back on the road

Now the real fun begins..dealing with insurance companies. But we got Keith a new car! He got a 2010 ford focus. It isn't his dream car, but it had really low miles, a great price & will work great going to Indian Springs every day and can comfortably fit all my growing boys in the back.

crash

 For once it wasn't me!! Saturday morning I got woken up by a phone call, it was Keith calling to let me know he was going to be home late, that he was just involved in a 5 car accident on 95 (he is working graves this year).  He told me that he & a coworker/friend Aaron that carpools with him were both fine, and that he is pretty sure the car is totaled and that they would need me to come get them.  I quickly got dressed, grabbed Nathan and headed towards the accident.  As I drove north on 95 past the accident so I could get back on the freeway going south and pull up behind the accident I was amazed how horrible most of the cars looked!  There was car pieces all over the road, glass everywhere, NHP & tow trucks blocking all but one of the lanes.  I drove down the shoulder with my hazard lights on to avoid the traffic and pulled up between a few highway patrolmen.  Nathan was thrilled to see all the police cars & tow trucks!  

There was a car (with a drunk driver) that hit this red mustang & hit her so hard that she smashed into the center divider and moved the concrete divider.  The car that hit her fled the scene.  Keith & Aaron saw this happen and stopped to help her, a car next to them with coworkers followed and stopped the car that tried leaving.  As they were helping her the white truck t-boned the mustang, not touching the brakes at all, flying her into Keith's car.  They were both standing outside the car when it was hit.  Aaron jumped out of the way of the mustang and was within a foot of it smashing into him.   The driver of the white truck was also drunk.  

(white truck)

 Once I got there we emptied the hyundai into my truck so the tow truck could take it.  We have a fun insurance mess to figure out this week now.  No one was seriously hurt, two people were taken to the hospital, the girl in the mustang and the drunk driving the white truck. It could have been a lot worse than it was!  When we got home Thomas and David wanted to see the pictures of the car, as I was showing them the pictures on my phone Thomas started crying and didn't leave his dad's side Saturday.  He still is pretty clingy to him.  Now the fun part....what car to get now!  We were planning on getting a new car closer to summer/fall this year but obviously are getting it sooner.  I'm more upset that we don't get to see how many miles we can rack on that little hyundai!  I bought it with 6 miles on it, when it died yesterday it had 215,000!!

Presidents Day Weekend

David's baseball team played in the Red, White, and Blue Presidents Day Weekend tournament this past weekend.  The boys played well, they played up a division for the experience and with the exception of one game, they held their own and did pretty good.  David hit well in all 4 games, and even pitched in one.  He loves pitching, me not so much.  It's to much stress for me to watch him pitch, but he likes it and is pretty good.

Thomas took these pictures for me 

David is #1

Nathan & Thomas

David hitting & pitching

Saturday morning my friend Ashley & I did the color run 5K.  It was a lot of fun and we had a good time running it together.  We are training for our next run now!

Baseball Saturday

There are times I think I'm crazy, like this weekend when I signed David up for spring football, spring club ball (baseball) league, and Thomas up for t-ball and golf lessons. It will definitely not be a boring spring!
David was supposed to have baseball practice Saturday morning & at the last minute his coach let us know we were going to play in a local tournament instead on Saturday. He played at 1 and 3. His team played really well, they lost the first game and tied the second. David got to pitch in both games. He was thrilled & I stressed! The second game his team played his cousins team which was a lot of fun. They played on the same little league team last year so it was fun to watch them compete with eachother this time. I didn't think of it until just now, but I should have taken a picture of the two of them after the game together. David scored the tieing run for his team in the second game. It was a nice way to end a game against your cousin...in a tie. Nathan and I had fun watching David play baseball, Thomas had a birthday party to go to instead. I love watching how far David has come in baseball and how determined, serious and competitive he can be while at the same time enjoying the game and having fun.

cousins

Growing up, I never had a friend relationship with my cousins.  Now that we are all adults, we are friends on facebook, follow eachother on instagram,  and have more of a relationship than I remember having when we were younger.

We got a picture in the mail this week, it was sitting on the counter when David came home from school.  He picked it up, looked at it and said "who are they?"  It was a picture of his cousins that live less than 10 miles away.  I was so sad to have to tell him that it was his cousins!  We have absolutely no relationship with half of the family.  My kids miss out on 16, almost 17 cousins that are right around their same ages, and not because of distance, they are mostly within 10 miles from our home. It makes me sick.  Family is supposed to be able to be such a strength in life and be people that you can lean on and turn to no matter what.  To have so much family so close and not be able to recognize who they are in pictures....  

I am SO thankful for the relationships that my boys do have with my siblings kids.  They all have at least one cousin that is their same age and they love to play and do things with.  We are looking forward to a quick Disney trip next week with our Washington (& local) cousins. 

beach

This weekend the boys and I went with a good friend of mine and her girls to Newport Beach!  We had SO much fun!!  One of my friends daughters had a school project on mapping and had to figure out landmarks along the way, gas mileage, time and how to get somewhere in the world.  She chose the beach and we thought it would be fun to see if it works out the same in real life as it does on paper!   

We had fun walking along the beach. The boys had fun finding shells along the way & they all walked pretty well.  David gave Nathan a piggyback ride a few times.   The best part, as we were walking along the shore we saw dolphins in the ocean!!  It was really neat!  If you look in the picture under Thomas, above David giving Nathan a piggyback ride, you can see a fin in the water.  It was great weather!  We were hesitant going down, the weather report said it was supposed to be rainy.  When we were getting ready Saturday to go to the beach it was sprinkling, but when we got there it was overcast but nice!  Perfect beach weather!  Since it is winter, we thought it would be to cold to go in the water so we dressed everyone in sweatshirts and shorts that way we could get our feet wet.

Luckily we were able to find sand toys in the store before we left for our beach trip, so the kids were able to have fun digging in the sand and trying to make sand castles. 

We rode the ferry across the bay, and on the other side bought a pizza for lunch.  We got back to the beach and laid our towels out and sat down to eat.  The seagulls were crazy!!  They had no fear at all!  One of them swooped down and took Tommy's pizza right out of his hand!   They kept dive bombing us so we had David run interference!  He was running in circles around the towels while we ate scaring the birds away.  

 After lunch the kids played in the sand more and ventured a little closer to the water.  Lesson learned...regardless how cold it might be, the kids will still go play in the ocean!

 Nathan didn't like how the sand felt between his toes, so he played on the beach in his socks.  Thomas was SO afraid of the water and didn't want to get close to it.  He was afraid that the waves would get him and take him away to the ocean where a shark would eat him.  No matter what I or anyone else said to him he was not going to go in the water.  

Finally he got brave enough and tried it....he LOVED it!!  This is him running up the beach to tell me how brave he was (and get praises) that he went in the water.  Once he went in there was no stopping him. 

 The kids, except Nathan, as we were packing up to leave.   We had such a good time and are looking forward to going again soon!

birthdays & baseball

MLK weekend was a pretty busy one for us!  Nathan had his birthday party, a pool party (yes, it was at one of the city indoor pools since it is winter & freezing!)  He had a good time with his friends, cousins and grandparents. 

 This was his invitation, a mini beach ball with all the party info on it, deflated in an envelope.  On the front of the envelope I wrote inflate for the date. 

I was in the pool with the kids most of the party so didn't get any party pictures, except a cupcake/candle picture. 

We also had a 5 game/3 day baseball tournament!  David's team, LV Rebels, played in the MLK tournament in town.  They had 2 games Saturday, one was the same time as Nathan's party so David had to miss the party & it was also his best hitting game of the tournament (& I missed it!)   They won both their games Saturday.  They had two games on Sunday, they lost both of those.  And had the semi final game on Monday.  They ended up 4th place in the tournament.  They are a fairly new team, and in the last tournament mid-December they horribly lost all their games, so to make it to the semis a month later is great.  These boys have been working hard and it shows!