The Toths Come To Town!

The last two days have been full of great food, late nights, and mostly catching up with Matt's childhood best friend, Joe, and his wife, Sarah.  What a blessing that they drove six hours to come see us right after making the miserable drive from Florida to Pennsylvania (where they are moving)!  In this baseball lifestyle, we make many new and wonderful friends every year, but new friends can never take the place of old ones.  When you are away from home, it is always a comfort to spend time with friends who you have a history with.  And boy do Matt and Joe have some history together...

They have been there for each other during the most difficult times and happy times.  They have countless stories of crazy shenanigans they got themselves in to.  When Joe and Matt are together, Sarah and I typically just sit back and watch the show! : )  Needless to say it was a really fun and entertaining two days.  

Joe had "met" Sienna when she was just a few months old, but Sarah never had.  I enjoyed watching Sienna interact with her Uncle Joe and Aunt Sarah, and of course they were as delighted with her as everyone else is.  Here are a few pictures from the weekend!

Sunday Best

Sienna is 9 months and 3 weeks old tomorrow!  Her Granny (Cindy, Matt's mom) bought her this beautiful dress, so I obviously had to take some pictures.

Sienna's new thing..she tilts her head to the side to look at you.

Olympic Trials

"The Olympics remain the most compelling search for excellence that exists in sport, and maybe in life itself." Dawn Fraser (Australian swimmer, 3 time winner at the Olympics)

I have a feeling this is only the first of many posts still to come about the Olympics this summer.  If watching the Olympics were an Olympic sport, I would be a gold medalist for sure.  The Olympic Trials of diving, swimming, track and field, and gymnastics are airing this week on NBC Sports Network and my DVR is working over time.  I can't be sure what has caused me to be so obsessed with the Olympics. A huge factor of course is the fact that I have only ever participated in Olympic sports (gymnastics and track and field).  But even more significant than that is the utter drama of the Olympics.  For example, yesterday I flipped on the women's synchronized diving finals.  I thought to myself, "This will be good background TV as I feed Sienna, clean up, etc.  I mean, it's women's synchronized diving...I really could care less."  Well come to find out I cared.  Two teams were practically tied going in to the last dive of the finals. One team would go to the Olympics and the other team would not.  As I watched the reactions of the girls who trained for four grueling years as they learned their destiny and their fate, I noticed tears trying to escape my eyes.  What is happening to me?!  I am becoming my mother!  It's synchronized diving for the love of God!  But it doesn't matter that it was only synchronized diving...that's the phenomenon of the Olympics. The simultaneous emotions of glory and agony, jubilation and devastation, victory and defeat that the Olympic Games dispense is absolutely riveting.  There is nothing like it.  And more often than not, what separates the exultant from the sorrowful is mere milliseconds or inches or a small matter of pointed toes.  It's wonderful and awful all at the same time.  Did I mention I love the Olympics?  Did I also mention that I was already crying and it's only the Olympic Trials? : )


In other news, Matt joined Sienna and I at church today!  Yay!  He has a 6 o'clock game, which meant ample time for church.  What a blessing.  He was really excited because he hasn't been able to go to church with us since Easter.  The ladies in childcare love Sienna...of course!  Every time I go to pick her up, they tell me how beautiful she is and how good she is and how often she smiles.  Last week, they even told me they take pictures of her...which is mostly hilarious and flattering, but maybe a tiny bit weird.  


God has been so good to Matt and I.  Although this baseball season has certainly not turned out the way we would have wanted (not unlike other years), I'm quite confident neither of us has been more full of peace and joy as we have this year.  There is a quiet contentment with ourselves and our lives that we have not had in the midst of other tough seasons.  And moreover, Matt (and I) maintains hope for better seasons to come.  On this day, I feel incredibly blessed...


and excited to watch Italy play (and hopefully dominate) England in the UEFA Cup!  

Designer Blog

Well if I take as much time to write on this blog as I did to design it, there will be much to read.  The problem is shaggyblog.com has too many incredible backgrounds to choose from.  I may have took longer to choose a background for this blog than I did my own wedding dress!  (I'm sure my mom would emphatically agree.)  And I know it took longer to fit the design to my page than it took for the wedding dress to be fitted. :)  But after much deliberation I chose the patriotic themed design because the 4th of July is my favorite holiday, and just so happens to be around the corner.  At the very least, it is relevant.

Mattie came home early this morning after being gone for six days.  While he still slept, I started feeding Sienna.  But as soon as she heard him rummaging around up there, I could hardly get the spoon in her mouth because she kept moving her head to look over my shoulder to see what was going on. (We have a loft, so you can see up in to our bedroom from the kitchen and living area.)  And when Mattie finally peeked over the banister so she could see him, you would have thought Sienna saw Jesus, Himself.  Her face expressed pure delight with the widest (still toothless) grin I ever saw, blue eyes shining with excitement, and just in case her face did not fully express her emotion, she clapped her hands in glee.  I kid you not...clapped her hands when she saw her daddy.  Needless to say, I fell more in love with her.

Beginning Today

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.  How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?  For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone.  That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop."   ~Vita Sackville-West

This quote encapsulates why I have decided to  write a blog.  How else will we (let alone others) remember our lives?  I hope this blog will enable me to relive the small, seemingly insignificant (at the time), yet truly precious moments of my life.  It is a lofty goal to be sure.  I have journaled off and on throughout my life with various degrees of inconsistency.  I can not promise a set number of entries or any particular content.  I only desire to capture still shots of a life that sweeps by with unanticipated speed.