Anna is playing softball again this spring. She is on a team w a different coach, but a couple girls are the same from last year. Funny thing about softball–the socks. One is purple and one is gold. The purple one went missing (wherever missing socks go) after 1 game. Instead of just wearing regular socks, she wore the gold one and a regular sock. Didn’t want you to think it was a gang sign or anything.

PS–the purple sock turned up this past weekend (after about 3 weeks on vacation). It was under our bed.  Imagine that–a dirty sock 2 feet from where the clothes got pulled off and dropped. Who would have thunk it??

Anna rounds 3rd on her way home.

Tyler is playing baseball (T ball really). He is the only kid who gets overhand pitched to and he SMACKS it every time. He has a great swing and really crushes it. He gets that from me I am sure. The main thing he has been doing though is GROWING! This past weekend I think he ate and laid around the entire weekend. He even put himself down for a nap (normal for me, NOT for this 6 year old boy).

What do growing 6 year old boys and lazy 77 year old dogs have in common?

A few weekends ago Paul and I went to see Simplified play at the Blind Tiger again. Their songs are great and it is always a good time (made better by the recent legislation banning smoking in bars and restaurants). Turns out the band’s drummer broke his wrist so they had a new kid who did ok. Just a little different vibe since he was new.

We like that band so much that their song, “Home,” was the one that we walked down the aisle to at our wedding. Lyrics:
Never thought I would be the one who,
Found someone to make me feel like you do,
It’s true I dreamed of you,
And you came in right on cue,

At the Simplified concert April 16.

Tyler and I were playing basketball one afternoon (which means I was rebounding for him–I am allowed 1 shot per 1 million Tyler shoots). All of a sudden he stops and runs over to the yard by the fence. He wanted to pick me flowers and insisted that I put them in water right away so they would last. Here is a photo of my gift:

What more could a girl ask for?

I have been reading quite a bit lately (Paul would say “as usual”). I recently finished House Rules by Jodi Picoult. She could make the phone book a best seller. LOVE her writing style. I also finished Walking on Broken Glass. It was ok. I am part way through The Irresistible Henry House. It is quirky so far. Henry House is an orphan who is adopted by a Home Ec Dept of a college in the 40′s so his 6 “mothers” rotate weekly for a semester, then he gets a new batch of mother every 4-5 months. It follows him through life to watch how messed up this makes him. It is supposedly fiction, but I think these programs really did exist. I introduced Paul to Bill Bryson and Dave Berry. That’s right, Paul is STILL reading! He even said his next book will be FICTION. Imagine that!!!

We have been riding a lot more now that the weather has warmed up. We are doing our first mountain ride this weekend. Can’t remember exactly how much climbing, but its a lot. Hopefully the bike Garmin will work to measure climbing feet like it is supposed to. Last weekend there was such a drastic change in pressure w that big storm that it said at one point that the incline we were on was 850% grade! WHOA!

7:35pm: Anna is giving us (Paul and me) a silent treatment. She is no longer talking outside of school. You may want to pick up that Sign Language for Dummies book.

She is also playing softball this spring. Last minute decision this past weekend to sign up. Her first practice tonight was rained out. Gotta love these silly outdoor sports.

7:38pm: Anna just made an exception to talk to the dogs.

Paul and I went to the Eric Clapton concert on Monday night. Yep, a school night. We are paying dearly for it, realizing we are WAY to old for this rock star lifestyle. Got home shortly after midnight on Monday, Paul went to work at 8am on Tuesday, I took a half day (got my hair cut), but of course still got up with Paul. Cameras were not allowed, so excuse the low quality on the photo below, it is taken with Paul’s Blackberry.

You will just have to believe us that the tiny blob in the center is Eric Clapton

I went to Camp Crop A Lot this weekend: 48 hours of scrapbooking! Here are a couple pages I finished:

What cracks me up about these pictures is that Bluesy really does not like to sit right on the ground. Ever.

7:47pm: Another exception for her to talk to Tyler.

This weekend Paul and I have NO PLANS except a fundraiser party on Sat night and NAPPING. My original idea was to make a list of all the things we were NOT going to do, but that seemed like a lot of work that would only lead to lots of guilt. Spring forward is this weekend. Losing that hour of sleep really kills me. Which makes me kill Paul. Sorry kiddo.

After Camp Crop A Lot I came home and had the house to myself. I decided that it was a good time to paint the playroom (formerly known as Tyler’s bedroom). We kept the Carolina Blue color (despite the season), but it looks much better now. It was a surprise for Paul and the kids. Anna and Tyler declared it not a good present.

This is the masterpiece!

The artist w her masterpiece

Anna would be on here writing the update herself, but she is currently typing up a novel of her life story. Seriously.

Paul and Susan on Christmas morning

This post has pictures that represent Christmas Day to New Year’s Day. Just to recap, we had 9 celebrations in 11 days. For some reason I also thought that was a good time to do a home improvement project of painting all the door knobs. Which also means the latches, screws, etc. You probably realized that. Wish I would have…

Christmas w Steph, Roy, BizNKids, and MomMom, Dec 26

Point of interest on this photo–I THOUGHT both eyes were crossed. I did a redo for Paul just now, thinking my eyes were crossed again. No such luck. My sister was like this all the time from birth and had surgery to make her normal. Perhaps I had preemptive surgery to make sure mine did not wander…EVER!

Anna--Dec 26 Christmas; celebration #9

I just love love love this photo of Anna. You get glimpses of what she will look like as a young woman, yet she still has that baby look too.

Tripp gets a robot for Christmas!

Sleepy Becca posing for pictures

The robot Tripp got for Christmas was very cool, it even danced to a Duran Duran knock off song (sounded like the song, but like they changed it to not have to pay royalties). But then it started to somewhat stalk MomMom. Kind of scared us. Rebecca was SO sleepy, but she always wants to get a good picture. And the truth still holds–sometimes the kids like the box the toy comes in rather than the toy itself!

New Year’s Eve 2009. Basic math I should have realized when I bought the sparklers: [(Sleepy kids x bad weather so they didn't get any exercise for days) x (Paul has been w said kids for 80 hours x Susan has been sick for 80 days)] x fire sparks shooting off a stick = probably not a good idea. Not to mention I had accidentally sprayed some grass (and a little driveway) with my door knob project so Tyler of course wanted to prance there w his sparklers. He was drawn like a moth to a flame. (get it–flame??)

Skinned squirrels in the refrigerator. Seriously. Ugh.

Paul took Tyler hunting w some friends and their kids. Tyler was a little loud (lucky for the squirrels), but the others were more successful (unlucky for Susan). We had 6 dead bodies in the fridge. It was like The Soprano’s. Paul made fried squirrel, scrambled eggs, grits, biscuits and squirrel gravy for New Year’s breakfast. They say that how you spend NY Day is how you spend your year. God help me.

Day 1, 12/17/09: Anna’s 8th birthday. Paul and I met Robin and Jason, and of course Tyler at Rio Grande for Anna’s birthday dinner. Anna chose the restaurant–Rio G won for the 3rd year in a row. I just LOVE this picture of Anna.

Anna at her Rio Grande birthday dinner, Dec 17

Day 2, 12/18/09: Kids Family Birthday Party. Stephanie and Biz planned a party for Anna and Tyler at their house. Sandie, Brandon, Haley, Hunter and Mom Mom all celebrated with us.

Tyler had a Star Wars cake complete w light up light sabers. Anna had a doll cake complete w Barbie-like doll you lifted out of the cake before cutting.

Day 3, 12/19/09: Tyler’s 6th birthday. Before we could celebrate Tyler’s birthday, we had to play in the snow! That’s right, we had about 7 inches of snow on Friday night/Saturday morning. Then we met Robin, Jason and Lacey (their baby) at Chuck E Cheese to celebrate Tyler’s day.

Anna, Tyler and Frosty. This was after sledding off the ramp Paul built for them!

Ahhhh, my NRA reps.

Day 4, 12/20/09: Extended Sanders Family Christmas/Susan’s half birthday. OK, 1 was celebrated a little more than the other, but still…

Paul and me before starting to open presents at MomMom's.

Day 5, 12/21/09: Susan’s manager Christmas party and Cole’s Annual Christmas party.

(photos unavailable, cameras confiscated by security, paparazzi bounced from property)

Day 6, 12/22/09: Celebrated Paul’s birthday at UNC vs. Marshall basketball game!

My first time in the Dean Dome! I mean... me doing whatever Paul wanted to do for his birthday!

Paul and I are vegging out tonight. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, not sure what the plans are. Then we get the kids on Christmas Day about noon. Then Christmas w Steph and Biz, et. al on Sat afternoon! 9 events in 11 days! Whoooooo hooooooo! Keep in mind this was including 10 loads of laundry, 0 minutes of napping, 3 days of work (which included creating a plan to restructure our cardiac rehab program to make up for $96,000 worth of revenue that we cannot bill for in 2010 and 4 days of 11 state inspectors surveying our hospital), baking 120 cookies and only 30 minutes of physical activity and NO tears shed! Happy Sanders Hanukkah!

Anna was very excited about wearing this outfit that Granny bought her. Jason brought the kids over special to pick up this outfit the night before school started.

CHEESE!

Anna was most looking forward to showing Tyler around and helping him ride the bus.

Tyler was most looking forward to riding the bus. Here he would not even stop to get his pic taken.

Tyler clearly had enough of the picture taking.

Anna has been getting more and more into riding bikes lately but her bike was too small for her. About a month ago I took her up to Paceline to look at new ones but told her we were just going to look. She found a bike that she fell in love with and I told her that if she showed us she would ride it she could get it. We took her back up there tonight and told her that she was just going to look again (we knew we were going to get it for her tonight though). When we told her she could get it she was so excited. When we got home we went out for a ride and she kept saying “I love my bike”. Unfortunately a storm came in so we didn’t get to ride as long as we wanted, but she still had a great time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are a lot of rolling hills on the roads between Hanging Rock and Sauratown and as we were getting close to Sauratown I told them that the climb would be starting soon and I got a few worried faces since what we had already done was not considered climbing. The climb up Saurtown is around 3 miles with the second half of the climb being much steeper than the first half. I had warned them about this before we got on the climb, but as soon as we rounded one of the corners where you can see the grade go up I heard Bryan saying “Oh man!”. Everyone made it to the top and at that point Bryan and Tamara weren’t so excited about doing the second climb. Luckily we had parked at the top of Hanging Rock so I was able to tell them if they wanted a ride back home they had to get to the car . Once you get off the top half of Sauratown it is a really easy decent without any real curves but right in the top third of the mount there is  a really tricky switch back corner that I had warned everyone to be real careful through. Susan and I made it down the mountain first with Tamara right behind us. Bryan showed up several minutes later with a few tears in his eyes because he had scared himself so bad through that corner .

On paper Sauratown is the harder of the two climbs but Hanging Rock always feels much harder to me (even when I do it first). Susan and I have ridden there several times and she thinks the same thing. Apparently we aren’t the only ones because Bryan and Tamara both about died on that climb. Bryan got so tired and wobbly that he went off the road at one point and decided that since he was already stopped he would take a quick break. Tamara said she wanted to stop but couldn’t get her foot out of her peddle so she just kept going (a good thing for her since it is very hard to get started on a hill like that). In the end we all made it and had a great time.  OK, that was my take on Saturday…here is Tamara’s http://memosandlovenotes.blogspot.com/2009/05/mountain-climber.html.

Sunday we went on a ride with the Blues that was suppose to be a easy 35 mile ride. None of us had done this ride before but we had a queue sheet so no problem. We took off and all went well at first. Eventually it started raining and then there were a couple places in the queue sheet that were wrong. In the end our 35 mile spin turned into a wet 50 mile ride. Fifty miles wouldn’t have been a problem if we had brought enough food for a ride like that but we didn’t so added in with our ride from the day before I was starving by the time we got done.

Sunday’s ride was a much more relaxed ride. We were going out for a walk with the kids and Tyler wanted Susan to ride her bike with him. Anna knows how to ride but has always been scared to and would never do it so I was going to walk with her. All the sudden before we left she decided that she was going to ride also. We rode all around the neighborhood and Anna did great. She has outgrown her bike so she had a little trouble with banging her knees on the handle bars but she was excited to be riding.

Monday morning Susan had be at work early and the kids and I slept in. I slept until 7, Tyler slept until 7:30 and Anna got up at 8. Normally I am up by 5:30 or 6 and Tyler is also so Susan wanted to know why we can’t do that when she is there. As soon as Anna got up she wanted to go out for a ride again. We rode around for a long time and Anna was asking for a bigger bike. I told her we could go to the bike store and look but that we couldn’t get one right now (I couldn’t pass up a opportunity to go to the bike shop ). They had a couple of bikes that would be good for her and of course she wanted the more expensive of the two. Of course now she has her heart set on the bike so it should be fun until we are able to get one for her.

Anna At Horse Camp

Anna was at horse camp on Monday and Tuesday and had a great time even though it was cold both days. They have a indoor riding area where it is still cold but not as bad as being outside. Every morning was a fight to get her to dress warm enough but I was worried about her being cold because the camp was all day long.

Anna has always wanted a horse and now she has come up with a plan on how to get one. She said all we have to do is make our fence a little bigger and build a barn. Then she is going to find a horse “with no saddle, no owner, and has no fence” so we get one for free. If she can’t find a wild horse it will be OK because she will buy one with the money in her piggy bank. Next summer is going to be great, Anna, Tyler and I are all going to go out riding…Anna on her wild horse and Tyler and I on our motorcycles!