10-on-10 October - 10 new friends!

How can it be October?  It was just June the other day, and my poor blog has been neglected!  Well, I'm back, and with a fun set of pictures to share about our ten new family members...baby chicks!

My Dad has a decent amount of property, and he's had chicken coops for years, from chickens he had over 20 years ago.  He mentioned once to my girls that he wanted to get some chicks and they asked him just a few (million) times when those chicks were coming...they are finally here!  They were just two weeks old in this picture, and oh so, so cute!  

There are many things our Papa is great at, but being meticulous is not one of them.  The first day we went to meet the chicks we discovered a little problem...

They were too tiny, and could walk right out of the coop Papa had for them!  We found these cute tiny chicks just exploring the yard.  Yikes!

So, we spent the first day baby-proofing the chicken cage, we think the chicks are all safe & secure now.  Whew!  

My girls are in love, and my big girl decided to start some notes about the chickens and their behaviors.  The girls sat for quite some time coming up with these notes.  I thought it was so cute.

So there is a quick preview of our newest chicken family members!  It'll be fun to see how fast they grow and how quickly they change.  Thankfully Papa lives just 5 minutes away, the girls are anxious to visit often!

Thank you for stopping by my blog!  Be sure to follow the circle and visit Bonnie, to see what she is up to.  Happy October!  I'll see you again in November!

10-on-10 for June - All softball

My younger daughter is playing all-star softball, my husband is her coach, so at the moment our lives are ALL softball!  They practice every day, and play tournaments on the weekends.  We have just two weeks left, and amazingly we're wishing it would continue.  She is loving every minute, and I am having the best time watching her improve every week.  

Therefore, for this month's 10-on-10, I bring to you some softball action!

I think what makes this season is so fun is that Brooke is pitching, and she's doing SO well, it's exciting to watch.  Last tournament she pitched two full games, and struck out 20 batters!  It really was incredible.

She gets herself set & focused...

She throws a strike...

and another...

and a third...she's out!

Then her team comes to give her love ... it's so sweet...

Her batting has come a long way too.  She takes it very seriously.

Of course Brooke is just one of a full team of all-stars, and I'm not only having fun watching them play, and win games, but also taking so many fun pictures, and being able to share them with families who appreciate them so much.  The girls have all come so far in the last 4 weeks, we're already talking about how fun next year will be!

Thanks for reading and letting me brag for a few minutes :).  Go Scripps!  

Please continue on the fun blog circle, by visiting Kathleen Ries.  Perhaps she spent some time in Boston?

I'll see you again next month!

May 10-on-10 - A Gorgeous HS Senior

I had the pleasure of photographing this gorgeous girl recently.  It was a bittersweet day for Mom.  She's an only child, Mom's baby, and she's all grown up.  She's an amazing student though, and is off to UCSB in the Fall.  Only 1 out of 7 applicants got accepted, it's a huge accomplishment.  We had a fun time exploring Balboa Park and capturing her beauty.

Along with a bit of photography work here & there, we're still hustling around with sports.  The regular softball season ended, and I don't think I've posted any of the shots from that!  Here are a few from our fun season.  And now we're onto All-star softball, and competitive soccer, so there'll be more pics to come, for sure.

This little one was hustling and trying hard all season.  She made the 8u all-star team thanks to her efforts.  Go Brooke!

My big girl did awesome too...

She became a professional bunter, and helped make tons of key plays for her team.  Go Syd!

Thanks for stopping by, and if you're following the 10-on-10 circle, be sure to visit Kristina Rust.  Her images are always gorgeous, and from the link title it sounds like maybe she has some seniors to share also!

Happy Spring

I believe the theme for this month's blogging 10-on-10 is 'Spring'.  We just came off our week long Spring Break with the girls, so I thought I'd share some of our fun and adventures.  

We start with a 'Feed it Forward' story.  Brooke attended the Girl Scout Thinking Day, where she put together a bag of food & water that she was to 'feed forward' to someone in need.  We've been carrying that bag around with us for a couple of weeks, waiting for the right person to give it to.  Then, my older daughter, Sydney came home with an extra credit assignment to conduct a random act of kindness.  She decided to put together a few of her own bags of food & water to hand out.  We had to go downtown to take care of some tasks, so it turned out to be the perfect opportunity to find a good home for our bags.  

I guess we assumed homeless people would be on every corner downtown, but when you're out looking for them it's amazing how hard they can be to find!  Then we came across a few people that we thought may be homeless, but we worried we'd offend someone who wasn't!  

So...we carried the bags for quite a while...

We completed our downtown business, were still carrying our bags, so we decided to take a break and visit this yummy Donut Bar that we keep hearing out.  Yum!  We came to the famous donuts to find a huge line down the street.  But, we waited.  We had to taste these donuts.

Yum!  I highly recommend Donut Bar as a fun stop if you're downtown.  A lesson I learned though - you can pre-order the donuts you want and have them ready when you get there - because they sell out!

Brooke was lucky they still had an Oreo filled Birthday cake donut left:

So after our donut break, we set back out to complete our act of kindness.  We finally found a man who we were sure was homeless, who didn't appear too crazy, and the girls set off (with Daddy) to give him some food.  We decided it was his lucky day and he got double the bags, rather than us continuing to search :)

The girls were nervous as they crossed the street.

But they gave the nice man the food.  He thanked them, and wished them Happy Easter.  It made the girls feel very proud to have helped him out.

I even got them to pretend to like each other for a quick pic!

We left downtown feeling accomplished, and headed off for our next exciting Spring Break adventure - jump rope camp!  

The girls wanted to attend this camp during their break, so every day they jumped their hearts out and became amazing jump ropers!  We got to watch a 'show' on their last day, and were so amazed at all they could do. 

In just a couple of weeks, Miss Brooke will be performing during the EBS Idol talent show.  Tickets are on sale now to watch her fabulous jumping skills!

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog to read about our Spring Break adventures!  Please continue along our 10-on-10 circle and take a peek at Suzanne O'Brien's lovely post about coffee!.