Last Game of the Season!

Owen's team had their last game of the season (already??) last weekend and they ended on a great note! The teams seemed to be well matched and were eventually tied 3-3 up until a minute before the end of the game. Owen kept having great breakaways but would kick it right to the keeper. With a  minute left he had one more breakaway and scored the winning goal! The genuine excitement from the whole team was awesome to watch. Owen turned around with his arms spread out and accidentally fell in the mud while some teammates jumped on him:)

One of the breakaways...

Normal team picture...

Crazy team picture

Owen's team had a pretty good coach this year:)

Aww!

1/2 Birthday

It's been half a year since Paige turned 6! Can you even believe it?! She woke up acting totally normal but then she saw her card and seemed to immediately start acting more 6 1/2ish. Normally we celebrate with sprinkle pancakes but Paige had been wanting to have this Blueberry Breakfast Cake we ate in Michigan so we went with that instead! It came out great!!

New Foods

First-a store bought item. I picked up these mochi ice cream bites at the store because it's nice to have already portioned ice cream treats ready to go and no one argues about who got more... It's made of a sweet rice dough surrounding some ice cream. Our box had mango, strawberry and green tea flavored. So far I'm the only one brave enough to eat the green tea ones (they're good, I promise!) but everyone likes the other two flavors!

Up next, a homemade dinner veggie-Baked Cheesy Zucchini Bites! So. Mixed reviews on these. Owen couldn't stomach them but everyone else thought they were alright. They don't maintain their texture when reheated so definitely eat them all the first night!

Family Playlist

The kids are still fairly young but we already have some songs that are important to our family. Not all of them are super kid appropriate but might contain a couple lines that specifically applied to us at the time. We'll continue to add to the list but so far here is a list of songs that instantly bring us back to a specific time!

Yellow by Coldplay - This song reminds me of Owen in the NICU and the windy drive through the park we would take to visit him. He was very jaundiced so the yellow reference totally applied but the rest of the lyrics are pretty touching when you think of them in relation to a newborn- "Look at the stars, see how they shine for you," "You know I love you so."

Lola by the Kinks - This song was also for baby Owen! The lyrics have nothing to do with anything related to us except we heard it one day and sang it as "la la la la Owen" and that line became something we would sing pretty often.

Turn the Page by Bob Seger - Baby Paige needed a song too and this one was chosen because it had her name in it! It's also a little moody and references being on the road which are two things we were dealing with pretty heavily while Paige was in the NICU.

Dream a Little Dream of Me by The Mamas and the Papas - I've loved this song for a long time and it's important to our family for a couple reasons. Pat and I danced to it at our wedding and we used to sing it to the kids every night at bedtime.

Outdoors (I'm Yours) by Jason Mraz - Jason Mraz's original song, I'm Yours, was rewritten as Outdoors when he performed it on Sesame Street and I like to think it's better than the original. I get completely thrown off when the regular version is on the radio and the lyrics are all wrong.

What I am by Will.i.am. - Another Sesame Street favorite that we listened to a lot and I hoped that the kids were internalizing the message of all the positive things they could be and not just being distracted by muppets:)

We are Young by FUN - This is one of those songs that you don't realize is a problem until the kids are singing it but by then it's too late...and then you just sing your heart out and hope they're not paying attention. We used to blast this song in the car.

One More Night by Maroon 5 - We used to listen to this song on the way to and from indoor soccer when Owen was little so it reminds me of those dark, chilly nights!

Sunday Funday

Owen's regularly scheduled Sunday soccer game was moved to Monday so we had some free time before our adult league game (I sat out this week!). Owen and Pat headed out for some Pokemon Go time and lunch at Boca Loca and Paige and I did some shopping and ate lunch at Panera. It's not always easy to carve out one on one time so it was really fun getting to hang out with just Paige. Next month Pat will take Paige to the Daddy Daughter Dance and I'll have some time with Owen! After a few hours we all met at the movie theater to watch Storks and everyone loved it. It made me cry a couple of times but there were also a ton of funny moments!

Lunch selfie!

Yum!

The theater was pretty empty so we had great seats!

Family Time

Owen and Paige were pumped to hang out with their cousins last week! They just keep getting more awesome. Seriously.

We had to take pictures quickly! No time to stop!

Book time!

Paige got a chance to read!

Uncle Pat!

You don't have to be a toddler to love Peppa Pig:)

Soccer Challenge

A local organizations organized a soccer skills challenge for kids ages 9-14 and we convinced a reluctant Owen to participate. Each kid took 15 penalty kicks at a goal that was marked off for certain point values. Not a lot of kids showed up to participate but Owen's age had 4 or 5 kids competing. He didn't win but he ended up having fun and I was proud of him for trying!

The Lunch Note

Paige helped me make lunches the other day and decided to write Owen a note to find when he opened his lunchbag. It ended up being such a sweet, thoughtful and inspiring note! I hope she writes more of them:)

Paige enjoys some light reading and a pancake before school

Spirals

I make a lot of substitutions when I try recipes because I don't like buying expensive ingredients or tools to try something I'm not sure we're going to like. So I saw this recipe for Lemony Linguini with Zucchini and I had a giant zucchini in the fridge...I just needed a spiralizer... The recipe looked so yummy and I came across a decently priced spiralizer so I decided to go for it. Even if we only use it for this recipe it was worth it. Everyone loved it! The recipe calls for 2-3 cups of zucchini spirals but I think it would have been even better with 3-4 cups.

Running

Well, I injured my hip and had to miss out on my favorite half marathon:( But I did get to go cheer my parents on! They had great weather for such a fun race so I was a little jealous but also very proud of them. We were waiting partway through the course to see them and ended up being near another person there to cheer. This guy knew so many people and we picked up some good encouragements from him to shout at people. The overwhelming favorite ended up being "Stay Fresh!" Or was it "looking fresh?"

At the Library

Game On

Paige's soccer season finally started! It was great to see her playing again and she seemed like she was having a ton of fun! Owen had a blast too, playing with one of Paige's friends little brother.

Paige on one of her breakaways!

A few of Paige's dance friends are playing soccer this season too! 

Akron Game

Akron University had a camper's reunion game last week (remember when the kid's went to soccer camp there?) so we made the long trek out on a Friday night and met some friends to watch the men's team play. It was fun to be there with Pat this time and show him where the kids played and see which players on the team had worked with the campers. Akron won the game and then the players signed posters for anyone who wanted to wait in line.

Ready for the game!

It got dark pretty quickly!

Paige opted to cartwheel for a lot of the second half but I got a picture of her in between.

The players were really nice to the kids and a couple of them recognized Owen (although he was wearing his camp shirt so that was probably a big help:)

The game was a couple days before September 11 and the University had these flags out for what I'm assuming was a tribute.

Strudel

The phyllo pot pie we had a week or two ago was mediocre so I was excited to try a dessert! I did use butter between the layers this time instead of spraying Pam and yes, no one is shocked, it did make a tasty difference! The strudel was a big hit and pretty easy too!

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Home Again

One more family selfie to round out our weekend! We went hunting for some Pokemon after our long car ride home!

More Michigan

We had a fantastic brunch put on by Pat's cousin and Aunt and I came home with a couple recipes that Pat and the kids have asked me to make this week! We'll see...

The only picture from brunch but you can see the pretty bowl of fruit and a peek of the quiche!

We took a bunch of family selfies and this was one of them! I'm impressed we all got in!

It's not really obvious in this picture but a bee stung me below my right eye a couple days before we left and it ended up getting really swollen. I got some steroids the day we left but I kept having to explain to people what happened because there was such an obvious difference between the sides of my face.

Pat has been telling us about the Peach Festival for years even though he rarely (if ever) was able to go because of soccer tournaments. We got the kids on some rides, got them some junk food and went in search of some peach pie or any peach dessert really...

This ride was similar to the Rotor but I can't remember what it was called. Pat and the kids went on and they all loved it.

All the peach pies had been sold out for the second night in a row before we could get one so we settled for peach pie blizzards (yum!). The kids opted for Cheesecake blizzards!

We found a great seat for watching the festivities!

We were super excited to watch the "bed races" but it ended up not being so exciting. There were only 4 or 5 entries and some sort of confusion at the finish line where the first group across the finish line wasn't actually the winner. We never found out why!

Immediately following the bed races there was a classic car parade. We didn't even have to get up from out seats!

Immediately after the classic car parade there was something called a Mummer's parade which was basically adults in crazy costumes throwing candy to the kids.

Michigan Day One

We went on a long overdue trip to see some of Pat's relatives in Michigan over the weekend. Everything was pretty relaxed so I did a terrible job of getting pictures of those relatives but I did get some of the kids (and some parade pictures in the next post!). Owen and Paige's favorite part of the trip was probably getting to take care of two dogs. They learned a little bit about what it's like to have a big dog and a small dog and relished taking them for walks. The poop part...not so much!

Owen liked the tire swing and was trying to see if he could get credit in PokemonGo with some movement. I'm pretty sure it didn't work!

Paige hung out with the dog and walked her all over the yard!

Phyllo Pot Pie

This recipe came about because I needed to use up some ingredients and I still hadn't gotten around to making something with phyllo dough. It was alright but I was definitely expecting it to be better than it was. Of course, I also changed around some things so that might be my fault... I used broccoli instead of celery and peas and realized too late that I didn't have tarragon. Also, it was an especially stressful evening so I took a shortcut on the phyllo and sprayed Pam between the layers instead of using melted butter. That was something I knew I would regret even as I was doing it but it did save me a lot of time! Next time I'll definitely use the butter but I'm going to try a dessert instead! I ran into one more problem when it called for me to bring the mixture to a boil but there wasn't any liquid left! I ended up adding some more and maybe I overdid it...

So Far...

Paige's teacher is really good about sending out pictures and updates from her class! Here are a few...