nine.

Lincoln just turned nine...the last year before "double digits", which he's pretty excited about. 

This year, we celebrated his birthday with a pool party. He invited a few close friends from school to come over to swim and, hopefully, have a Nerf gun battle. Unfortunately, a couple of his buddies were sick at party time and couldn't make it, but his closest friend, Caden, came and the boys had a blast. 

Caden brought the perfect gift for Lincoln -- a Mega Nerf blaster.

Matt & Cassidy teamed up against Lincoln and Caden in a Nerf gun battle. I'm not sure who ended up winning, but there were Nerf things flying all about the house!

Matt ready to shoot from upstairs. 

This girl is serious when she plays. 

When the Nerf battle ended, the kids headed outside for fun with water balloons. 

She may look sweet and innocent, but watch out, she'll get you when you least expect it!

Linc got slammed over the head!

When the water balloons were all broken, we all headed for some fun in the pool. 

Finally, we had pizza and cake and ice cream.
Per usual, Lincoln chose a chocolate cake with mint frosting.
This year, we found one at the grocery store and it was very tasty. 

On Lincoln's wishlist this year were several video games, some books, and lots of sports gear (he can't wait to head to Sports Authority to spend his gift card money). 

Here, he is posing with his Magic 8 Ball, which holds the answer to all questions. 

He's thrilled to have some new Detroit sports gear.

Big bro received a new Spiderman game as well as some rainbow loom bands (in Lions colors) from little sis. 

This boy has always loved his pillow and his two favorite pillowcases are getting really worn on the corners from Lincoln rubbing them so much. I indulged this 9-year-old's love for his pillow by getting him a personalized pillowcase. Lincoln is working on breaking in the corners on this one. 

Father and son with some new sports video games...and a new Lions baseball hat. 

 

Linc with his new baseball net. 

 

Happy Birthday, bud!

Sea ThisLife Aquarium, Tempe, AZ.

While Matt was in Michigan enjoying his annual "guys weekend", I took the kids to a local aquarium, where we enjoyed exploring life under the sea.

Look at those adorable fish lips.
(He's wearing a frog hat from our lunch at the Rainforest Cafe, by the way)

Cassidy chose not to put her hand in the Touch Tank. It took Lincoln some time to gear up for it. I went ahead and showed them that it wouldn't hurt to touch a starfish! My goodness, our kids are sometimes so apprehensive about things. 

There were several of these bubble windows where kids could pop their heads up and feel like they were right in the aquarium swimming with the fish. Pretty neat. 

My favorite: the stingrays.

Lincoln's favorite: this small shark. I can't remember what kind it is.  

Big bro and little sis making gestures at the camera lady (me).

They're being eaten by a shark! 

Cuties swimming with Dory.

This was a neat area called the 360-degree ocean tunnel where you could literally watch sea life swim over you, beside you, and under your feet. 

time for the tooth fairy.

Cassidy recently lost one of her two front teeth and the other is wiggly. She's also got a loose tooth on the bottom of her mouth. Looks like the tooth fairy is going to be making several visits to our house. 

Below, you can see Cassidy ready for bed, holding her dad's old tooth pillow. How hilarious!

The tooth fairy came through with $1!

school's out!

School got out just after Memorial Day this year. Here, in Arizona, the last day of elementary school is "water day". Several inflatables and sprinklers are set up on the school grounds and each grade level gets an hour of outside water time. The kids love it. What a fun way to end the school year. 

Cassidy completed full-day Kindergarten. We're so proud of her. She has learned so much in the past year. It's really amazing to see the progress that the kids make each year. Cassidy's favorite things at school are reading, PE, library, and music. 

Cassidy and her wonderful teacher, Mrs. Pichardo

Cassidy with her end-of-year Bucket Filler award. Bucket Filler awards are given to students who show kindness and generosity, and are those who help others without being asked. Go Cass!
p.s. I'd be remiss if I didn't include the fact that Lincoln also received a Bucket Filler award earlier in the year. 

Lincoln also had a year full of growth and learning. His favorite things about school are math, PE, lunch, and recess! The biggest project for the 3rd graders was a "Famous Americans" project that involved researching a famous person and writing a paper, creating a poster board display with pictures, drawings, a map, compare and contrast diagram, and timeline. They also had to prepare a 2-minute speech to give during the wax museum. All 3rd graders got to dress up as their famous person and parents and other students walked around and pushed the button for any person they wanted to hear about as if we were in a wax museum. Since Linc had started reading the Harry Potter series, he chose to do his project on the author, J.K. Rowling.  Yes, we know she's not a famous "American", but his teacher let him choose her anyway. 

Here is Lincoln set up during the wax museum.
Instead of dressing up as J.K. Rowling, he wore a Gryffindor robe and made a J.K. Rowling cut-out face. 

Here is the boy behind the cut-out face!

Lincoln playing around with the lightning bolt that would eventually end up on his poster board.
Nice scar, dude. 

I'll get you He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named! 

It was so cool to see all of the 3rd graders dressed up as their Famous Americans!
Lincoln is in the bottom left of the picture next to Neil Armstrong. You can see folks like Dr. Seuss, Betsy Ross, and Amelia Earhart in the crowd. There was a fantastic variety and lots of great costumes. 

Lincoln holding his Math award. 

Lincoln and his buddy, Caden, who did his Famous American project on James Madison. 

I'm so proud of the hard work both kids put in during the school year. Now...we shall swim for 7 weeks until school starts back up.

Mother's Day cruise.

One of our Mother's Day activities this year included a 1.5 hour boat cruise on Canyon Lake, located within the Superstition Mountains. This area is about an hour northeast of where we live.

We rode on the double-decker Dolly Steamboat and enjoyed perfect weather (80s) and sunny skies. 

Matt, Cassie, and Lincoln waiting to board the Dolly.

Me and my two special angels. 

If you look closely, you can see a desert bighorn sheep taking a drink from the lake. 

Looking closely again, there are a couple of bighorn sheep here as well as several saguaro cacti.

Such different landscape here than we'd see if we were cruising on a lake in the Midwest!

You can't tell from the above pictures, but the lake was actually quite crowded on Mother's Day with lots of boats (skiing/tubing) and jet skis, etc.

Little League day at the college ball park.

We had the opportunity to take in a college baseball game last weekend: Arizona State vs. University of Arizona. While we don't have a vested interest in either team, none of us had been to a college baseball game so when we got a flyer from Little League about ASU vs. UofA day, we thought we'd check it out.

ASU's Sun Devils moved from their old stadium on campus to an off-campus stadium this year. They are now occupying Phoenix Municipal Stadium, which is where the Oakland A's did their Spring Training from 1984-2014.

Matt, Cassidy, and Lincoln watching batting practice before the game. 

Along with other Little Leaguers, we got to do a short tour of the facility before the game. 

Father and son on the field. 

The dugout.

Cassidy in front of the Packard Stadium information.
Packard is the old Sun Devils stadium. 

Little sis and big bro.

Waiting for the game to start. 

Matt, Linc, and Cass. 

Much to Lincoln's dismay, ASU won the game 13-7. For some reason, Lincoln was rooting (against the rest of the crowd) for UofA.  I guess he's grown accustomed to rooting for the visiting team since we moved away from Detroit.

Happy Easter 2015.

We had a quiet Easter with just the 4 of us this year. We enjoyed lovely weather with temps in the mid-80s and had a traditional ham dinner. Delish!

Cassidy dying eggs. She was working to get one that was the same color as her shirt.

Lincoln dying eggs.
If we'd let him, he'd eat every hard boiled egg in the house.

The finished products! 

All spiffied up for church.

Cassie modeling her dress. 

Dad and the kids.

Mom and the kiddos. 

Right after church, we all broke into the delicious chocolate bunnies that the Easter Bunny left...there's nothing better than biting the ears off of a chocolate bunny!  Happy Easter!