Play Ball! ⚾

Baseball season has officially begun.  Xavier played his first game on Monday at home.  Our new town has beautiful stadiums, and while it's hard for me to not know anyone on the teams besides my own kid, we're really enjoying the season.  We have a fun bunch of coaches and boys.

Post game, because Mom forgot to take a pre-game pic...

Xavier rotated between catching, pitching, and playing third at the first game.

He's an excited player, always looking to improve himself and be supportive of his team.

Our second game was tonight (Thursday the 29th) and began at 8:00 p.m.  We have several 8 o'clock games.  Yawn.  It was a nice battle at a nearby town and a lot of fun to watch.  Xabe caught for a couple of innings, pitched one, and finished by fielding at third.  He got a couple of nice hits, and made it round to home!

For every pitched strike you see in the videos, there are many balls, but I saw a lot of improvement from game 1 to game 2.  Tonight he hit his first batter while pitching (but he's also been hit twice while batting!).  He only hit one, though!  There's a lot of learning at this age!

Coming in to home.

Tonight I knew a kid from the other team!  Felt so nice!  (Xavier on the mound, our friends' son, Garin, at the plate.)

It was a late night but we're excited for many more games under the stars.  Our best years, right here!

New Wheels - A Big Step 🦽

On April 27th we took possession of Natalee's beautiful, custom ordered sparkly pink wheelchair.  

I'll start this blog post with a heartfelt thank you to everyone who acted in love to help us secure her chair when insurance said no thank you.  We'll be forever grateful and you'll be remembered every time we use it.  

I'd be lying if I said that the chair doesn't come with a whole range of emotions.  Relief that she has it when she needs it.  Also uncertainty in knowing how much to let her use it versus encouraging long range mobility and strength building.  A bit of sadness that this day has come, but also excitement that we can do trips again without having to worry about how to get through them and without her paying for them physically for days afterwards.

We are planning to use the chair just for times when a lot of walking is necessary.  For example, we went to the tulip festival yesterday and we walked for 4 hours.  Natalee did walk some of it, but she got tired and began hurting, so she was able to rest, while we continued on.  It was nice that we didn't all need to stop or cut our day short, or encourage her to keep going when she was hurting. (She had also had hippotherapy before we went, so she'd worked pretty hard prior to our adventure.) 

So many people look at Natalee and simply don't understand why she needs this type of help when she looks so "normal." (man, do I dislike that word)  If you could feel her muscles in her calves, especially her right side....It's kind of like a constant charlie horse, but the tension travels all the way down her leg into her foot.  Her leaf spring AFO does help, but she's just so tight.  I try to imagine walking and playing like she does all day, and those instances help me know the chair was right.

We considered getting a cheaper $500-2K chair just off Amazon, but in the end we felt like the durability and benefit of being able to grow with her made the custom chair the best for our situation.  Children have growth spurts.  Children are also hard on things (no matter how careful we may be).  The equipment specialist said when she grows, to call.  We can buy a new sling for the chair if we need width, he can raise the height, adjust the arms, the legs, etc.  He also made it so the arms swing back or completely off, and tilted her wheels in slightly so that she can propel herself.  This is very important to her mobility and independence.  Likewise, the footrests fold, swing, and come completely off.  

We're prayerful that this chair leads to many new adventures and beautiful memories for our resilient girl!

Flowers for Five ⚘

Mike took an afternoon off and went along to Natalee's hippotherapy session with us.  After she was done, we grabbed some lunch and headed to the Pella square to enjoy the tulips.  Official tulip time festivities begin the first full week of May, but I was a bit afraid it would be very very crowded so we went this week.  Maybe we'll go back again, but if not we won't be disappointed since we got an opportunity.

The flowers were absolutely gorgeous and there was not hardly a crowd at all.  The day was overcast, which probably accounted for the lesser people, and we did get drizzled on a bit, but it was still lovely.

Each kid chose a favorite color and we took group and individual photo with their choices.

out take.....real life and pretty cute in itself...they were all chuckling at Ev who kept crouching down every time she posed for a photo...

Like this...

Smile Evie....

Uh, yeah, kinda like that..... 

Here, be precious and smell the flowers instead....

{perfection}

so cute every time...

Love you, Shaggy Boy.

Love you, Accessorized Diva...

Love you, Fancy Man...

Love you, Comfy Cutie...

After we appreciated all the flowers around the square we went walking.  We ventured our way to the Molengracht Canal.

When the sprinkles became more of a drizzle, we ducked in and treated the kids to a couple orders of poffertjes to share from Dutch Fix.  The menu was reduced for Tulip Time, so we just went with plain ones - all enjoyed them but Ameliya.

Attempted a family photo in front of some pretty artwork. #nailedit

The rain cleared and left some heat behind and we started adventuring back slowly, enjoying what we could see and chatting as we went.  We wanted to tour the windmill, but it was full, so we got instructions about when a good time to come back would be and will do it another day.

Before leaving town we decided to let all the kids choose a treat from Jaarsma Bakery and had to wait in line to enter.  It took about 15 minutes to get in and was quite crowded, but I think they all felt like it was worth it.  We took the treats home for after supper.

Making wishes...

A beautiful day with my favorite people.

Arthur Patrick {Our New Nephew}

We are so excited to share that we have a new nephew.  Arthur Patrick Tallman-Smith arrived in the afternoon of Monday, April 12th.  He is 9 lbs, 10 oz. and 19 1/4" of pure baby snuggles.  Because of COVID we weren't able to visit Lauren, Lance, and Arthur in the hospital, but we are so thankful that they got to be together.  We gave the trio and big brother, Theo, a couple days to settle in before visiting on Saturday, and I decided to not take our tribe this time.  I took the kids and Mike to Papa Phil and Granny Sara's to play, gathered Andrea and Mom, and had a nice afternoon meeting the newest family member and loving on his people.

Isn't he just a little dumpling?  Look at those cheeks...and the sweetest mouth.

Seriously, Gigi, stop ogling me.

Just some aunties and their sweetie nephews.

It was worth the wait to meet you, precious Arthur.  You are so very loved already.  

Children are a blessing, new life is worthy of praising the Creator of all.  We now have 3 beautiful nieces and 3 handsome nephews - how thankful we are!

Nannie's Fun Farm

We had an impromptu visit to Nannie's fun farm and the kids really enjoyed jumping hay bales and seeing the animals and Nannie. 

We didn't catch anyone else at home, but got to check out Emma's greenhouse and the puppies and all the fun things!

Bottle calves are always up for a drink!

She did not want to pet the piggies.

Ev did like the horsies, but she tends to be a bit horse enamored since she sees them weekly at hippotherapy.

Natalee used the skills she's learned at hippotherapy to teach the other kids the proper way to greet a horse.

A very fun couple of hours!  Thanks, Nannie!