{Soccer Baby}

Our little baby started soccer this last weekend.  How did that happen?  How is he old enough to be doing rec sports now?  However it happened, he is and he is loving it.  He was so cute to watch running all over the field, chasing the ball.  Actually, he didn't do a lot of chasing.  He was more concerned about the unattended goal.  He took it upon himself to be the goalie and would run toward the ball until the direction the ball was taking changed toward his own goal and then he would high tail it to guard the net.  He liked wearing the jersey and learning how to pass and stop the ball.  The age group is 3-4 year olds.  So you can imagine how crazy it could be with kids running and all trying to get the ball.  My stomach hurt after 45 minutes from laughing at all these little guys.  The coaches were really patient and worked well with the kids.  We only have 5 more weeks and we are gonna enjoy each and everyone of them.  Yeah for soccer!!

 

{Easter Eggs}

We had a really quiet Easter this year.  We didn't do any Easter egg hunts.  The kids got books, new shirts and some chocolate in their Easter baskets.  We were getting ready for my brother Andy and his wife Sariah to come into town the day before Easter.  I got to speak in church on Easter and then we came home and had a wonderful ham dinner, enjoying our time with family in town.  My kids loved having their Aunt and Uncle here and so did I!!

The kids did dye Easter eggs, so we were kinda festive!!  They had fun being creative, Meysa especially.  She really tried to get her eggs multi-colored.  Wyatt was happy to dip his eggs and get them drying as fast as possible.  Lauryn was a mixture of the two and she was also the messiest.  Ayden was too cool I guess to dye eggs this year.  He dipped his eggs and then used some screen time to play Hay Day on the iPad without having to share with his siblings.  I mean he is almost 12.  So that basically means he is too old for baby egg dying right?!!

 

{NASA & Mini Golf}

On our second full day in Ocean City we had a lovely mix of rain and snow to add to the already cold temps.  So we were looking for something to do indoors and found out that there was a NASA facility just south of us into Virginia.  There was a visitors center so we thought, why not check it out.  It was fun for the kids, even though we seriously spent only a half an hour there.  It was a small visitors center and they were doing some renovations so their theater was wasn't working.  We got back into the car and ate lunch and then headed back to Ocean City to find something else to do.  We hit up a bowling alley and it happened to be Senior day and they had a senior bowling league tournament going on so there were no open lanes.  The next best thing was indoor mini golf.  The kids had a great time.  Wyatt even got a hole in one.  We spent the afternoon doing that and then we headed to the pool and let the kids swim for a few hours.  It was our last day in Ocean City.  The next day when we left to head home the weather was warmer and sunny, go figure.  We stopped off at the outlet malls on our way back and found some good deals.

The rest of Spring Break was spent doing some spring cleaning, going bowling, watching movies and enjoying being off of work and school.  We are excited to head back to Ocean City when it is much warmer.  We may even get to wear our swimsuits on the beach instead of our parkas!!

{Ocean City & Assateague Island}

We found a great hotel right on the beach in Ocean City and we got it for a great price.  That was most likely due to the fact that it was in the off season and cold.  It was cold, but fun nonetheless.  After we visited Annapolis, we drove straight to Ocean City and got checked into the hotel.  We then headed off to find dinner and then enjoyed the indoor pool before we headed to bed.  The next morning we ate breakfast, and then went to Assateague Island, which was just a few miles away.  Assateague Island is known for it's wild ponies and of course with a horse lover among us we couldn't not go to see them for ourselves.  Meysa, I believe has watched the movie Misty about a billion times.  The movie is about the wild ponies on Chincoteague Island which is the Virginia side of Assateague Island.  We got lucky and the horses were out grazing a lot that day.  The Park Ranger said that they would be because they sensed the storm that was coming and so they would be getting their bellies full to tide them over through the storm.  The kids loved spotting them and naming them.  The brown and white one in the picture below they named Florida because it's white paint looks like Florida.  We are pretty original around here.  There are some short hikes on the island that you can take and so we did one of those and then headed to the beach to check out the ocean.  We came away from the ocean with tons of sand in our shoes, shells in our pockets and wind blown hair.  I laughed when I thought of us traipsing around the beach bundled up in our winter coats, freezing.  We were supposed to be getting snow and rain, starting that evening and throughout the next day.  So we tried to make the most of the one day that wouldn't be nasty weather.  The kids thought it was neat that they have now been to the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans!!  We had a great time on the Island and actually plan to be back when it is warmer and we can really enjoy the beach!!

That night after we found a wonderful place to eat some local, fresh seafood and had an amazing black raspberry shake, we headed back to the hotel.  We were all a little too cold for a swim in the pool, since it wasn't the warmest water.  So we improvised.  The kids could all fit into the jacuzzi tub that we had in our bathroom.  We started up the jets and let them play for a while.  They had fun, it was like our own mini hot tub!!