The Brown Bulletin: May 2015

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

First Grade Is In The Books!

Will is officially a 2nd grader!

Last Friday was his last day of school and now school is out for SUMMER!!!

Will's school had a small ceremony where they handed out Christian Character Trait medals.

Will also received an award for Perfect Attendance and the National Fitness Award.

Here's Will with his 1st grade teacher - we will miss her dearly!!!!

She was such a great influence to Will.

For Will - she assigned the Christian Character Trait of "HUMBLE".

I asked her how she arrived at that particular choice for Will and she said that unlike any other child Will's age, he is the kindest, most humble she has ever had in class.

She remarked that when Will won the Spelling Bee and placed 3rd in the district Speech Competition, he never bragged or showed off his medals/trophies to his friends. Instead, he would always comment on how well his fellow classmates did.

We are so proud of him and his behavior! We saw it during baseball season too - when Will made a double play during one game, we all congratulated him afterwards and tried to make a big deal of it, but instead of allowing us to, he countered our excitement by commenting on how his teammate Lane, having zero hits all season, made his first hit, and how that was so great.

After assuring Will's teacher that his little brother Johnny Boomtastick would behave much differently :) - we left Will to enjoy his last full day of school and headed to work.

But not before capturing this great photo of Will and his bestie :)

Happy Summer Vacation!

Hero Encounter

Two weeks ago Will and I had a date night.

The venue: Minute Maid Park

The entertainment: Astros vs Blue Jays

The menu: Hot Dogs and Ice Cream Sundaes

The Goal: Get Will's Hero's Autographs

We arrived to the park 2 hours early to secure a spot along first base line where the players surface from the dugout. Will was super excited....like over the moon excited.

Things really started getting ramped up when Orbit drove by!

And with less than 30 minutes before game time - the players started hitting the field.

Will wasn't excited at all (sarcasm - see him clutching his trading cards!)

First up - George Springer, Number 4, Right Field.

This photo was taken right after he signed Will's George Springer trading card!

Next up - Jose Altuve, Number 27, 2nd Baseman.

I may or may not have screamed, kicked, shouted, pleaded, feigned crying, to get him to sign Will's card and he DID! I stopped just short of wrapping Will like a burrito in a Venezuelan flag.

He is Will's number one hero and now we have his autograph, in sharpie, on his Astros trading card!

Here he is with this two favorite player's autographs!

At the fourth inning, we grabbed hot dogs.

At the sixth inning, we grabbed sundaes.

Over the course of the game, Will got to see both Altuve and Springer hit home runs.

And to top it all off, the roof opened up and we got to sit through Friday night fireworks!

It was an absolutely FABULOUS date night!!

Thanks, Will, for taking me out to the ball game!

Cubs 2015 Season In Review

This was a tough season for Will and his reigning World Series 2014 Champions. They only won a few games. They had a bunch of tough losses. But they ended the season on a strong note with some good playoff performances, placing third over all.

This season, Will moved up an age group - which meant he was no longer hitting off a tee - but instead, hitting 40 mph machine pitch. It was an easy transition, surprisingly. He was a strong hitter often batting clean up! In the field, he mostly played pitcher, second, short, and first.

The highlight of the season was when he single-handedly made three outs at the pitcher's mound durning a play-off game by back peddling to catch a pop fly and then catching a line drive and turning a double play to first base to get the runner.

There were a lot of ups and downs this season - but we had tons of fun nonetheless!

Here is a mash up of the highlights.

Set it up on full screen and turn up the volume!

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Mother's Day

One of the greatest holidays that I look forward to every year, is Mother's Day.

And I'm pretty simple, I don't want breakfast in bed, or jewels, or dinner...I want STARBUCKS waiting for me when I wake up, and a baseball game with my three guys.

Mother's Day usually starts about a week early - with Will's school having Muffins with Mom.

This year was great - I had a custom made card, and got a fantastic blueberry muffin with coffee!

And when real Mother's Day rolled around, I woke up and had a wonderful Starbucks coffee, set out for a jog, and was then showered with gifts!

Let's go through these real quick.

Johnny made me some fantastic artwork, very hipster - quite possibly my favorite piece of artwork EVER by either kiddo.

Will made me a card which I will absolutely cherish forever and ever and ever.

And Billy bought me a Super Mom book.

But he also took the time to type up and print out and tape down some specific phrasing into the book to make it extra special and unique to me and my awesome mom-ness :)

Billy also had the kiddos color some artwork from the book just for me!

And then we set out to College Station for a Texas Aggie baseball game! It was an absolute blast! It was at least nine million degrees - but fun nonetheless!