Sunday Musings

Amelia is a very social baby. She has been from the very beginning. She loves being out and about, smiling at new people and squealing loudly to anyone within ear shot. And now that she can move a little bit (no crawling yet, but getting very good at "downward dog" as well as turning in circles), she is even more adept at seeking out the social contact she craves.

Case in point:

You can set her on the ground with a bunch of toys and she will lie there and scream her head off, tears streaming down her face for 20 minutes without stopping. The minute you go and sit down next to her she will frantically turn in a circle until she can pull herself into your lap. Once comfortably in your lap, she will immediately stop crying and look around contentedly to see what toys she can play with. Apparently all she needs is your warm, comforting lap, and the knowledge that you are there holding her. Heaven forbid you try to get anything done with your day besides hold her...

Baseball America

Very nice article on the Ducks and on Andrew in Baseball America yesterday:

http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/college/?p=3045

It was really fun to read and to hear someone as respected as Aaron Fitt write such nice things about Andrew. Like Heather said in her post, it's nice when other people think your spouse is as awesome as you do! Also, in the sports world we are learning to enjoy and be thankful for the praise when it comes, because as soon as you lose a few games you go from super star to super dud in no time flat!

Andrew earns and deserves every ounce of praise he gets. We think you're amazing too, sweetheart :)

"Pitching coach ejected for arguing with the umpires"

Yes, it's true. Andrew got ejected from the Stanford game on Saturday for arguing with the umpires.

Here's the play-by-play:

1. The argument

2. The ejection
You're outta here.

3. The continuation
One ump is trying to cut him off (the one beside him) while Andrew tries to get in a few more words with the offending ump (the one out in front ignoring him).

4. Coach Horton to the rescue
Coach Horton runs out to save Coach Checketts from further penalty

Coach Horton's daughter took these timely pictures. She had her camera ready because she thought her dad was going to get tossed a few minutes before, but Coach Horton maintained his poise while Andrew happened to lose his. So she sent me these pictures for our scrapbook. Very thoughtful.

Andrew says this is the first time he has been ejected from a game since church basketball when he was 17. Hopefully we have another 17 years before the next one. At least he didn't throw a chair this time.



In other news, here are a few random pictures of Amelia from the past month.

Uh, mom, could you stop taking a picture and give me some more oatmeal please?

Easter at the Hortons

The Hortons have a wonderful Easter tradition that we are lucky to be invited to each year. They have delicious food and great company, but the thing they are best known for is Coach Horton's Easter Egg Hunt. Coach hides the eggs, and his goal is to make them so hard to find that the seekers have no shot at finding all of them. He has been doing it for 31 years (starting when his oldest daughter was 18 months) and he has a 30-1 record. The seekers beat him last year for the first time (Andrew found the last missing egg just before it was time for us to go), so this year Coach was more determined than ever to regain his title and improve upon his record.

He hid 163 eggs.

Even with about 15 seasoned ADULT seekers, we still had 8 missing by the end of the 2 hour time limit.

Here is one of his favorite places to hid eggs:

Yes, that's right, that egg is INSIDE a jar of peanut butter. He buried it inside and then smoothed over the top. Eggs are hidden inside containers of oatmeal, hollowed out loaves of bread, inside the shredded paper of the paper shredder, buried in the ice box in the freezer, and on and on. His daughters are the ones who clue us in on some of the places from the past, but really what it takes is scouring their house and opening every container, drawer, nook and cranny.

Here are some of the hunters checking the kitchen cupboards...
for the 3rd time and still finding eggs!

Andrew searching under the stove.

While Coach Uhlman searches on top of the stove:

It was a great time. I usually hunt for about 10 minutes and then sit in the kitchen and eat candy for the rest of the 1 hour 50 minutes.


This year I thought I'd bring an ADORABLE and special Easter treat. I found this recipe online http://www.bakerella.com/spring-chickens/ for spring chick cake pops that were sooooooooo cute. I gathered the necessary supplies and planned for days. After a lot of work (and a lot of Amelia whining at my feet to be picked up), I looked down in grave disappointment at my final results. They looked nothing like the beautiful pictures on the website! My chick cake pops were deformed, misshapen little things. Oh, well, they tasted good and at least now I can save myself the time, energy and disappointment and just bring a veggie tray next year.

You really should check out what they are supposed to look like here: http://www.bakerella.com/spring-chickens/

How she got them so round, smooth and adorable, I will never know!