dinner guests; batting practice included.

Troy & I are good ‘ol Granger alumni, we went to high school together and as we all scattered after h.s. he went on his way to the Minor Leagues {AA} for about 7 years. This makes Troy {by FAR} Dusty’s favorite h.s. friend of mine.
{Matt Stakehouse, no tears, you don’t count because you’re older than me…}
Troy is currently living in Arizona with his adorable family, and it is a rare & fabulous occasion when they come to visit.

Yesterday, we had a casual evening including dinner at our home with Troy, Kajsa, and Brady. While I was finishing the cooking, everyone headed out to the backyard for batting practice. Dusty has been concerned about KJ’s front foot/leg in his swing lately. You may be thinking I’m crazy if you notice our son is 5, but I’m totally serious. Also, Dusty’s hoping to improve his batting at Pro Look’s softball playoffs. Troy was very generous to put his baseball skills to use while giving free batting lessons to the Rhodes {and I think he enjoyed it}, thank you!

Sela & Brady became little buddies very quickly, and had fun following each other around – we couldn’t stop lauging at how funny they were together. Being the 4th child, Sela rarely gets someone near her age to play with. She thought it was silly good!


Troy has some new competition in the daddy field, because Dusty is Brady’s new favorite guy. By the end of the night he wouldn’t stop smiling at or tackling him. Brady & Sela were sharing loves while attacking Dusty.


We introduced Troy & Kajsa to “fusion frenzy” on the xbox-360, they had never played it before and this picture would be so good if it wasn’t fuzzy because you could have seen my mouth hanging open in pure concentration…I must apologize to them about the competitive Rhodes children who were screaming at each other over paddles during the games, geesh. I don’t know where they get that?!?
Kiana/Dusty/KJ/Sela/Myla/Jane/Troy/Brady/Kajsa
We didn’t get Brady’s smile in this picture,
so we had him go sit by his new buddy Dusty
then we got this awesome smile!
Troy; hanging out in little Fenway…his dream home.

Once all the Rhodes children went to bed, we pulled out the card games.
T & K had never played Phase 10!
It was such a riot, I think Troy tried to end the entire game about 6 times, but we kept going!
Finally, we let Kajsa leave a winner when she finished Phase 9 before everyone else, way to go K – it must have been beginner’s luck!

Thanks for the visit, we thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of you! I hope next time you have more time to be here so we can spend more time playing…xoxo
If you couldn’t find the “butt” cake recipe,
it’s here. Enjoy!