Is it Spring?

The first flowers in the yard popped up!  Hooray for these brave little beauties. 

Thursday night we took a nice, long bike ride.  Josh isn't going to give a straight smile unless we specifically ask for it. 

After the bike ride and after dinner, we went to the backyard to play baseball and lacrosse.  W/hen I asked him if I could catch for him, he said "you???" to which I said "yeah me!"  It cracks me up to surprise them. 

Luke is so good at avoiding going to bed.  This night he chose to show me how cool the Harry Potter " The Goblet of Fire" looks when it's fanned out.  I asked him for a picture with his face in it, and this is what I got. He's seriously a master at stretching the rules. 

Friday after school, Luke and his friend Rogen met a bunch of neighborhood kids at the Harvest Creek park.  They had 8 kids so they decided to play Capture the Flag.  They were intense -- so much yelling and running and guarding.  It made me happy to watch kids be outside and happy in the sunshine!

Luke was really proud of his "dirt line" at his ankle.  The sign of a fun time at the park! 

Saturday was a big sports day for us! Josh had 3 lacrosse games and Luke had 1 baseball game.  We had to miss one of Josh's games to catch Luke's game, but we still had plenty of good watching.  
Josh is the one with the ball in this picture, white head on his stick. 

He wore #92 because his #2 jersey was in his closet.  It's pretty early in the season, not quite all dialed in on our routine just yet.

Luke's first game was against the other Emily Dickinson team.  So fun to watch so many boys we know!  Luke got to be pitcher for the first 2 innings.  

Hustling off field...

He's solid back there, getting in front of tons of low pitches.  This is the first season that they can steal bases, so he was hopping busy back there making sure they didn't have an easy job stealing. 

I love this picture of Rogen batting and Luke on deck. 

Luke was at bat twice and struck out twice.  This is the first season where it's kid pitch, and it's a rough learning curve

He's got a great little swing!

I only put this picture in here to show you that he doesn't think he needs to wear special cup undies, he thinks he can just put the cup in his undies and it will be fine.  But apparently it moves around a bit. Ha ha ha

Luke pitched for one inning, and he did a great job!  He walked 2, gave up 1 hit, but he had three strike outs! 

Isn't he so cute!?

His tongue was out for this entire pitch, from warm up to follow through. Ha!

We ended Saturday night with the first backyard fire of the season.  

Luke made us a special dessert, a twist on Smores.  It had graham crackers as "the base"as Luke calls it, and then chocolate syrup, mini marshmallows, snickers bites, butterscotch chips all sprinkled on top! 

Sunday morning we watched the MSU lacrosse final home game. Toby is the silly face friend!

The bobcats are undefeated -- they're very funny to watch!

Sunday afternoon we hiked to the M.  We went up the steep way, at the boys' request.  They did great, it nearly crippled me, but they were billy goats!

The town is just about to turn green.  I bet the rain in the storm that was blowing in will help! 

We took a quick break on the bench to talk about how far they've come as hikers.  Remember when you couldn't make it up here going the easy way?

Ruby loved her hike, but isn't great at posing. Her timing is shit.  My smiley boys make me happy!