judges will choose the best chocolate chip. Then, later in the week, I will bake chocolate chip cookies a-plenty, using 6 different recipes (and the winning chocolate chips) to determine which recipe is best.

I promise no groundhogs will be harmed in the making or eating of the cookies. I cannot necessarily say the same for my waistline.

I'll introduce you to the panel of judges next week. In the meantime, if you have a favorite chocolate chip you'd like included in our judging, let me know!

Looks Like We Made It

No, I'm not singing Barry Manilow, and I'm sorry if now you are. This isn't a post about 70's tunes, it's about SPRING! I've torn myself away from the great outdoors to share with you how we celebrated our balmy 58 degree weekend.
And this is a picture I took today!!! WooHoo!!

Oh look , there's me taking the picture!

Sorry - back to our regularly scheduled post... This weekend I took my Brownie Troop to a workshop at the beach. It was a "Magical Fairies" workshop.

They painted tooth fairy boxes and made comfy pillows for their tooth.

They made glitter globes and body sparkle....


And they used this... ( oh, the possibilities!!)

to make magical fairy crowns...

And got their faces painted - Emily is a "Fire Fairy" - says she, not me.

After the workshop, we went to the beach!!!

The girls had a blast running around and searching for treasures.

It was a perfect day. And when I got home, Keith announced that we would be going back on Sunday afternoon !! Yeah!!!!

I've told you before where you can always find us in Ocean City, and even in March that holds true...

As long as there are free samples, my gang will be there.

And, well, Keith bought a pound a fudge. We needed our fix.

So Spring!!

And Spring Break for my nephew, Christopher. Emily was just a little excited that he came with us! I'm thinkin' Christopher can't wait to get back to college....

Okay, my angels. Get closer, look like you know each other...

A little closer, please. I just want a picture of the two of you TOGETHER.

Um, okay. I'll take what I can get.

Flock of Seagulls....

Yeah, I'd have to say Winter Weather is pretty much for the....

Couldn't resist. Sorry. Eleven more days til Spring is "Official"!!!!!