Racing

The car races never seem to stop at our house these days. It all started when we bought them a Cars (like the movie) video game for Christmas. Ever since it's been all racing, all the time at our house.

After a while, we realized we needed a track. So out came the masking tape and within a few minutes we had a great loop running through the living room.

 Just the other day Noah expanded the track into our room, right beside where I sleep. Thankfully, the masking tape doesn't bother us at all.

 They even have a spot for pit stops where they make every single sound for changing tires and filling up the cars with fuel. There's usually a pretty good commentary going about who's winning, who's losing, which turn they're on, and so on. Most of that comes from the video game but some from the actual movie and some just gets made up.

 Vrrrroooom, vvvvvrrrrrroooooom, vroom!

k-STATE Basketball

The ultimate goal in high school basketball is to win a state championship, or more realistically to play in the state tournament. Well, it's kind of the same for the people that officiate high school basketball. The ultimate goal is to work games in a state tournament. Coaches make recommendations for officials based on if the officials did a good job during the regular season. Getting state games is an honor, showing that you earned the respect of the coaches and got recommended by them.

Yesterday, the boys and I traveled to Manhattan to watch Ben ref at the 2A State Basketball Tournament. Right next to Bramlage Coliseum is the K-State football stadium. The cranes doing constructions were huge! 

 But the boys were focused on seeing the big wildcat in the middle of the field. I ended up having to prop Levi up in the air above my head so he could see it. I felt like a Super Mom.

 Eventually, we decided it was time to go find Ben. He'd arrived ahead of us by a couple hours. Oh, but first they had to shake Mr. Bramlage's hands.

Ben, with permission from the guy in charge, took us in the back door. It still felt completely sneaky and like we were somewhere we shouldn't have been.

 Once inside, we found our friends Pat, Amy, Emily, Jake and Jenna. Pat was working games with Ben. It was so good for the boys to have other kids to play with!
We sat and watched the game that was being played, but soon enough the boys were asking for food. They had snacked in the car, but claimed to be hungry again. So up to the hospitality room we went! What a cool location! The boys were thrilled to get a good look at the stadium from up high.

 And the snacks were fantastic too.

 The kids lined up on this couch to get a better view

 of what was suddenly happening on the football field! They asked repeatedly if Weston (the Goessel grad who plays for K-State) was out there. None of us figured it out.

 And then back inside for more basketball!

 The kids watched some of the Moundridge vs. Inman game, but that was about the extent of the actual games that any of them watched.

 Noah and Jake had a good time playing together. Emily did a lot of reading and some walking around by herself, the perks of being the big kid in the group.

 Levi and Jenna played, too. Soon it was time for more snacks.

 And finally, Ben had his stripes on!

 Thank goodness for this open space near where we were sitting. The kids played tag for a very long time, allowing Amy and I to simply watch the game and walk around taking pictures.

There were moments when tag was too tiring and the boys stopped to watch the game.

 In the end, we were reduced to passing the time by taking silly pictures. The boys had been inside the gym for about 5 hours at this point and were still doing a great job of listening and cooperating.

 After a quiet and sleepy ride, we made it home at about 10pm. Not bad! I had feared we'd get home much later than that.

And with that, another basketball season ends. We made it. It certainly has gotten easier every year and for that I'm very thankful. I'm also thankful that Ben truly enjoys being a basketball official and that he can balance the joys and stresses of the game without getting wrapped up in the drama.

Cinnamon Rolls, check!

I've got this mental check list of life skills to learn, or at least to stop fearing. So far, I've tackled gardening, canning garden produce and now I'm in the midst of learning to bake with yeast. I learned about baking with yeast as a kid in 4-H and then again in high school when my grandma gave a couple baking lessons to my cousin and I. But high school was a long time ago. Since then, I let yeast become this complicated and intimidating thing that was too scary to actually use. 

So on Snow Day number 3 I decided it was time to bake. And then I allowed a crazy idea to enter my brain - cinnamon rolls. Most of my motivation to tackle yeast has been my desire to bake my own cinnamon rolls. 

And thanks to the Buns and Platz recipe from the "Mennonite Girls Can Cook" cookbook, I did it!

They're not perfect looking, but they taste good. Levi was so busy playing that he missed out on helping me roll the dough up. So he was sure to be paying attention when it came time to frost them!

He worked so hard to get the thick frosting on each roll.

He did a mighty fine job, too!

Next time I'll make my grandma's recipe. Her recipe assumes that the person making the dough is familiar with the process. Thankfully, the recipe I used this first time around did not do that and gave a nice step-by-step process with photos for me to follow.

Cinnamon rolls, check!

Snow Days part II

When snow was blowing around outside,

we hung out on the couch, 

and when that got old we got creative....thank you Pinterest for helping me find this fun idea:

milk jug toss.

 We had a ton of fun with this simple game.

  This morning when the snow had finished falling, we were amazed by the winter wonderland all around the house.

 The boys were thrilled to have snow day number 4, making a 6-day weekend for our family. We packed our tennis shoes in Levi's backpack to keep them dry, slipped our boots on and made our way over to the neighbor's house to play basement basketball.

 Grandpa made the over-the-door basketball goal work in the basement which gives us more space to play (and keeps it quieter upstairs....).

The boys think it's pretty amazing. 

After being inside for a while, it was time to head back outside to play some more .

 We shoveled, played, had snowball fights, walked through lots of deep snow, got tired and took a break. Then later on we built our families first snowman. Full disclosure: for a while that snowman even had some male parts....I totally live with boys. There was lots and lots of giggling about the snowman being a boy.

 Thankfully, the weather was warm so we could enjoy being outside.

 But, it's a lot of work to walk through snow and throw snowballs so eventually we had to go back inside.

 One more creative/Pinterest project to round out the afternoon.

 The celery stamp actually worked! And I'd never carved shapes out of potatoes to make stamps but that was really fun! Noah made this creation,

 and Levi claimed, "This is the best picture I'll ever paint."

We wrapped up snow day number four with more basement basketball and some kitchen dancing. Good times. It was wonderful to get a break from our normal routines, to watch the world around us change to all white, to slow down and spend more time together.
Now to get ourselves ready for a regular school/work day tomorrow.