An Open Letter to the Moms of the Girls on the Softball Team My Husband Coaches

Dear Moms of the Girls on the Softball Team My Husband Coaches,

Even though our season just began last week, and we’ve only played two games, and still have ten more games to go, I feel it necessary to help you help yourself be a gracious human being by sharing the gems of advice below:

1. Please do not permit your daughter to arrive at a game with bronchitis. We appreciate you telling us that she loves the game that much — to show up with back pain and her chest on fire — but we aren’t interested in forfeiting the rest of our season because all of our players mysteriously contracted bronchitis. Boundaries can be a helpful parenting tool.
2. If your daughter has been upset and in tears late into the night because she didn’t get to play her preferred position(s) in a game, that is not my husband’s fault. You need to help her learn to adjust her expectations. With 12 players on a team, you should have expected this. It’s called rotation, and it will happen a LOT this season. Please adjust your daughter’s expectations accordingly.
3. Yes, you are correct: My husband does sacrifice a lot of time coaching our team. However, he cannot be expected to teach your daughter everything she needs to know to be an outstanding softball player in only 3 short practices. Parents should anticipate the need to practice with their daughters at home if they are interested in improving their softball skills. Even if they have been playing since they were 4, there’s always room for improvement.
4. I’m sorry if your daughter’s confidence was so shaken by her position toward the bottom of the batting order in a particular game that she could not connect with the ball when she was at bat. Please see #3 above. Please also recall the previous game where she was one of the first 3 at bat, which resulted in the same outcome. Numbers don't seem to be the issue here.
5. Regarding your daughter being heartbroken at the thought of not playing for an inning: We are talking about ONE inning. Because we have 12 players. And can only have 10 (sometimes 11) on the field at a time. And again, this will also rotate throughout the season. It will impact all of the players. Everyone’s daughter (including our own) will rotate throughout the season, and chill on the bench for a single inning. This is called life.
6. Let me remind you: We’ve played only TWO games this season. Apparently you have not provided my husband with an adequate opportunity to demonstrate to you that players will rotate field positions as well as batting order during our remaining TEN games. I’m confident that even though it’s been hard on you to watch your daughter suffer so terribly, she will have plenty of opportunities to play her desired position(s) and bat right smack dab at the top of the order. Trust me. My husband knows numbers, and he knows how to be fair.
7. We’ve had 3 practices and 2 games. While we appreciate your daughter’s desire to show that she is a good player, if it were in fact true, it would have already been demonstrated by now.
8. Do let us know what you expect my husband to do when the other 10 players’ moms send him an email asking him to consider giving their child more opportunities on our team. I’m curious to know exactly how he is supposed to appease All. The. Moms.
9. Thank you for asking but no, there is nothing you can do. My husband won’t be persuaded into giving your daughter preference over his other 11 players. All of these girls deserve the same opportunities, and will receive the same opportunities. See #8 above.

Sincerely,

The Wife of Your Daughter’s Softball Coach

Halloween 2014

We had a blast tonight taking the kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood! The kids looked great in their costumes and really seemed to love transforming into Mario and Fluffy the cat, although E didn't seem terribly excited to be Luigi, but whatevs! I took a ton of pictures (waaaaaaay more than necessary, of course), but I couldn't help it! They're so adorable!!!

Enjoy!

Cute little kitty!

My darling Mario!

This glare! Ohmygoodness. I could just die!

LO helping her little cousin ladybug to the door for candy. So sweet!

This adorable Luigi stole my heart!

Here's a flashback to last year:

And 2012, too!

Love these kiddos so much!!!

A Confession & the Deets on Chase's New Room

Confession: I'm nothing if not ambitious.

Well, assuming ambitious is a synonym for impatient, because I'm most definitely that, too.

This weekend--actually just this Saturday to be exact--I have decided my beloved hubs and I will be doing Chase's room. I can't use the term "redo" because technically all we did was move his bed & dresser into his room when we first moved into the new house. We didn't "do" anything that would now require us to be "redoing" it. I'm crazy excited about this but it's a lot to take on in a single day. Well, really it'll just be a few hours while the kids are being entertained by their grandparents. I want it to be a big "reveal" for him... he leaves in the morning with his current sad, boring room, and comes back that evening to his amazingly awesome big boy train room!! WOO-HOO!!!

Chase is currently still in a toddler bed, so we're going to convert it to the full size bed. We're also painting the walls, installing some new lighting, putting up a curtain rod and curtains, and adding a variety of homemade wall art to complete the theme.

We decided to go with trains because, let's face it, the boy loves him some trains! But I didn't want it to look like Thomas the Train barfed all over his room. I want it to be a great starter room for a toddler boy that can easily grow with him. Removing an 8 foot by 12 foot Thomas of Sodor wall mural from one of his walls wouldn't be the most effective "grow with me" option. So I want to do a train theme that doesn't involve a lot of cartoony train stuff.

Enter my amazing Pottery Barn sheet set that was the basis of my inspiration for the room:

Classic. Train-y. In primary colors that can grow with him. I am so in love with these sheets!

I've paired them with this amazing Pottery Barn quilt that I swear the boy will be taking to college and eventually using with his own kids considering the price tag on this bad mamma jamma:

For the walls, we have chosen a lovely gray (Secret Passage by Olympic) that is really going to 'pop' against the white trim everywhere. Hubs insisted I buy a paint sample to paint a swatch on his wall before buying the gallon we'll need for his room. How dare he doubt me?? (LOL... past experience with picking out a paint color for our former kitchen, I'm sure). But kudos to me for picking out the RIGHT color the FIRST time! Now to just get that gallon...

For the wall decor, I've crafted a do-it-yourself framed train collage that I'm super excited about! It's very simple and juvenile, so it's perfect for a 3-year-old boy's room, but the images can easily be switched out as he grows.

I also found a fun Pinterest idea to purchase cardboard letters for less than $2 each, then spray painted them with a lovely brushed nickel metallic paint. I LOVE the way these turned out and can't wait to see them up on the wall!

I also purchased two wall decor signs from Amazon to add to the train theme:

Next to his new full size bed, you will find a new night stand from Target along with a cute lamp, also from Target.

There is only one window in Chase's room, and it is currently (and embarrassingly) covered by a dark brown blanket that is tucked into the valence attached to the blinds. This was our quick and cheap fix to make the room darker for nap time and bed time when we first moved in. Totally redneck, yes, but it's served it's purpose (for the past 9 months)...

His new room will have a lovely curtain rod in brushed nickel from Target and two navy blue blackout curtain panels (Surprise! They're from Target, too!).

The new lighting has to be my favorite part of his new room decor! I really wanted to add train-y depot sconces on either side of his new full-size big boy bed. Wouldn't you know I fell in love with these ones from Pottery Barn, complete with their $69 price tag (each). UGH.

Super cute though, right?? Hubs' wouldn't let me I couldn't bring myself to spend so much on lighting, so I searched elsewhere. I found these ones at Home Depot for a more reasonable $42 each, but again, way more than I wanted to spend. They have a much different look than the Pottery Barn ones, but still keep with the "train/depot" theme of his room (although the finish is a bit darker than I'd like).

So last Friday, we stopped at Lowe's to pick up the paint sample and a few other items to prepare for the big room overhaul, and imagine my surprise when I saw THIS light up on the demo wall... for $12.49!!! Score!

I loved loved loved it the second I saw it! It was perfect!! But, just my luck, they didn't have any more of them in stock. I believe it was discontinued or something and was on clearance, so it was all kinds of gonezo. We talked to the friendly Lowe's guy and -- get this! -- I was able to get the demo unit from the wall for a whopping FIVE BUCKS!! That's $5, people! Shut the front door, right?? The guy was super nice to call the other local Lowe's not too far from us to see if they had any in stock. It was the same sitch where they only had the demo light, but we were able to get that one for FIVE BUCKS, too!!!!

Seriously. $10 for new lighting for my boy's new room?? YES, PLEASE! Now the fun begins for hubs as he tries to determine how we can install these onto drywall (there are no existing wall sconces for him to simply replace), but without cutting into the drywall so we'll have the flexibility to move them or the bed without leaving two big holes in the wall. Plus I also want them to operate using the light switch in Chase's room, so good luck with that, hubs! I will mention here, though, my husband is the very best at entertaining all of my crazy ideas. I get my heart set on something and he makes it his mission Every. Single. Time. to be sure I get what I want. It's pretty much a win-win for me, but I know I make things so very difficult for him sometimes. He's such a trooper though and I'm SO THANKFUL to have that guy in my life. LOVE HIM!

So anywho, if any of you are wondering what we'll be doing this Saturday, you now have your answer! We've got our hands full with a loooooong list of "to do's" and a short timeframe in which to get it all done, but I'm rather confident in mine and hubs' skills. I mean, when you try to accomplish something with two kiddos around, I think we can all agree it takes at least 4x as long. But when you subtract those two precious little distractions, you're able to accomplish 10x as much!! At least that's how I do my math! ;)

And no worries ('cause I know several of you were worried completely sick about this - lol!), I will most definitely be sharing some "Before & After" pics of Chase's room after this weekend. I'm so excited and cannot wait to see how it all looks put together and most of all -- what Chase's reaction will be to his new big boy room!!!!!

Not to think LO has been left out of things... I have big plans for her room, which I hope will be implemented next spring (before the baby arrives). Here's a sneak peak at the inspiration for her new girly horse-themed room:

LOVE!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

What I'm most thankful for:

P.S. Happy 5 year anniversary, hubs!

Park

We spent some time at the park yesterday with the kids. It was a beautiful fall day and very nice for all of us to get some fresh air.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! We had a great time at our church's "Trunk n' Treat" festivities, which involved a lot of candy and ended with an outdoor showing of a Veggie Tales movie.

Here's our "nice dinosaur" as she called herself:

And of course, our adorable and sweet little monkey:

It's amazing to think of where we were just one year ago today. Our little miracle was 5 days old and his first open-heart surgery had officially been scheduled for Monday, November 2, 2009. He celebrated his 1st Halloween in the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (PCICU) at MUSC. He was intubated and had an ng-tube, along with a UVC, UAC, an IV, an obnoxious sensor thingy on his forehead, as well as some other "stuff" I just can't seem to recall right now. All I know is that this is where we were last year (see pic below) and God has brought us through SO MUCH. We are so grateful and so very blessed!!!