Been a long time, been a long time...

Recently I've had a few family members ask about the blog...in the days of FaceBook, Instagram (I still haven't been a Twitter person), it's been much easier to post on social media versus a blog post.
I've missed the blog - it is always fun to look back at our early posts and see all the photos and funny kid posts.
They are less "cute" but beautiful, and less innocently funny but more sarcastic humans these days.

Just a quick update to 2019:
 - Mason - engaged and getting married in October.  We get a beautiful daughter-in-law (Ciara), sweet grand daughter (Mia) and grand-pup (Jade) ... and we couldn't be more thrilled about it.

Ella and Silas are busy bees - Ella has soccer training all summer. 6:15am  every morning.
Silas has decided to focus on wrestling and tryout for football this fall. His soccer days are apparently over.

We just returned from a family trip to Colorado and I have so many pictures.  I'll need to do a day by day. I'll just say - it was amazing and I can't wait to go back!

Happy 21st Birthday Mason!

It's been almost 1 full year since my last post to the blog.  I almost forget how to!  Hopefully it's like riding a bike.

Happy Happy Birthday to Mason Paul - the big 21!!  

He continues to grow into a young man that would make any parents proud. He finished up his Junior year at Capital University this spring.  Hard to believe!! We love you Mason!

Happy (Belated...) 4th!!

Holy crud...this is definitely the longest that I've gone without updating the blog. That bites.

I'm going to start catching up with the awesome and completely exhausting July 4th holiday we had.  It started with some swinging to kick off the long weekend...

...and a long overdue visit with Aunt Amanda.  She moved to Ft. Wayne a year ago and we had been missing her! 

Friday we had a great time at Sarah and Brian's cooking out and hanging out.  Swimming for the kids, lots of food, fun and a firepit for all :)

And pretty flowers for me to take pictures of - which made my day.

Mason turned 20!!  No idea how that is possible.  He tried to recreate the wipe out of his 13th birthday by getting on another Rip Stick.  Luckily no broken arms this time!

Saturday we missed the Hilliard parade because the kids slept in late - the usual for them these days.  We made it down to watch the Doo Dah parade in the Short North though.  Our first time and we had so much fun.  Definitely NOT your typical parade!  Creative, fun, odd, goofy, different and sometimes scary for sure.  Super fun time that we hope to make a tradition!

Justin was at the parade too - apparently too busy hanging out with Lee or something.
 

From Doo Dah we went to the annual James pool party - luckily the weather was pretty decent and the kids got to swim.  Somehow I ended up with no pictures - must have been too busy gabbing!

Justin spent a HUGE chuck of Saturday cleaning out his truck and removing the cap so that he could do the Annual "drive the kids to the fireworks in the back of the truck" run. We had a nice clean truck to pile into the back of...so that we could promptly get eaten alive by 1 Billion mosquitoes.
We had a much smaller group of kids this year - Mason was working, Sarah was out of town, Ashlee with other friends...as they get older and go their other ways.  But we still had a great time.

 Michael, Silas, Allysa and Ella

Our neighborhood view is quite lovely considering we don't have to fight all the traffic to and hoards of people!  We followed this up with another firepit, more s'mores and sparkers!

Sunday -  when we thought we couldn't take any more fun...the women's US soccer team played in the World Cup on Sunday night.  A high school friend invited us over to swim and watch the game.  Awesome fun and awesome game!! 

I'm surprised that here it is - Tuesday - and I'm not still asleep.  Instead, I'm finally blogging! I am going to try VERY hard to keep up...

The 2014 Wrap Up

Way overdue wrapping up the year of 2014!  My last post was early November after one of Silas' soccer tournaments.  Since then, soccer lead to the holidays, the holidays flew by and now it's 2015!

So...November...
Ella had her first 6th grade social.   This is her "Stop! In the Name of Love" move.  I think I mentioned before but she is REALLY loving 6th grade!  She gets herself up at 5:50AM, makes her breakfast and gets me up to pop her contacts in and walk her to the bus stop. The extra 30 minutes of sleep does wonders for me :)

Justin's old white truck finally (pretty much) bit the dust.  It still drove like a champ but the radiator spewed fumes into the cab and there was no heat...it would cost more to fix than the truck was worth. So...it got donated and Justin got a new old truck!

He loves the cap and he loves having heat again!

I went on 2 works trips in Nov/Dec. - One to Tucson and one to Boston.  Both were pretty quick trips and I would have loved to have spent more time in Tucson taking some pictures!

I still never tire of taking picture of sleeping kids. This boy has to have the book yanked out of his hand every night - he's re-reading the Harry Potter series now and on book 3 or 4 again.

We got a beautiful November snow - perfect, beautiful, fluffy snow.  I took a walk on the Mudsock Trail and it was gorgeous.

We hosted Thanksgiving again this year - which we love to do.

I love having my family all together.

And lots of cousin love!

and some sister love too :)

Thanksgiving was late so Christmas came early...

We had Santa come for a little visit too (even though there were MANY moments that he has marked them in his naughty book this year).

Felix (aka Buddy) came back for a visit. Not sure how many years it's been now but it gets more complicated each year! His friend, Gino, now hangs out with him and they roam...around the house.  Usually around 4am or so. But sometimes they are just too damn tired to move. Or respond to the notes that Silas leaves for them.

We had a wonderful family Christmas party at Greg and Tracy's - and we celebrated Dad's 80th Birthday!!!!

So blessed to have parents that are happy, healthy and wonderful :)

And then it was Christmas! I tend to be the first one up now on Christmas - though I fall back asleep until Ella (who is generally the first one to wake up and then wants to get everyone up). Another year with all 3 at home which I'm thankful for.

Justin did surprise me with a little Happy Birthday party.  That was nice even though I was in pj's and hadn't showered - but then again so were a few of the attendees!

And it's never boring after Christmas either - we get to celebrate Silas James' 9th birthday!  He really wanted to go ice skating this year on his birthday...so we did.  And it was painful!!

Two hours doesn't seem like that much time but strap some ice skates on your feet and it can seem like an eternity! I cried uncle quite a few times.  

And we did have some cake and ice cream for the 9 year old (even if it was my leftover cake). He'll get a party and a real cake...maybe in FEBRUARY?

Ella edited this fantastic photo of Silas in his new Superman pj's. I love it!

He was laying on our couch in the family room and then she did the cloud edit.  So cool!

And then it was time to ring in the New Year - it was spent at some different neighbors (because of the OSU game on New Year's Day!) and then at home with the kids after 10pm.  It was nice and relaxing and felt like the perfect way to start 2015!

Happy New Year!  I feel like this one is going to be GRAND!

Soccer Soccer Soccer Soccer...and Halloween

October was JAM packed with soccer...every weekend, almost every night of the week.  Exhausting - completely exhausting, but so fun.  Silas had his very first tournament and we went to Beavercreek for the Haunted Classic.  It was a lot fun hanging out with all he kids and families.  They had definitely done this a time or two based on how prepared they came for the tailgating!

Silas' team has had a rough season - trying to mesh a lot of boys to these 2 teams. This first tournament though, the played awesome!!  They won all 3 of their games and made it to the final playoff game.  They lost it by 1 or 2 goals but it was so great to see them all play hard, know where to go and what to do... so fun to watch their work come together.

Justin and Ella's Orange Strikers also had an awesome season. Undefeated during the regular season!!  They got bumped up to a tougher bracket in the last tournament and went 0-1-2 but they played so tough against these teams.  

Just as much as Ella loves playing, Justin loves coaching - funny for someone that never played soccer - ever!


There wasn't time for too much else in between soccer this season...though Ella and I got out for a couple walks and took some fall photos. Here is one of my favorites from Hayden Falls. 

I have a bunch from her and me that I should post.  She has a great eye!


We also managed to make time to get to the pumpkin patch (barely) in between Ella's last tournament games. That is why they have orange hair - they got sprayed with hairspray at the soccer game :)

We were totally behind in planning Halloween costumes. The Monday before Thursday Trick or Treating, we still weren't quite sure what they'd be.  Ella decided she wanted to be a scary baby doll and Silas originally wanted to be the Man with the Yellow Hat (from Curious George) but it was too hard to find an all yellow suit.  He ended up being a Zookeeper, Monkey Division.  Banana included.  They both looked really cute (ignore the photobomb in the window :)

The weather this year was perfect for Trick or Treat night.  50's and dry (unlike last year!).  They finished up with a firepit and hot cocoa at one of the neighbor's houses. 

And now, here we are in November...one more soccer tournament left next week (for Silas and it's going to be COLD!!) and then on to worrying about getting Christmas shopping done!

Darby Creeking with the 6th Graders

Last week I took a day off to go on a field trip with Ella's sixth grade class. We went to Darby Creek and lucked out with a gorgeous day!! Earlier in the week it'd been 20° cooler and rainy. 

The kids has different assignments to complete to evaluate the water conditions. 

Ella was excited to jump on in and see what she could find. 

I can't remember what she called this thing -a sand penny or a water penny... something like that. 

Then she found a little crawl dad. Some of the kids found a bunch of them and big ones!

I discovered that my right boot has a hole in it as I was standing in the creek...That was chilly!

And of course I took a lot of pictures while I was there.

Goober Girl!

Fun day. I'm happy I get to tag along on these field trips!!