Softball

I love to play softball...it's one of my favorite pass times.

Just over a year ago I started playing softball on Friday nights with a friend from work and her husband, sister, neighbor, etc etc.... Most of us have been playing together for over a year now, minus one season they played Sundays and I didn't play and a few of the girls (3) being pregnant. Well we finally came in 1st place. This is our picture of our victory Friday night - Gilbert Big League Dreams Rookie West Champions. We won the final game 20-6...it was a weird week, not everyone who normally plays was there do to sickness and injury but here's our troop from Friday Night.

In January a few of the newer girls from the Friday night team asked me to sub on their Wednesday night team....well it seemed that someone was always gone so I played every week. They played in Awahtukee. We won our season there too, but for winning the tournament we only got a $25 Fry's gift card (yes for the team as a whole). So they had a barbecue.....These are most of the girls from our team plus an extra friend or two.

Growing, Growing...Gone

Ok well not gone yet but I am amazed at how big Keaton is every day. They recently started a preschool for school district employees at Dobson High and I plan on putting Keaton in there starting August. I know that's still half a year away and he'll barely be 3 but it's all gone by so quickly. Here is some of the latest happenings with this busy boy.

These pics were taken this morning. Keaton chose all his own clothes including shoes and don't forget the glasses. And he's very particular about his hair, when I comb it down he says no mommy not like that, up up up! I wish the pics had turned out better, his genuine smile is eyes squinty mouth open but I told him to smile with his eyes open and mouth closed and he looks a little grumpy but still very cool.

Sunday Keaton wanted to be the photographer. These are his actual photos. Not great but at least there are people in the shot and his finger is not over the lens. Now we're working on getting his finger out of the way of the flash.

GO CUBS! Ok well we aren't really Cubs fans but we did go to spring training on Saturday. We had lawn seats which I thought would be good for Keaton to run around and play a little instead of having to sit, but our friend arrived late with the tickets and the place was totally packed. So it wasn't until the 8th inning when people started to leave, that we got close enough for Keaton to realize it was baseball.

Before the ball game Keaton had his last day of tumbling class. Yes I keep the boy busy although nothing worked out for March so I guess we'll take a break. It was only 4 weeks and he didn't love it as much as soccer but it was still good for him.

Keaton loves his grandpa. On this day Saturday Grandpa was going to ride his bike to work but Keaton really wanted to ride with him so they went on a 45 minute ride around the neighborhood (at Keaton's pace), then Grandpa drove to work.

Well I did take more video of soccer but I'll just post these final pics for now. Keaton loved soccer and I'd keep him going but the class filled up within a few hours so we're out of luck for his season. Here he is on his last day with his medal. He loved soccer.

I think that's it. A review of the last few weeks. I really need to scrapbook some of these pictures and not just blog them, plus I have so many more....I'll put it on my things to do list.

I've got rhythm, I've got music...

Well a mom has to brag a little...I happen to think Keaton is very muli-talented...he's doing well at soccer and has improved since the last clip I posted, he loves to sing and sings all the time, but he seems to be too camera shy to perform, he knows all the names of his letters by sight and about half of the sounds, and The Boy Can Dance! (still working on the potty training)

I've always know Keaton loves music. Here are a few clips of recent dancing, though I wouldn't say his greatest perfomances :) The first two are his favorite cell phone rings, then the credits to Madagascar 2. Just disregard the fact that he's half dressed and all the toys, etc in the background....

Snow, Lights, Trains, Fireworks......who could ask for anything more?

Ok this post is way overdue and really long. It's so hard to choose just a few pictures I took about 85 and saved about half that to my computer and hopefully I can narrow down this post to maybe half that again.

These are pictures from our trip to South Weber, Utah (Odgen area) to visit Melissa right after Christmas and to see her new house. I've decided it wasn't my old camera but I'm just not that great of a photographer and need to use some sort of photo editing program but I like the pictures all the same.

HANGING OUT AT THE HOUSE - Between Sunday, Ben and Dad working, Ben and Houston snowboarding, Mom always being cold and Melissa with a 5 month old baby, we stayed at the house quite a bit. It was nice to enjoy each other's company and just relax.

SNOW FUN! - Keaton loved the snow but when he was done he was done, big fits and all. T here was enough snow in Melissa's yard we really didn't have to look anywhere else. We build a little sledding ramp off her porch perfect for a 2 year old.

TEMPLE SQUARE - Temple Square in Utah is a lot different than here in AZ. There is tons of lights on the Mesa temple but they are all so close together. The lights were beautiful, took us a while to park but we all enjoyed it.

TRAIN MUSEUM - Keaton loves trains. He has for a very long time so Grandpa and I went to the train museum. They had some old train stuff which was cool but he didn't really understand, they also had some model trains which he loved to watch go in and out of tunnels. Outside they had real train cars. We saw the torch relay train car from the Olympics in Salt Lake and also an old mail and medical car. These things are huge! It took a lot of effort to climb up onto them.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! - Our last night was New Years Eve. We got some sparklers and poppers and it was about 10:00 when we set them off. Keaton was too afraid to hold the sparkler until the very last one, then of course he wanted more. We had some sparkling cider and chips and dip etc. I think I went to be with Keaton around 11.





There are tons more pictures that I really like of Keaton's cute face but these pretty much sum up the trip. It was a nice vacation away from home and always fun to spend time with Melissa, Ben and Braden.

The Name Game

I saw this tag on someone else's blog but thought it was so fun.

1. Your Real Name
Deanna Louise Semendoff

2. Your Gangsta Name (first 3 letters of real name plus izzle)
Deaizzle or I would just say D'izzle

3. Your Detective Name (favorite color and animal)
Blue Monkey

4. Your Soap Opera Name (middle name & current street)
Louise Shawnee

5. Your Star Wars Name (first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letter of your first name, first 3 letters of mom's maiden name)
SemDeLev

6. Your Super Hero Name (2nd Favorite color and favorite drink)
Purple Pepper

7. Your Witness Protection Name (mother's middle name and father's middle name)
Levi Daniel (my mom doesn't have a real middle name, just her maiden)

8. Your Goth Name (black & the name of one of your pets)
Black Leo

I know, who has time on their hands to do silly things like this. I found a few minutes and did it. It made me laugh, so it was worth it. Now you go and do it!

My, Oh MyEYE

My poor kid doesn't have any luck when it comes to health. Of course I don't want to jinx us, he has a healthy heart, no major allergies, etc. But he seems to always have something going on. He had so many ear infections his first ear that when we switched insurance companies they won't cover any form of "otitis" for TWO years. He also had bronchitis (probably RSV) when he was 5 months old so we've had a nebulizer since then. At 16 months he broke the snow globe and had six stitches. Then we found the cyst in his eye and that eye surgery happened just before he turned two. And a variety of other small things that normal kids get. Well just this month he was having a hard time breathing and had this really nasty dry barking cough so we went through a couple days of breathing treatments at the beginning of last week.

Now to the present time. Keaton's eye was starting to get all goopey on Sunday afternoon. We put some AzaSite drops that were left over from his surgery, meant to prevent infection. Monday morning he woke up screaming at 5 am...his eye stuck closed with all the goop. So I called the doctor at 8:30 am. They had no openings until 7:15 at night! I thought about taking him to urgent care but didn't know how expensive that would be and no one answered at the insurance company. So I bought some homeopathic stuff from walgreens that seemed to work ok. This morning his eye was stuck again but cleaned off easily and didn't look so bad. Well when I picked him up from daycare, she had him in a separate room from the other kids watching a movie rather than playing with the kids. His eye was swollen and totally nasty drippy and stuff. So I took him to urgent care.

The verdict: conjunctivitis (pink eye), otitis (ear infection), and peri-orbital infection (something to do with his eyes being all puffy, maybe sinus) After two prescriptions (one that was 65 bucks and didn't have a generic) and a shake from Burger King we're relaxing watching Kung Fu Panda and I'm feeling bad I didn't pay more attention yesterday.

Ta Da...here he is...complete with dirty shirt and a booger nose!

Kicks for Kids

Yesterday Keaton started in a little soccer class for toddlers. I was so excited. Since I have to work it's hard to find activities to do with Keaton. There are lots of great things out there but they seem to be at 9:00 am during the week days. So when I found this little Saturday soccer class for 2-3 year olds I was super excited. The only catch...8 am on a Saturday. I had to drag him out of bed he spent 20 minutes fighting me to get dressed, kicking, putting his pajama shirt back on after I took it off. Running away from me naked when I changed his diaper etc. I forced him into his car seat and he cried half the way there. Luckily we came out of it and he had a good time. I took a few short video clips with my new Christmas camera.

The first one is Keatons first attempts at dribbling. Well his first few attempts failed because it takes a lot of control for a little boy to only do little kicks, he wanted to swing away! But here he is...he's about average for the class, they all mostly do it this way but it's the first day...maybe we'll be able to move a little faster by the end of the 6 week season.

This one is at the very end when they each got to kick a goal with the big soccer ball. He had done this a few times with a regular ball so I thought he'd do the happy goal dance on his own but he didn't, he needed help. Plus I pushed the wrong button on the camera so I missed the first kick that got the ball close to the goal, and just got the little kick at the end.