Because He Hits Homeruns!

Last night we went to a Cubs game with my Grandma & Grandpa, 2 of my cousins and my uncle. On the way to the game, my cousins asked Bryce who his favorite player is and he said "Soriano". They then asked him why - and he said "Because he hits homeruns"!! Little did we know the game would have such an exciting ending with Soriano hitting a Grand Slam in the 13th inning to win the game!

This was my Grandma & Grandpa's first game at Wrigley Field!

Here is our whole crew outside of Wrigley.

Bryce loved being able to be at the game with Great Grandma & Great Grandpa!

I got a little nervous in the 5th inning when Bryce said he was ready to go home! Luckily Wes & John took over for a bit and gave him a second wind! (Thanks Guys!)

13 innings is a LONG game - especially for a 4 year old on a weeknight! He was so exhausted and fell asleep on the bus ride back to our van! But he had a GREAT time!

GO CUBS GO!!!!!!

A Couple Reviews

I wanted to let you know about a solution I found to what I *think* is a common problem. Grease stains on clothes... I'm talking about grease from your fryer - not from your car!! :) (haha - for those of you that know my husband, know we don't have any car grease on our clothes! heehee!) I also seem to have an issue with not checking pockets before washing clothes and end up washing chapstick, which if you've ever done that, YIKES - it will ruin almost everything in the load with little grease stains that constantly look "wet". So does this happen to the rest of you? Do you get stains like that on your clothes? Sometimes I end up with them and am not even sure how they get there!!! Anyways, I've always struggled to get them out and have tried numerous products. Well, recently one of my favorite shirts got a nice big grease stain. This is one of those mysterious stains and I don't really know how it got there. I got to doing a little research online and saw some suggestions for Purple Power, which can be found in the automotive section of Walmart (or in automotive stores). It is a degreaser. I thought - what the heck - it's worth a shot! So I went to Walmart last night and purchased some Purple Power Degreaser. (I'm attaching a picture, but the bottle I bought was actually clear and you could see the purple liquid.) So I tried it on my shirt last night and guess what - IT WORKED! Good as new!! I'm so excited! I did read online that if the stain has been washed & dryed a couple times (which mine had) that you may have to spray with Purple Power and wash it a couple times.

I have a couple other "laundry issues" I'm going to try to tackle as well... ink stains (again, washing without checking pockets... WHO puts pens in their pockets!?!? MY HUSBAND!!) and also mold stains. That sounds gross, but what happened was my son had gotten his white shirt very dirty and I sprayed it with Shout and threw it in the laundry basket. Well, I obviously waited too long to put it in the washer, b/c when I took it out of the basket it had brown mold spots on it!!!!! :( I was so disappointed, it's one of his favorite shirts! Well I've done some research on that as well and have a little potion I plan to try tonight. I will let you know how it goes!

The next thing I wanted to tell you about is Google Voice! Have you heard of it? It's Google's latest & greatest product! (I swear, Google will take over the world!!!)

Google Voice is the Internet based phone forwarding service by Google. It is free except for international calls. Google Voice gives you a separate phone number which you can give out as if it is your regular (and ONLY) phone number. You can then change your settings to have calls forward to any of your phones. Now you don't need to program someone's cell, home and office numbers. If you know their Google number, they will set it up to "find" them wherever they may be.

You can forward to one group of phones during the day and another at night. You can have calls from certain numbers forward differently than calls from other numbers. You can block spamming callers and send some calls straight to voice mail.

You can even leave different greeting messages on your voice mail for different groups of people! So when your friends call, you can have a fun & crazy greeting, but when your boss calls, it can be a professional greeting!

You can send yourself an SMS message or an email whenever you get a voice mail message, and you can check your voice mail from the Web or from your phone. Plus it transcribes your voice mails for you, so you can sit at your computer and read what someone just said in your voice mail!

The online app is really cool and you can send SMS messages (text messages) from your computer to someone's phone! I'm much faster at typing on my computer than my phone, so I think this is really cool!

Google is just starting to release this product to the public and I'm sure over the next couple years it will have tremendous improvements and even more functionality. One thing they will be adding is a way to use your current cell number (or whatever number people know best) as your Google number. They are also implementing a cell phone application so you can run the online version straight from your phone and people will see your google number show up instead of your cell number.

It's pretty cool - and hey - it's FREE! Check it out and sign up to get an invitation. You may have to wait a little while to be invited as Google is still slowly releasing this.

http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html

Have a good weekend everyone!

Summer Fun & Bryce's Party

We've had a busy week of playing outside, parks & Bryce's birthday party! Jenna loves sidewalk chaulk. She usually draws on the sidewalk when she's not taking over the baseball game her brother starts in the front yard! :)

Speaking of baseball, here's Jenna last week at Bryce's game. She was wearing my shades and looked so cute!

Bryce & Victoria posing for a cute shot before the game!

And guess who else is ready to start her baseball career!!! Yep - Miss Pooh!

Friends came to visit this past weekend... here's Jenna and her friend Kenzie... they were so cute together!

Bryce's pool party was also last week. He had a great time and all of the kids LOVED the new pool in town!

It was cold, but the kids could have cared less! They swam and didn't think twice about the cool breeze!

Bryce and his friend Ellie had this party together. The joint party worked out really well!

Bryce was excited to see Brennen. They haven't seen each other since preschool ended!

Sorry it's been so long since I've updated the blog... I'm going to try to get my camera working harder again!! :)

Our New Ride

We've purchased our new ride!! It's a 2005 Honda Odyssey and we LOVE it! We're looking forward to our first road trip in a couple weeks! A big THANKS to my in-laws for loaning us a car for the past few weeks while this all got sorted out! We appreciate it!

Brother & Sister-ly LOVE

So last night Bryce was "testing" me and decided to kick his sister. I told him not to do that and had him apologize to Jenna. Not 15 minutes later, I see him push her. This time I pulled him aside and this is how it went....

Me: Bryce - DON'T push your sister. That is NOT NICE. You love your sister and should always be nice to her. Is pushing and kicking nice?

Bryce: No

Me: Ok then... you need to start being nicer to her. She loves you and wants to play with you.

(Enter Jenna)

Jenna walks over and SMACKS Bryce right on the face!!!!!

Hmmmm.... her timing is PRICELESS!!!! How am I supposed to handle this one? Of course this happened RIGHT after I was talking about how much Jenna loves him! Bryce just looks at me after she hit him... (Don't Laugh Hayley - you can get through this!) I could feel Bryce's stare saying "See Mom - she hits me too!!".

Definitely a moment that BACKFIRED in my face!! A good story to tell though! Brothers & Sisters will be Brothers & Sisters!!! :) Gotta love it!

There's still LOTS of LOVE between these two! :)

Bryce's First "REAL Game"!

Last night Bryce had his very first REAL baseball game! :) He was so excited!

GOOOOOO Black Team!!

Bryce is playing pitcher, and that's Sam over on 1st base! They were quite the combo! It was so cute to watch Bryce field the ball and throw it to Sam! Watch for yourself....

Bryce would slide in to "stop" the ball after every hit, even if the grass had already stopped the ball! haha! Guess we need to work on that a bit!! :)

Here are all the kids lined up in the "dugout" ready to hit. Bryce asked about 2 million questions on the way to the game. One of them that he kept asking was if there would be a REAL dugout with sand in it. Not this time, maybe next game!! :)

That was Bryce's very first hit in t-ball! Pretty good one! He was so proud of himself!

SAFE!!!!

Ok - so can I bore you with just one more video! This one is so funny. It's Sam making a play, and then if you watch the left side of the screen, you will see Bryce point to Sam with his glove.... as to say "YEAH - NICE PLAY SAM!" Just like the majors! :)




Wasn't that cute! Love it!

That's Jenna helping to coach 3rd base! :) How adorable!

Great game everyone! I was really impressed with how well everyone played!

4th of July Bash

We had a busy & fun 4th of July weekend! Friday we hit the pool, Saturday we had a big party in our backyard at our neighbors, and Sunday I went to the flea market with my friends! (Yes - a flea market!! ha!)

Jenna looked so cute in her 4th of July outfit! She went to the doctor Saturday morning and has Thrush. But the dr. said it was still ok for her to be around others and that she shouldn't be contagious. (I swear, it's one thing after the other with her & her sicknesses!!)

My skinny minny Bryce has worn this shirt 2 Fourth of Julys in a row now!! haha! It's sure cute though!

Miss Pooh chillin out! She had a lot of fun & played hard!

Bryce & his good friend Ellie cruisin the streets! Can you spell
T-R-O-U-B-L-E!!!

Jenna is so funny and LOVES putting on bike helmets! I really need to get her one of her own so she doesn't fight with her brother over it. She found this one laying around and claimed it as her own for an hour or so! haha!

You can't have the Fourth of July without sparklers!

Best Buds Forever! Sam & Bryce

Now that I'm 4!

Now that Bryce is 4, he has a lot of new "views on life"! I've caught him on numerous times stating... "Now that I'm 4, ...". Here are a few of the things he's said!

Now that I'm four, I don't need a lid on my cups Mom!
Now that I'm four, I am not going to sleep with my blanket or bear.
Now that I'm four , I am going to take showers instead of baths.
Now that I'm four, I'm going to sit in a big boy chair.
And my favorite.....
Now that I'm four, I AM THE BOSS!

So right now, we're "making things work" with one vehicle. Tonight we burned some time by stopping at McDonald's before we picked Daddy up from work. After the kids ate all of their nuggets, we got some ice cream. Jenna LOVES ice cream and of course insists on doing it all herself! You can imagine how clean THAT is!!

Have a great night and an awesome 4th of July!