Raine is awesome, she really is! She is a first-born in every sense of the word — over-achiever, controlling, rule-follower. She is also creative and passionate. She’s not afraid to get her hands dirty . . .

Digging for worms with her neighbor-friend Riley

. . . but she also loves to be a girl.

I find this photo to be unbelievably disturbing. What happened to my baby???

Raine loves to read. She is currently working her way through the Boxcar Children Mysteries. She’s also obsessed with being a spy. She started a “Spy Team” with a bunch of her girlfriends at school and is always working on things for the team. I’m not sure exactly what they do, but she sure loves it.

Raine still loves rescuing animals. In fact, she and Riley built a sanctuary for those “poor worms” that they dug out of the dirt the other day. She also loves to “rescue” roly-poly bugs during Carter’s soccer games. I keep trying to tell her that the bugs are better off in the dirt, but she insists that they need her help. She argues that they could get stepped on in the grass and would be much better off on the side-walk. (Sometimes her logic is so flawed, but she believes it so passionately, that I get exhausted even thinking about trying to change her mind! And so, I just nod.)

Speaking of soccer games, here is Raine’s first corner kick. She really loves soccer. It’s too bad we’ve had so many games and practices cancelled this season because of weather. She has made a lot of progress and is really fun to watch.

Raine asked me to record this video of her riding her bike so that I could post it on the blog. She is riding in a spiral around the cul-de-sac.

And finally, here is a story that Raine wrote at school. (The paper she uses is wider than my scanner so the edges got cut off. I’ll type out the text below). I really love this story because it is sooooo Raine! Almost every line ends with an exclamation point and the jokes don’t really make sense but it has animals and princesses and a little excitement!

* * * * *

The Mean Mean Bat
Long, long ago in a dark haunted cave a flying bat swooped out of the dark looking for food and then frightened a little rat. The Queen grabbed the rat right before the bat ate him! The bat sihed [sighed]. The princess ran over to the queen and then pecky sqwacked [squawked] with alarm! It’s the King! Run! The rat squeaked with alarm! Pecky screeched with alarm again! Then something worse happened! The evil evil witch went after them! Run fast! But . . . the princess and the cat came up with the best plan ever! First, Oh no! The bat ate the rat! Wait never mind. First the princess snuck up on the bat and killed it. Then the cat bit the king and witch! Everyone was happy! The end.

This past Wednesday, Carter’s preschool class took a field trip to the Fort Worth Zoo. They use the zoo-phonics curriculum, and just finished all 26 letters, so they went to see how many of their zoo-phonics friends they could find.

Carter is second from the right.

Daddy went with Carter on the field-trip (it was his first field-trip) and I met them there for lunch.

Carter spent the entire time with his best friend, Jack. They were in the same primary class in our old ward and have become best buddies. As we were walking to the kangaroos they looked at each other and said “let’s hold hands!”

Here’s Carter petting the goat.

More of Carter and Jack.

Carter ran his first road race on Saturday, April 11, at the Victory Over Violence kids 1k (it was Raine’s second race). The District Attorney’s office had a team participating in the event so we joined.

After the 1k fun-run, the kids and I took off for soccer games while Daddy ran the 5k.

Raine kept asking if this was a “winner-loser” race or an “everybody’s a winner” race. I told her that the 1k was most likely an “everybody’s a winner” race, but that the 5k was a “winner-loser” race. Then I asked her which she preferred. She said that she prefers an “everybody’s a winner” race because she isn’t fast enough to win. Sound logic!

That conversation made me really wonder what the best approach is when it comes to kids and competition. Should everybody be a winner? Or should kids be allowed to lose? Both approaches have advantages. When kids are little, it’s great to encourage them and build their self-confidence by making them feel like a winner even if they weren’t the best or fastest. But at some point, kids need to learn that sometimes (most of the time) other people are better than they are at certain things. It will drive them to either try harder or find something else that they are better suited for. Kids know when they aren’t the best so why take away the “consequences” and raise them to believe that they are entitled to a prize even when they didn’t earn it?

I’ve never considered myself a competitive person, but I’m all for keeping score at a soccer game… no matter how old they are!

Our second day in Tyler, we swam in the hotel pool and then visited the zoo.

I love watching Carter jump and swim at the pool, he’s such a fish!

The Tyler zoo was was a lot bigger and nicer than I expected. They had lions and tigers, elephants, giraffs, and all the other big animals that large zoos have. The animal enclosures were very natural-looking and the walkways were covered with a canopy of lavender — it was really pretty.

We saw them feed one of the rinos up close and personal!

This is a really deceptive photo of our bird-feeding experience! The kids tried forever to get birds to nibble on their sticks, but this was the only time they could get any takers and the birds all flew off shortly after the photo.

After the zoo we headed to Brookshire’s corporate headquarters where they have a huge playground and wildlife museum. I was too in-awe to take any photos inside the museum — it was full of hundreds of taxidermied animals — but I did get a couple of photos on the playground.

Good Friday I was off work, so everybody else played hooky and we left town! We headed about two hours east to Tyler, home of The Villages Resort and its indoor water park. We had an afternoon of fun in the endless river, wave pool, kids area, and water slides. Here are some photos, the videos will have to come another day.

Carter’s soccer team, the Sharks, with their mascot!

Carter is 2nd from the right.

Raine was team captain at her last soccer game. She has improved significantly over the last week and came within inches of scoring a goal this past Saturday. It’s been fun to watch her get more confident and “aggressive” (if you can use that word with Raine) on the field.

This time of year has the best weather for playing outside.

Carter has been using the warm evenings to work on his bike riding. Pretty soon, we’ll be ready for a family bike ride.

Saturdays this month were full of soccer games, birthday parties, and grocery shopping.

Daddy taught Raine how to play Uno while we were stuck home on a snow day and she was instantly addicted! We have played hundreds of hands of Uno this month.

Picking out new frames.

Daddy was the at-home parent during spring break this week. He took the kids on outings nearly every day and they loved it!

Monday was the Museum of Nature and Science, where they watched the new humpback whale IMAX movie and made crafts.

Wednesday was the Fort Worth Stockyards where they watched the legendary longhorn cattle drive…

…and made their way through the cattle-pen maze.

Friday was the Fort Worth Zoo.

They also made three trips to the library — two story times and a movie — and spent plenty of time jumping.

And by the end of the week, I came home to this unexpected scene:

We’re going to have to buy this girl a taller bike now that she can ride!

We’ve had a few snow and ice days around here lately. School was canceled three days, let out early one day, and started late one day, all within about a two week period.

This was our first dusting on February 27. It doesn’t look like much, but we had a solid coat of freezing rain the evening before so it made for treacherous road conditions.

On March 5 we woke up to 4 inches of snow. It was perfect for making a big, tall snowman.

We have been avoiding major organized sports for the kids for a while, mostly because there wasn’t a league close to our house and I didn’t want to be tied to a schedule that included a lot of driving. Now that we have a program only about a mile from us, we decided to sign up both kids for soccer. Neither of them has ever played on an organized team before, and as parents we have completely failed to teach them anything about this great game, so it has been fun (and funny) to watch them jump into it and try to figure out what is going on!

Saturday, after a mere two practices, they each had their first game. Raine’s team, the Rockstars, played the Divas. Raine played significantly better than I expected. On the field, she is just as timid and polite as she is off the field — she always waited her turn to kick the ball, never stealing it from anyone! But she had a huge smile on her face the entire time and loved running with the pack!

Raine is easy to spot on the field because she is the tallest. They use the kids’ age on Sept 1, so she is playing with the kindergartners, rather than the 1st graders that she goes to school with. As far as playing ability goes, this is great for her, but it reminds us just how tall she is!

Carter’s team, the Great White Sharks, played the Believers. Carter was just happy to be playing; if he gets a chance to kick the ball, that’s just a bonus. His team plays on a tiny field with just 3 players from each team on the field at a time. The coaches for both Carter’s and Raine’s team are on the field the entire time getting their kids in the right places at the right time — it is a great way to do it because it teaches them how to play the game as they go along.

Daddy is the assistant coach for Carter’s team so they get to enjoy the chaos together!

He had a pretty serious game face . . . too bad he doesn’t have the skills to back it up!

At this age, just keeping them focused on the game is half the battle!

Highlights from Carter’s game (he is the one with a white stripe down the side of his shorts):

Highlights from Raine’s game:

As I sat on the sidelines cheering for the kids, I found that every time I opened my mouth, my mother came out! She coached my soccer team all through elementary school so she is deeply ingrained in almost all of my soccer memories. I tried to at least keep my mouth shut while I was taking videos, but I just couldn’t keep it in at the end of Raine’s video! I’m surprised I still have a voice after all the yelling I did yesterday!

Saturday we made our annual pilgrimage to the Fort Worth Stock Show. It was beautiful weather so the grounds were PACKED! We saw all sorts of sheep, goats, pigs, cows, bulls, and horses. These photos are from the mid-way.

Raine insisted that we watch the milking demonstration. It’s such a strange novelty to see someone milk a cow — makes me sad that my kids never got to visit my grandparent’s farm and see Grandpa milk cows.