Volleyball practice with Aubrey and making cupcakes

From what I heard, Aubrey had three things she wanted to do while visiting us from Michigan.
1. Visit with Theresa and rub the baby belly
2. Learn how to use her new camera
3. Get some volleyball practice so she can try to make her school team this season

She's already done the first two. Now we're going to start working on some volleyball.

You might have noticed Theresa wearing a hand brace for the past 5 months due to a volleyball injury. After a visit to the doctor this morning, she got the news that she can finally take it off.

We spent a solid 1.5 hours hitting the volleyball around the front yard.
To start, we did some serve receiving.

I stood in the driveway and hit balls at Aubrey who would try to pass them to Theresa.

Next we worked on hitting. I would set Aubrey.

And she would hit them into the yard.

Passing was next. After a little bit of warm-up, we got up to 104 passes back and forth. The practice in the yard has been okay, but tomorrow we're heading to the beach to practice on a real net.

Before the night was over, Aubrey got a little bit more practice with her camera, all without any real instruction from me. This flower looks beautiful. She's got a good eye.

The tree behind us has a family of hummingbirds. Here's one hanging out on a branch.

On Friday, Theresa, Rita and Aubrey spent 3 hours at Target working on her baby registry. That's right. 3 hours. And no, I wasn't there with them. While she hasn't had too many pregnancy cravings, she does seem to get an ICEE whenever there's one around. Target usually has ICEEs, but none of their machines were cold. Once she got that idea in her head that she needed an ICEE, she was on a mission.
After picking me up from home, our next stop was a local gas station. She actually called them first and confirmed they had ICEEs, but once we got there, they were just ICEE slushies, and they're not carbonated. Strike 2.

Luckily the Burger King right down the street sells ICEEs as well.

And now Theresa's happy. Craving satisfied.

Next stop: Hermosa Beach! It's a beautiful day to play some volleyball.

This time we've got an actual net to practice with.

We worked on serving, and by the end of the day, she had much better form and was regularly getting the ball over the net.

We worked on passing, and while we didn't get to 104 passes, we still did pretty good.

Lastly, with her hand back in good working order, Theresa served the ball at us, while we tried to bump, set and spike.

Ready to receive the serve.

Bump...

Set and spike!

 Nice work Aub.

After a tasty dinner of chicken and rice, Theresa and Aubrey made cupcakes for dessert.

And I got to lick the beaters.

Aubrey scooping the batter into the cups.

Perfect. Just needs icing.

Mmm.

While taking this photo, Aubrey made some comment about putting frosting on my nose.

So before she could even start to do it, I swiped my finger through some frosting and beat her to it.

And from there, it just turned into a back and forth battle.

We were both laughing pretty good and Theresa was enjoying just watching it all happen.

After calling it a draw, Aubrey continued the cupcake decoration.

Mmm. Sprinkles.

Yum! Nice work girls.