Leckbee Family Blog

So It has been a really long time since I actually blogged.  I do love it but sometimes life is too busy to sit and play on the computer (like right now, what am I doing?)  Anyways, I don’t really like the program that I use and so I am debating if I should just completely give up on blogging.  OR maybe try a different service, or just get my butt in gear and get back on the band wagon.  The only bad thing is that it has been so long that I don’t think I have ANY followers anymore, who wants to check out a blog that is never updated.  Oh what to do, what to do???

Rachel played Upward Basketball this winter.  It was a great experience for her and she learned a lot.  Upward is a religious based sports program that was run out of a near by church.  I really liked the program because it was non-competitive and very Christ based.  They started every game with the announcer yelling “Lets Get Ready to Be Humble”.  It was so cute!!

Rachel had a lot of fun and improved so much through out the season.  We are still learning on the aggressive thing, maybe it will click one of these days (I’m not holding my breath).

Here is Rachel with her team!!  Go Ravens!!!

Leckbee, #2, dribbling down the court

Go #2, dribble down that court!!

Rachel and Kirra

Rachel really did have fun and even wants to play basketball again next year.  It added to her fun that she got to play against friends from both school and church.  She even got to play against Kirra in the last game of the season!  I love it when Rachel has fun while getting exercise, I doubt she will be a great athlete but I love that she is willing to give different sports a try and have fun just playing.

So in January all three of us girls got hair cuts.  My haircut was the least drastic but still fun.  Rachel’s hair cut was the most drastic, cutting of almost 7 inches of hair.  Too bad it wasn’t enough to donate.  I hate wasting all that beautiful hair. Rachel has wanted an “A” style hair cut for such a long time and I finally gave in and it looks so cute!  I was a little sad afterwards, it looked beautiful BUT it killed me how much older she looked.  Rachel was just smiling from ear to ear, she loved her New Do!!!

Rachel-Before

Rachel-After

side view

back view

Sarah got her hair cut a few weeks later.  I decided during her bath one night that life would just be a lot easier if she had a hair cut.  She wanted one really bad after Rachel came home with her new do.  Sarah kept telling me “I want my hair short like Rachey”.  I wasn’t willing to go to that extreme but we did cut off a lot and boy does it make baths and doing her hair SO  much easier!!

Sarah-Before (I don't know why it is sideways, it won't let me change it)

Sarah-Afterwards

After-Back

Jill-After

The girls had an amazing Christmas.  They are so spoiled!  But also very loved.  We had our first Christmas season completely alone.  We have spent Christmas at our house before but we have always had someone come visit us either on Christmas or a few days later.  Well, this year no one was able to come visit us over Christmas and so we had the entire Christmas break just Me, Josh and the girls.  It was fun and we tried to do some fun stuff with the girls but at the same time they got SO many new toys that they just wanted to play.  I do love these crazy little girls and love how fun it is to wake up in the morning after Santa has come.

Rachel with her stocking

Sarah with her Tangled Barbie

Rachel with her new desk from Santa

Rachel’s T-ball team had a swim party for their end of the year party.  Lets just say that 5 and 6 year olds should not have swim parties.  It was really odd, parents didn’t want to swim with the little kids and I think only one of the kids on the team could actually swim (and his parents owned the pool).  I knew that Rachel would be fine in a swim ring but none of the other parents brought swim gear for their children and we actually had one kid try to drown several times that night.  WAY TOO SCARY for me, I couldn’t take my eyes off Rachel the whole night. Rachel actually looked like a pro in the water compared to the other kids.

But the kids had a good time.  Rachel really liked t-ball and made some friends with the two other girls that ended up on her team.  I wish that Rachel could play t-ball again next year but she will be too old and gets to try machine pitch softball next year. 

Sabrina, Rachel, and Sonny

Rachel and Sonny

Getting her trophy from Coach Ronnie

This is the 3rd year that my friend Sharee has ran a summer Children’s Music Theatre.  Rachel participated in the program the first year with the performance of Stone Soup and then again this year in Welcome to the Jungle.  Rachel loves any kind of performance, she loves to sing and dance and practices doing both in front of the mirror on a daily basis.

The performance was so cute!!  All the kids wore cast t-shirts and had their faces painted like  jungle animals.  Several of the parents agreed to help paint the kids faces and they did an amazing job.  None of the kids got to pick what animal they would be, Rachel got to be a Hippo. She really wanted to be a Cheetah, it is her new favorite animal but she was happy to be a Hippo.  She was the cutest (skinniest) Hippo I have ever seen!

Getting her face painted for the performance

Rachel the Hippo!

Sarah has graduated from her toddler bed to a ‘big girl bed’.  She loved her little toddler bed but wanted a big bed like Rachel.  So when Sears had amazing deals over Memorial weekend on mattresses we went ahead and bought a new one for us and gave Sarah our old mattress.  She loves her new big, big girl bed and keeps telling us it’s big, soft, and bouncy.  What more do you need in a bed!  She loves her pink quilt and polka dot sheets, but I think the best part for Sarah is that she finally has room for all her stuffed animals to sleep with her!

Sarah's pretty new bed

I think that Rachel was just as excited as Sarah was about the new bed.  They have spent lots of time jumping on it, reading together on it, and playing anything they can on it.  I sure love these crazy girls!

Rachel has been very jealous of the fun activities that I started doing with Sarah, so I promised her that when school was out she could come too.  Rachel was really jealous because I was doing these fun things with my friend Tania and her children, it really had nothing to do with having fun with mom.  Rachel just adores my friend Tania and her two little girls, of course they are amazing and I can totally understand why she loves them so much!!

So once school was out we set a date to visit the aquarium and botanical gardens with Tania and her girls, it was a fun day and Rachel just loved spending them with them.

Rachel, Sarah, and Gina at the aquarium

Inside the giant tree

Rachel going down the tunnel slide

Giant Carrot

How can my baby girl already be done with first grade and officially now be a second grader, that just sounds SO OLD!

Lets see how much she has changed from the first day to the last.

First Day of School

Last day of School

I just can’t believe how fast they grow, what happened to my baby?

The first grade classes decided to hold a picnic lunch on the grass field at the school for all the kids and parents this year.  It was fun to eat lunch with Rachel and see her play with the close friends that she made over the school year.  It was also nice to spend some time with their parents and get to know them better too.  I am very grateful for the two girls that were always loving and kind to Rachel this year and were true friends.  It seems like those kinds of kiddos are hard to find these days.

Rachel and Jordan

Jordan, Rachel, and Magdalena

Life is always a little crazier when Sarah is around

Rachel and Mrs. Sainz

Rachel and her first grade teacher, Mrs. Sainz