The Purple Clovers Go Big League

Evie's softball team got to walk in a parade around Busch stadium before a baseball game. We got to the stadium nice and early so we could easily find the team and get her lined up. 

We waited in the sun for a bit to watch the parade. There were lots of little baseball and softball teams. The kids all looked so proud to be down there. 

It was fun watching all the teams come out of the tunnel in search of our cute little purple clovers. 

It's kind of a long walk. 

We had some great little troopers in the heat!

We've somehow never gone into the kids' play area. At least not that I remember.  It was a nice respite. 

We stayed through the 5th inning, I believe. That's pretty good for my kids. They always want to eat and then leave without watching much of the game. 

Here are a few pictures from throughout the softball season. It's hard to tell them apart out there, so I always look for the blue cleats to confirm I am watching Evie play the outfield. 

They have the most awesome coaches!

A few more pics on the patriotic unicorn. 

This was a really nice Sunday afternoon, and the pool was almost deserted. The kids had some friends over, and Ben made burgers. 

Since 6 girls is too many girls for one unicorn, we had 4 girls on the unicorn and 2 on the cupcake. 

Love these summer days!

June Bugs

What do you do when your friend turns 40? Throw a unicorn party, of course. We actually had a lot of fun putting this together. The kids even helped out with cupcakes, a sign, and other stuff even though they weren't invited. 

Go unicorns!

I made the cake. It was simple and fun to make. It was also rather tasty.

A black bear was sighted a few times in our neighborhood. One of our neighbors said they saw it in our backyard. Evie told me she had a plan involving raw hamburger and a pot of honey. I said I had a better plan, and it involved Kiersten's panda head from last Halloween. After terrifying the poor cat, I went in the backyard to see if I could make friends with the real bear. 

It didn't really work out. My growls and rars were unconvincing. 

I did like that the panda head matched with my dress though. 

The girls have wanted to go to the water park at six flags a lot this summer. One particular afternoon, I saw that it was going to rain, so I thought that would be perfect, as it wouldn't be so busy. They had a lot of fun before it even began to rain. As soon as the wave pool got closed for thunder, we decided to eat lunch under the comfort of the canopy. 

I kept begging Evie for one straight face or smiling picture. She just couldn't handle it that day. The sillies were too strong.

I told the girls to wait up and I would ride the slide race with them. But they didn't hear me, and went up before I was over there. So I took a few pics of them sliding. I did guilt them all into inviting me to slide with them the next time we were there. 

Then the sky started to look like this. All the pools got closed, and before we were halfway to the parking lot it was pouring rain. I couldn't even really see where I was walking it was coming down so hard. Of course by time we made it to the car it was nicely drizzling, but I told the girls I wasn't willing to go back in. June can be unpredictable like that.

Summer Sports

Kiersten and Kara did a basketball camp the first week of summer. This is the only picture I have of Kiersten in her camp shirt. Kiersten had swim at 8, then Evie at 8:45. Then I took them home to change while Kara had swim from 10-11, but we had to rush to pick her up every morning to get out to the camp by 11:30. So in my rush one morning, I somehow said yes to Evie when she asked if she could wear her old dance costume that day. So we had sparkly sequins at the pool while we waited for Kara to get changed. She likes the attention, so it was okay. They loved the camp, even though I was a lame, non-picture taking loser mom. 

The next week, Evie did a cheer camp with her buddy. They LOVED this camp, and were such a joyful pair driving there and back. One day the car next to us contained 2 of their teen swim coaches, and it was the most exciting moment of their lives. 

She learned some fun cheers. 

I volunteered to be on the swim team committee this year, so between that and the girls' practices 6 days a week, I've spent my fair share of time at the neighborhood pool. 

On Friday the cheer girls put on a performance for the parents. Ben happened to have that day off, so that was fortuitous.  Evie is in the pink bow to the left between the 2 tall girls. 

I think Ben's great fear is that she'll want to stick with it, and we'll have cheer shows to watch in addition to dance recitals. He'd rather they stick with basketball, soccer, etc. 

We also got some fun video of all the cheers. 

It is actually a pretty good sport for this ray of sunshine of ours. 

They can always find the hidden bear at the grocery store. We've won many suckers and candies. 

We added a patriotic unicorn to our inflatable collection. It's fun to float on. 

Full shot! If only we could keep it there. It's a pain lugging it back and forth. 

Kara needed to raise her grade in math, and finally achieved her goal ON the last day when her teacher updated her grades. She has been wanting to dye her hair blue, but I told her she had to hit that goal first. So I spent an evening turning my pretty blonde baby blue. 

We actually had a fun night together, believe it or not. I even let her use my radio app, which now wants to play Green Day constantly. 

It was a pretty indigo, but she ended up buying more blue dye in a brighter shade of blue that we added a few days later. It was super pretty. But swimming in a chlorine pool every day, has faded it out a lot. Of course she wants to re-do it for school, but I think we should wait for the pool to close first so she can keep it bright for longer.