My Birthday (Guest Post)

I was going to do a post honoring my little guy today, but he wanted to honor himself. Happy Birthday Ben! We love you more than you'll ever know. ~Love, Mom

My Birthday

By Ben

Today, as you might know is my sixth anniversary of my sixth birthday (That means I'm Twelve.) So my gracious Mom let me make another blog post. Since there's twelve years of pictures of me I think it's time to share.Look how cute I was, I guess some things never change.

My little, little piggies.

I think she ate me.

Leave me alone I need my sleep, women!

So cute it must be censored.

Most kids don't brush at all, at that age.
I wonder how I got up there...


I'm totally rockin' those blue clues pajamas.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's Bennyboy!

To infinite (cuteness) and beyond!

Yo can AAAAAAAAAWWWWWW if you must.



I'm pretty fly for a pre-k kid.

Anyone need there lawns mowed?

Let not my face fool you, I was having fun.

That happened at least a hundred times that day. O the memories.

Don't worry it was field day at my school. I never needed to use a wheelchair. Ever.

Look at me all dressed up - for something....

Pretty awesome bedhead right there. I'm pretty impressed with myself.


Thank you everyone who read this post, and and dealt with the many grammar mistakes I know I must have made.

~Ben

Down Down Down

We've been at a soccer tourney all weekend, so other than the fact Jordan's team is in the semi-finals tomorrow, I have nothing to report. I would like to share this video however, done by the seniors of the morning show at Jordan's high school. Jordan isn't one of them, but I think you will find in enjoyable nonetheless.

Today's the Day

Happy Birthday to my wonderfully organized sister-in-law, Amy! She's so organized she's already sent Ben's birthday gift (which is next week ,OMG!) & has called about the kids Christmas gifts (I WILL call you back, I swear!) I'm so immersed into HS soccer season disorganized that I didn't realize what date it was until yesterday. I'm a bad sister-in-law, but you're a great one & a wonderful aunt to my kiddos! Hope you have a great day & we're all looking forward to seeing you guys next month!

Homecoming

Our Gator Girl came home this weekend...




...and it was just like old times.

Me and My Bright Idea

Some Both of my loyal readers may be wondering where I've been for the past couple of weeks. Have the Beth's Blog Bunch been struck by the flu of the swiney variety perhaps? THANKFULLY NO! Have Beth & Michael been off on an exotic trip? UNFORTUNATELY NO! Has Beth been on some sort of organizing/cleaning spree?! DEFINITELY NOT!

No, my friends, none of the above. You see, I, in my infinite wisdom had a bright idea! I decided to take on a project that no one asked me to. I decided to take something super simple and make it super complicated. I decided to ignore my domestic duties and spend hours and hours and days and days on something that will, I'm sure be eventually thrown in the garbage. When it comes to time management, I am, indeed, my own worse enemy.

So, it started simply enough. Back in the middle ages late eighties when I was in high school, on football game days, the cheerleaders sold "spirit ribbons" such as this... Maybe they still do that in some places (they must, I got this pic from a company that makes them...duh?!), but not at Jordan's high school.

They used to cost a quarter & were fun to wear & collect. I know you'll be surprised to know that my idea had nothing to do with football. Unfortunately, neither one of my daughters' high schools have winning football teams. Not like our EAGLES were back in the day! No trips to the State Championship for my girls' football teams. The highlights of Megan's high school games was always the band & most of the "fans" in the stands were actually band parents (have I mentioned that Megan was Drum Major?!) Wasn't she cute?!

I believe the band is also the highlight of Jordan's school's football games, but she's not in the band... Oh dear! Now I'm REALLY off topic...this is how my mind works, folks. This is why I can't get anything done around here.

Anyway, you may have guessed that my project has something to do with soccer. You'd be right. Jordan's senior high school soccer season started last week. I love, love, love the girls in her senior class. Even in their freshman year, these girls contributed greatly to this team, both on and off the field. They were honored to be part of the tradition of this team and really started planning how to be great senior leaders from the the first day of tryouts their freshman year. They are hard workers & really want to leave a great legacy behind.

(In the spirit of being fair to all of the Beth's Blog Bunch, I should mention that Megan also had a great team & a great senior class when she played HS soccer but I didn't have a blog back then to talk about them...)

Now back to the topic at hand... Traditionally, for big games, one of the upper classes make "Beat Tags" such as these for the team to wear to school that day...

See the pretty ones in the back? Those were given to Jordan her freshman & sophomore years. (some were made by her class) The half-a**ed one in the front was from last year. With few exceptions, the 2009 class were poor leaders with no team spirit.

Which is one of the reasons the Class of 2010 wanted to be outstanding.

Sometime over the summer (or maybe last spring) I started hatching a plan. Jordan liked the idea & we were going to start working on it over the summer when we had some free time. Didn't happen. About a week before the season started (about the time of my last blog post) we started working on a Sunday afternoon. We bought ribbon...LOTS of ribbon, muslin fabric, iron on transfers & plastic plates. Sunday evening was cutting & stapling ribbon.

Monday I spent all day cutting and stapling ribbon...

and designing and printing...

Monday night after practice, some of the girls came over to eat pizza, gossip, tape, cut & Mod Podge.

I love these girls. We've know most of them since they were 11. How can they be seniors?!

I love their school colors...

I love ribbon.

That Tuesday, I got to work. For some reason, I was thinking that Jordan would have time to help me. But honestly, she didn't. Once high school season starts, she has no life outside of soccer & school.

By this time I was starting to realize what I had gotten myself into. I hadn't talked to the other senior moms about it, so I didn't feel comfortable imposing my crazy idea on them. Besides, you know how it is, it's easier to just do it yourself rather than explain what you need. Plus, one of them might have an idea as to how to do it faster or more efficiently... you all know fast & efficient is not how I roll.

So I got to work designing...

and printing...

and more printing...

and cutting...

and more cutting...

and ironing...

and more ironing...

and then more cutting...

and stacking...

Hey look! There are those EAGLES! I want them to EXHAUST my alma mater? Heck yeah!

There are 22 girls on the team. 13 regular season games. That's 286 tags.

3 yards of fabric.

58 iron-on transfers.

Hot-glued between 44 plates. Jordan delivers them on game-day mornings before school, then collects them after school. I add a new tag for every game. At the end of the season they with have tags for all of the games attached to these plates.

And I will have 286 hot glue burns.

They're on their own for the post-season.