Monday, December 31, 2012

Remember Me?

I don't even know where to start, it's been since September that I blogged...oops!

How bout a picture update?


Madi & her friends at {ONE} of her birthday parties
(9yrs old)

Boston's Fall Baseball team ended their season 10-2

Madi is LOVING dance at Darcee's
She is currently taking ballet & jazz, but is adding acro in January

For the 1st time, Madi's Soccer team got last place :(

Boston helped his Football team win 1st with an undefeated season!


The kids are doing wonderful in school!! 
Madi has received two "Rap with Rueb" awards
The one above & another for "being a good citizen inside & outside of the classroom"

I have received a phone call & a post card from school about Boston!

Boston got to ride in a limo to McDonald's with his principal
and some classmates for selling so much in the Fall fundraiser.... he LOVED it!!


These beauties were born & I wish I was closer to them so that I could be as much
a part of their lives as their mama's have been in Madi & Boston's lives!!

Creed Kasselman and
Collins Cate Lorson



Sheila & I took the kids roller skating - I FORCED Boston to go around the gym, Madi barely stood up, sat down and then took her skates off  - they weren't fans!!  Carter went around a couple times!!


The kids getting their Jack-o-Lantern oranges ready for their class parties

"Queen of Hearts"

The Queen & Her Protectors

The Incredible Hulk

*We still need a picture of Madi & Hayley, 
without each of them knowing the other's plans, 
Madi was Queen of Hearts & Hayley was Alice!!

Madi & I attended Cortney & Troy's wedding without the fellas

Madi & Blair at the 3rd Grade Vocal Concert






and . . . . HOW BOUT THEM CATS?!?!

The K-State Mask has become quite the "cheerleader" for The Wildcats this year 
and everyone in this house seems to be followers of his "word"

Here's a link to his video's:  K-State Mask on YouTube

even MadiGrace has The Mask fever

DJ & I were able to take a weekend and go to a game this year.  Although, we REALLY
wanted to watch a game in Manhattan, our schedules just didn't allow it, so we headed to 
Ames for 2012 Farmageddon with our friends & co-workers Agnes & British
We ROCKED our purple overalls & I have worn mine for all but one game since... 
we won't talk about which game I didn't get to wear them for :(

Crazy Hair/Hat Day at School

We surprised the kids with tickets to a basketball game

Here is their reaction to skipping school and going to Manhattan:

At their 1st KSU Men's Basketball game

That's pretty much what's been going on with us the past couple months.  Soccer and football are over, dance is constant, Madi has started basketball and has had one game which she played pretty well in.  She is playing for Rushville because we missed the Atchison Rec deadline, but she is liking it over there just the same.  Boston starts after the first of the year, we just found out he will have the same coach that he had during his undefeated football season, so he is pumped about that!!

Barney & Holly (our elves) have come & gone, you can read about all of their antics here, they actually weren't too bad this year!!  Maybe taking a page out of Madi & Boston's school behavior ;)

I know it's not much this time, but I'm going to try and keep up with blogging again.  I always want to, but don't find (make) the time!

Here's hoping for a New Year's blog tonight!!

Barney & Holly

The elves that live in our house didn't come out quite as early as everyone else's.  We thought about Thanksgiving night, then we talked about December 1st and well, those dates came & went.  Luckily for us, Boston was grounded from Wii for lying to me, not lucky for us that he lied, but lucky for us that he was grounded because we told him the elves couldn't come to our house until he was ungrounded.  Here's what the little stinkers have been up to this year

They TP'd the tree the first night & wrote "we're back" on the empty toilet paper roll

Playing the piano & singing Christmas carols

Playing Hide & Seek in the Christmas tree

Fishing with Fruit Loops

Surrounded by GI Joe

Off to the Regata

Diving for Fruit Loops

Watching "Elf"

Barney poo'd on the counter & reallllly embarrassed Holly!

Holly got back at Barney for pooping on the counter by wrapping him to a present


Santa reading to everyone


They dressed our Toy Soldier as The Grinch


Taking a zip-line to the tree

Only the freshest OJ for these elves


Nerf Gun WAR


Pictionary - Christmas edition


Snow Angels in REAL snow!!

Watching the starts outside of their igloo

A nice warm bubble bath after playing in the snow for two days!


Snowflakes by Holly & Barney


The kids loved seeing what the elves were up to each day, but my brain was getting to be an elf mush!!  Thank goodness for Pinterest, Instagram, & Twitter for all of the #elfontheshelf help!! Barney & Holly left notes for the kids in their stockings as their last "gifts".

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Daddy's Girl


Madilynne Grace Bruce,

What can I Say?  9 years ago I can remember being the most nervous and scared father-to-be you can imagine.  Would I be a good enough dad?  Would I provide her with everything she wants/needs?  Will she love me like I already love her, even though I haven’t even met her yet?  Well, 9 years later and only she can answer those questions, but now there are a whole set of new questions.  Does she truly know how much I love her?  Do I say it enough?  Does she know how proud of her I am and how smart I know she is?  Let me say it now.  I love you baby girl.  A long time ago you stole my heart.  You are so much your mama.  Beautiful, intelligent, sassy, sensitive, elegant and sometimes graceful just like your mama.  I can’t say how much of a role I played in making you the amazing girl you are today, I’ll give your mom most of the credit.  What I will say is no other father is more proud of his daughter.  Every once in awhile a child is born that is so special, that simply by their birth, they make the parents better people.  Without you, your mom and I were as happy as I thought 2 people could ever be.  Girl was I wrong.  How can one little ol’ baby girl make 2 people better every day?  All I know is you’ve been doing it for 9 year!

I love you with all my heart,  Happy Birthday!
Dad




MGB2012 - slideshows

Really wanted this song to play with the slide show, but didn't want to pay for the premium subscription, so here's the youtube of it :)  Love Mom


Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Mommy Guilt :(

Let's start at the beginning....

Starting in second grade you can "run" for Student Council.  You bring home a piece of paper for your parent(s) to sign saying that you can run for StuCo.  You can make a poster and hang it up and place your name on a ballot for class representative.  Last year Madi ran and won for her class.  We didn't make a sign, mainly because I didn't know you could/should.  So this year when she told me she wanted to run for class rep again & told me she wanted to make a sign, I told her I would help.  We made a super cute sign that said "Smarties" will vote for Madi.  She had a really big smartie candy where the word "Smarties" was and then taped smarties all over the poster & put a picture of herself on there.  It was really cute.  She took smarties to school with her to pass out to her class to make the sign complete. . . . small (turns out to be HUGE) problem, you aren't allowed to give anything away, because it's not fair to everyone.  Madi came home from school and told me that she got to hang her sign up but didn't get to pass out the candy because her teacher told her it wouldn't be fair, but that she could put the candy in  her class cubbies.  I told her that was ok because people were going to vote for who they want whether they give them something or make a sign, after all, she did win last year and hadn't done anything.  She said yea, well so & so told everyone they were from her.  I told her not to worry about it, everything would work out ok.  Well, here's where the mommy guilt comes in . . . 

I got a call this morning from one of the Student Council teacher reps.  Apparently that note that I signed saying Madi could run for StuCo rep also stated that they were not allowed to give anything away.  Unfortunately, I didn't read the whole note.  I think I read about the first paragraph and signed away.  She was on StuCo last year, what could it say that I didn't already know?!  UGH!  FAIL.  The teacher said that a parent or two (I'm thinking one, and one in particular) called and brought it to her attention and said that it wasn't fair that Madi was allowed to give something away.  {A SMARTIE} I'm not trying to act like it wasn't right, but come on, it wasn't like it was anything crazy.  The teacher was really nice and said that she didn't want to do it, but that Madi would have to be disqualified from running.  She hated that it was Madi because she was such a great rep last year, she came to every meeting and helped with each event and is such a great girl.  I told her it was completely my fault and felt terrible.  She said if I wanted she would talk to Madi about it, I told her no, I would talk to her after school today and she would be ok.  She told me that she really hopes that Madi decides to run again next year and kept saying again how great she was.  I know she's great, she's amazing and it's going to KILL me to tell her this.  I kept saying ok, I understood and that I would discuss it with her, we finally got off the phone and out came the tears.  I felt (feel) soooo bad!  But because my Madi Grace IS so amazing, she took it like a champ!  She was upset, of course, but she said I bet I know which mom it was, ugh.  I gave her a bunch of hugs and kisses hoping her feeling better would make me feel better, it really didn't, I still feel HORRIBLE!  We were at the St. Joe mall after Boston's game tonight and I told her that I was really proud of her, she took a bad situation and didn't let it keep her down all night, she smiled, I told her, you're a tough cookie, you're not gonna let it ruin your night and bother you, you're gonna push past and keep on movin, she smiled and said yep!

Anyway, she told me she still loves me and so I guess I will try to let this not ruin my night (week) too, although it did ruin my day, it consumed me all day.  I didn't know how I was going to bust this info out on my innocent little gal, but like I said, she's a tough cookie and said she will try again next year.  The thing that did break my heart was her telling me that she didn't care if she won, but she at least wanted to try.

I love you MadiGrace, keep up with that positive attitude, you could teach me a thing or two!

Thursday, August 23, 2012

The Calendar

I never thought I'd be one of those people who needed to keep a calendar, I mean, how much do you have going on in your life that you have to put it down on paper, or in my case electronically, and then set it up to remind you?  Well, the time has come, I have started a Google calendar that is linked to my phone and will notify me an hour, or whatever time frame I have decided to let me know when I have something going on.  It's not ME that has anything going on, it's my minions.  We haven't started soccer or football yet, and already this week I've needed a reminder for ballet, jazz, Community Club (PTA), early release, baseball practice, and piano lessons... ugh.  The weeks to come will add even more reminders as Boston starts his baseball games next week & they're twice a week.  Soccer and football will follow shortly after with practices once a week for each of them and games on Saturdays & Sundays.  Who let these kids sign up for all this stuff?!

Madi started dance at Darcee's in St. Joe this week.  She is taking an hour of ballet & an hour of jazz.  She came home from her first day and says she LOVES it there!  So excited that she's finally found a place she loved as much as Bates in Manhattan!!  Darcee's is ranked pretty high in the state of Missouri from what I understand, so with her wanting to compete & dance further down the road, I think we found a good fit for her... Of course, it's still the first week of classes, but she never came home from the two studios in Atchison saying I LOVE IT.

Boston is still practicing baseball twice a week and loving it.  He's not been on a team yet that has given him so much instruction.  I think he's going to be disappointed come October when his games are over.  They gave out uniforms and told them the positions they would be playing last night at practice.  He is #33 for the Cardinals and will be playing second base.  I can't wait til his first game next Wednesday.

Piano lessons start today...

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Back to School? Already?

Well, school officially started for the Bruce kids last Thursday, yep, AUGUST 9TH.  I feel like it's a bit early considering they don't get out any earlier than normal (May 22nd), but hey, apparently I don't make those decisions so off they went.

We found out a few days before school started who the kids' teachers would be.  Boston got Madi's first grade teacher, Mrs. Martin.  I was really happy about this because she was so great to Madi her first year at AES when she was struggling with missing Manhattan so much!  Madi got a brand new first year teacher, Mrs. Schmollinger - probably a good thing she's teaching 3rd grade and not Kindergarten with a name like that!  Madi was a little disappointed at first when she found out that her two besties were in class together, without her, but she got over it fairly quickly when she found out another one of her friends, Rayne, was in her class, so all is well in her world now :)

Madi - 1st day of school 2012-13

Boston - 1st day of school 2012-13

My minions!

With school brings Fall sports.  After singing them up for soccer today the kids are enrolled in WAY TOO MUCH!  Boston is playing football, soccer and Fall baseball.  Madi is taking ballet, jazz, piano & soccer.  Like I said, TOO MUCH.  I don't know when the soccer practices will be, but I'm hoping Tuesdays because as of now, that's the only weekday available (except Friday, but they usually never do practices on Friday's)

1st day of Fall Ball practice - he thinks he's pretty big time now!!

Anyway, that's what's going on in our world for now, hopefully with all these sports, I'll be able to blog a little to keep everyone up to date on how they're doing.