ava, the soccer girl.

this little chica has really been getting into soccer lately and she is so fun to watch.  she is all over that field and not afraid to get a little dirty.  i kind of have a soft spot in my heart for soccer since it was such a big part of my childhood and young adult life.  so, naturally, when i seen one of my kids playing and enjoying it, i get a little excited.  i'm really looking forward to seeing her progress and develop some skills.  she has already improved so much since starting back in january.  she is my soccer girl, but don't assume that i will be taking on the soccer mom role because that aint my thang for the time being.  mom to four kids and being a nursing student is about all i can handle.  and i use the word "handle" liberally.

lemonade!

^^^taking a short break from marketing.^^^

^^^cutest cashier on the block.^^^

for christmas, ava got a multi purpose stand that can change from a puppet theater, to a market, to a post office, to a lemonade stand.  well she was dying to try out the lemonade stand so we did what any normal arizonian does the day after christmas...sell lemonade! we really are blessed with perfect winter weather but in turn, we pay for it in the summer.  its a good enough trade off for me, though.

ava had quite a successful day.  she had her marketing team making signs and her stand was well staffed with a server (eden) and a casheir (jonah).  they had so much fun and even made a few dollars.  she was, however, very generous and gave out plenty of samples to the neighbor kids and to those helping out.  everyone was well hydrated...with lemonade ;)

the nutcracker!

a few days before christmas, i took my girls on a date to the nutcracker or as eden likes to call it, the peanutcracker.  we drove to the big city (aka phoenix) and enjoyed some ballet at symphony hall.  the girls watched in amazement at the dancing ballerinas and told me several times throughout the show that they wished they could do that too.  when it was all over we went outside to take a few pictures and the girls just broke out into their own versions of ballet moves right there on the streets of phoenix.  they were quite literally dancing in the street (cue that song...you know which one i'm talking about).  it was pretty great.  i love my girls so much and i look forward to spending more and more mommy-daughter dates with them as they get older. i hope that we will always be the best of friends, i mean BFF's.  gotta use the right lingo here.

gilbert days 5k.

a few weeks back, we (jason, jack, ava, and i) ran in the gilbert days 5k.  we have done it for the past 3 or 4 years but this was the first year that ava ran the 5k. in the past, she has only ran the mile so this was a kinda a big deal for her.  she was quite the super star and she hung in there the whole time.

the plan was for jason and i to stay with her because for one, jason hadn't ran in almost a year so he was pretty much out of shape and i even questioned if he could hang with her and two, i had just had my appendix taken out two weeks prior and wasn't sure how much i should push myself.  well, about a mile in i decided to try and catch up with jack.  he took off pretty fast in the beginning but i thought i could catch him.  i thought wrong.  jack ended up finishing a minute or two ahead of me and jason and ava came in after me.  i was so proud of my kids and so thankful for my parents who came to cheer us on and help watch jonah eden while we raced.  it's nice to have family close by.

i could tell the next that day that ava had pushed herself to her limit because she kept saying how sore she was and every time she would go up and down the stairs she would say how much it hurt her legs.  i realized a 5k to her is like a marathon to me.   hopefully by next year she will forget how miserable she felt afterwards and she will want to run it again :)

ice skating for ava's birthday.

every other year our kids have a family birthday party (where no friends are invited) and this year was ava's family birthday.  when we asked her what she wanted to do on her special day she said she wanted to go ice skating.  it was an interesting request considering she has never been ice skating and neither had jason and i within the last 15-20 years.  but, yeah, why not?  let's do it.

so, we showed up in our warmer attire (even though it was 100 degrees outside) and we got our skates on and made a run for it to the ice.  i don't think jason or i had really thought much about this whole thing until we were actually in the moment.  none of our kids could skate and there are four of them and two of us.  i had kids on each hand and one grabbing me from behind.  jonah had to be carried most of the time and i was starting to realize my back was going to be sore following this little activity.  but, seriously, it was hilarious.  the kids were slipping all over the place and falling down on their butts, knees, backs, stomachs... it was quite a show.  they had absolutely no control of their little bodies no matter how hard they tried.

in the beginning, there were lots and lots of falls and holding on to the side but each time we went around they got a little better and little more daring.  by the end, jack was skating all over and ava could finally make it around without falling or holding onto anything.  even eden could do it almost on her own.  i would say huge progress in a short amount of time.  i was really proud of my kids.  they never complained or cried and by the looks and sounds from some of their falls, i think i would've been crying.  they never gave up.  it was a great day at the ice skating rink and i think we will be going back again very soon.