kids - Ground Control to Major Mom

Boys’ Baseball Bedrooms on a Budget

29 July 1329 July 13 by Major Mom

Who needs a Fathead? For the cost of a single Fathead we were able to do all this with Jacob's room. — Who needs a Fathead? For the cost of a single Fathead we were able to do most of this with Jacob’s room.

Each time we move, we try to come up with ways to make the PCS appealing for the boys. You know, something to look forward to. In the past we have given them gifts, and we’ve also given the boys some liberties with decorating their bedrooms.

(Truth be told, the boys absolutely love it here…they’re really enjoying the hiking and the views of the mountains from throughout our house.)

For the past two houses we were in rentals, so we weren’t able to do much with the bedrooms, but in our current house we let them have a little fun. We told the boys they could come up with a theme with which we’d be willing to paint the room. They quickly agreed on baseball-themed rooms.

As always, I came up with a Pinterest board with the boys’ ideas.

West Navarre Primary 2nd Grade Patriotic Performance

27 July 13 by Major Mom

This is from June 5th.

I’m just sharing some You Tube videos I had taken of Timmy’s class’s “Patriotic Performance”. It’s a tradition with the school’s 2nd grade classes. Sadly, the school is so large you can’t get all the 2nd grade classes to perform on the stage at once…nor can you get that many kids’ parents/grandparents into the room to see it. There are four classes performing in these videos.

I think there were over 300 second grade students at Timmy’s school. Nearly 1000 students in all for grades K-2.

Enjoy!

The Boys’ Piano Recitals

19 July 13 by Major Mom

Enjoy these videos from the boys’ piano recitals at the end of May. The boys will definitely miss Miss Ashley. We haven’t found a piano teacher here quite yet…but we aren’t looking quite yet either. Timmy: Jacob:

The Vollmer Space Program is a GO!

18 July 13 by Major Mom

Timmy built a small rocket that had a lot of problems during construction, but ended up launching successfully not once, but four times! Twice it nosed right into the ground, but Timmy got it to launch again.

Jacob is very proud of his "Far Side" rocket. — Jacob is very proud of his “Far Side” rocket.

Earlier this week, I was hauling the boys on errand after errand all over Colorado Springs. One of the errands was a short stop at Hobby Lobby to “dry mount” one of Timmy’s Atlanta Braves posters.

While waiting for the work to be done (about 15 minutes) I took the kids to the model crafts aisle. I thought they would look at the airplane kits, but they instead wandered over to the model rockets.

Hiking Around the Neighborhood

17 July 13 by Major Mom

A nice map with which we could plan our trip.

Sorry, you can’t really call it “taking a walk” here.

The kids, Howie and I decided to take a hike along the Cottonwood Creek Trail, which runs southwestward from our neighborhood. Just a couple houses down from us is an access point between two houses to Colorado Springs’ expansive network of multi-use trails.

We figured it’d be a quick walk to Cottonwood Creek Park, which is a nice big park with baseball diamonds, a basketball court and several playground structures.

Pensacola Blue Wahoos “Field of Dreams” Experience

15 July 13 by Major Mom

A fine finish to a great baseball season. Our youngest son's baseball team celebrated with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. — A fine finish to a great baseball season. Our youngest son’s baseball team celebrated with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos.

Just before the boys left Florida for good, T’s baseball team enjoyed an evening with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. I had written about the Blue Wahoos games in a previous post in 2012.

The kids got to take part in the team’s “Field of Dreams” experience, which was a block of seats together, dinner, getting introduced as a “featured guest” at the game, and a chance to hang out with the Blue Wahoos players before the game, either by singing the national anthem with them, or else running out to the field with the players as the players’ names are called.

House Shopping in Colorado

07 June 13 by Major Mom

It was a tough decision, but we decided to bring the whole family on this particular househunting trip. We found a gap in the boys’ baseball schedule in early May that would allow us to take a long weekend and fly the family to Colorado; we would all shop for the next house together.

My Baseball Boys

28 April 13 by Major Mom

This year the boys are both on very good, very hard working teams. It’s nice to see their hard work and tons of practice pay off in good records. Since it’s become apparent that the boys are serious about their baseball, we made the investment in some better-than-beginner equipment for the two of them.

I took our good camera out to the fields earlier this month, but didn’t get the best pictures because I had to deal with the chain link fence. I was able to use the manual focus on most of them, and all things considered, I’m pretty impressed. Enjoy!

Alabama Discoveries 5: The Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center, Mobile

04 July 1309 April 13 by Major Mom

On the last day of the boys’ Spring Break, we took a field trip to Mobile’s Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center. I went in thinking it would be an all-day museum, but we ended up not spending much time there at all. The kids enjoyed it, but there seemed to be a lot of empty space in a seemingly very large building. It wasn’t crowded at all while we were there, our school district seemed to be the only ones in the Gulf Coast region having Spring Break as early as the college kids….

Florida Discoveries 41: Navarre Beach Marine Science Station

27 March 13 by Major Mom

The Navarre Beach Marine Science Station is run by Santa Rosa County and the Santa Rosa County Schools. Its mission is to promote environmental awareness through education of the county's marine ecosystem. — The Navarre Beach Marine Science Station started in August 2009 and is run by Santa Rosa County and the Santa Rosa County School District. Its mission is to promote environmental awareness through education of the county’s marine ecosystem.

Just before the kids’ Spring Break, I had the chance to partially chaperone for Timmy’s class trip to the Navarre Beach Marine Science Station. My sons have taken field trips with their classes every school year they’ve been living here, and I suspect it’s an annual tradition for all the Santa Rosa County School District kids who live on the coast.

Nostalgic note: When I was growing up in Norfolk in the 1980s, my school system also had a Marine Science Center. I’m not sure if the program still exists, but I fondly remember an annual field trip to Crossroads Elementary School, where we’d spend the day petting horseshoe crabs, learning about turtles, flounder, the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem and our community’s nautical history.

The Science Station is really close, it shares a parking lot with the Navarre Beach Park beach access that our family uses quite often, only about 10 minutes from our house. It started in 2009 after the Navarre Beach State Park property was turned over to the county after suffering extensive hurricane damage in recent years.