Tae Kwon Do Party

Brennan and Tyler were invited to a birthday party at the Tiger Den, a local tae kwon do school.  The party started with the kids learning how to sit and stand properly and to respond properly to the instructor, "Yes, Sir!"  My pictures didn't come great, but here are some video clips that you might enjoy.

Tyler couldn't quite nail that forward roll!

The party ended with the kids getting to break a piece of wood - very exciting!

I'm not sure if Brennan was worried about hurting his hand, but it took 4 attempts before he broke the board. 

Brennan's First Baseball Games of the Season

Brennan had his first two games last week.   It was about 20 degrees cooler than the prior week, so it was a rude awakening sitting there watching the game.  Fifty with cloud cover and wind starts to feel extremely cold after 2 hours!  At the first game, Brennan got hits both time while at bat.

He made it to first.

This year, his level is "developmental machine pitch."    The pitching machine they use is shown below.  Each child gets 9 pitches when at bat.  If they don't get a hit, it is an out.  Kids can also be fielded out.  There are 3 outs per team per inning, but the inning is capped at 5 runs.  The game is capped at 2 hours.

Brennan's stance was looking better at his second game.

Tyler was just cold at both games... he hid under a blanket anytime he was sitting down!

More photos to come this season!

KUC Art Show

Friday night was the annual art show at Tyler's preschool.  Tyler was very excited to show us his art projects.  We started at his classroom where we saw Tyler's picture of his family.

 And, his snowy window scene.

Tyler's favorite project was the dinosaurs.  Tyler's dinosaur is the middle back one on the table.

I thought Tyler's caterpillar had an adorable smile - it's the one above his head in the picture.

Cute turtles were resting on leaves.

And, a cardinal.

The door to the classroom was decorated with bird nests.  Tyler's nest is the one center left of the door's window.

It was a great evening at the school and we visited Tyler's classroom for next year before heading for some ice cream and playtime on the playground.  It's hard to believe we only have a month left of preschool before summer break!

Little League Opening Day Parade

The games have begun.  The little league season opened this weekend with a parade.  Brennan is on the Braves and is playing on the "machine pitch developmental" level.  This season is going to have a pretty steep learning curve, but Brennan will hopefully come out of it with an understanding of how the game really works and some new skills!  Brennan has a couple of friends on his team this season, so it's nice to know a couple of other families.

Brian and the coach road in the back of the truck with the kids.  This year's parade went from Sterling Elementary School to Sterling Middle School.  I'm not sure how many teams are in the league, but I think there were over 30 trucks in the parade.  Brennan's team was fortunate enough to get a loaner truck from the Ford Dealership - they were driving around in a brand new truck with only 10 miles and a sticker price of over $50K!  It was really nice!

Another mom and I were responsible for truck decorations.  We were happy with how it came out, but the Braves didn't win the contest for best decorated truck.

I have to share a close up of the banner.... we put a lot of work into it!  We'll hang it up for the games.

After the parade, all the teams lined up on the outfield for the ceremony.

After the ceremony was over, it was time for fun.  They had a moon bounce obstacle course that the boys loved.  Tyler also took a turn at the blow up tee-ball game.

Brennan did pretty good on the rock wall!  He's the one halfway up the wall in the photo below.

It was a fun morning and a very hot day in the 80s.

Easter 2015

We had a lovely Easter weekend, which coincidentally was the end of spring break.  On Good Friday, we remembered Christ's death with a dinner at church.  On Sunday, we spent the morning at church celebrating His resurrection.  It's become a tradition to have a family photo booth on Easter.  We managed to get another marginal looking photo...maybe one year we'll get one with everyone smiling and looking at the camera.

We died our Easter eggs on Saturday afternoon.  I think we had more success this year with getting nice bright colors all around than ever before.  The boys were thrilled.

We made a couple of tie-died eggs.  This was Tyler's favorite.  He said it was so beautiful.

On Sunday, after church, the boys couldn't wait for the Easter Egg Hunt.  They don't believe in the Easter Bunny, so I didn't have to be stealth in hiding eggs.  Brennan asked that I hide the eggs in hard places this year, so I tried to put most of them out of sight.  Although he claimed I still made it too easy, Brian and I had to help him find most of the eggs!

After enjoying some beautiful weather that afternoon, we enjoyed a quite dinner with just the four of us.

Tyler the Soccer Bug

Tyler has been watching Brennan play sports for the last few seasons, wanting to play, but being too young.  This season, he had really hoped to play soccer.  There was only one league option for 3-year old soccer and it was for a very short season, really too short for the price.  Instead, I found an indoor 12-week program called Soccer Bugs that is geared towards teaching the fundamentals to kids under age 6.  It seems to be more playtime with a soccer ball than any real soccer at this point, but Tyler is thrilled to be playing, so I am happy! 

Adventures in DC

It's been a while since I've actually made it into DC and this week over spring break, we managed to make it there twice!  Over the weekend, we hosted a German family who is friends with my pastor.  On Monday before they headed out, we made the most of a beautiful day and spent the afternoon at the national zoo.  Between the three families, we had 10 kids, so it was quite an adventure.  We tried to get everyone to pose for a photo, but Tyler was pouting off to the side because he couldn't get a seat on the bear statue.

Yesterday, it was 70 degrees and we headed back into the city with Brennan's friend Gavin and his mom.  We rode the silver line in from Reston, which was my first time riding the new line.  It was easy and convenient, though the boys grew a bit restless from the 45 minute ride.  We packed lunch and planned to just soak up some sun on the national mall.  It was lovely!

We headed into the Air & Space Museum to see an IMAX movie.  We saw Journey to Space in 3D.  It was really fascinating.  I had heard about these supposed 1-way missions to colonize Mars, but I didn't realize NASA was actually working on a manned mission to Mars, of course one that would involve a return home!  It was a lovely day and now we are looking forward to Easter this weekend!