The good, the bad, and the mildly ironic . . .

The USSSA State Tournament began bright and early Friday morning. By early, I mean we had to be in Humble by 7am, and it's about an hour from Missouri City. The irony was that we were playing the Fort Bend Rebels, a team that practices about 10 minutes from our fields. So we drove an hour at the crack of dawn to play a team that we could have played any time. Oh, well.

The bad was pretty much how we played. Brady played flawless defense in two games on Friday, but didn't hit at all.



They went 1-1 in those games. He got a key hit on Saturday, but also made a couple of errors (he jammed his finger fielding a ball and had a tough time handling it cleanly after that). They fought hard, but didn't get the result we were hoping for. They lost 5-4. Back to work on the fundamentals and hopefully they will play better in the World Series in July. Brady is participating in a baseball clinic at Rice University June 30 - July 2nd, so hopefully that will be fun for him.




The good refers to a side trip we made on Friday to visit my sister who was vacationing in Crystal Beach near Galveston. We absolutely love the beach, and it was a relaxing and renewing break in the weekend.



We frolicked in the waves for a bit, then had a picnic on the porch with my sister and niece and their dogs Toby and Bennie,



then we rode the Boliver Ferry back to Galveston. We were a bit reluctant to try the ferry since our only exposure to it are the traffic reports of long waits, but it was a great experience, maybe our favorite part of the trip (definitely our favorite part of the drive). We drove aboard, then climbed the steps to the observation deck, and watched the seagulls and pelicans cruise along with us and dolphins swim along side us.



The wind was strong in our faces, and Abby put her hands to the side and declared she was flying (without ever having seen Leonardo DiCaprio do it).

It was so peaceful and calm we almost didn't think about baseball for a while. Almost.

The week of almost nothing . . .

The summer is 2 whole weeks old already. We've finished All Stars and Brady is busy practicing for the state tournament which will be held next weekend. Here's a review of last week . . .

Bill and Brady are taking guitar lessons. Bill has owned a guitar since he was about 14 years old, but before he could start taking lessons, his brother JoJo (who was 13) announced he wanted a drum set. That was the end of the music in their household. Now, 31 years later, Bill is finally taking lessons. So far he can play 3 chords. That's 3 more than I can play. Brady is learning scales (they have different instructors). So far, so good. Brady's fingers get sore after practicing for a while, but they should toughen up with time. My neice, Sierra, started guitar lessons about 8 months ago. She can already play a few songs!

KC is taking piano lessons. So far, one lesson in, she is loving it. She doesn't even play scales yet, but she's enjoying it so far.

Abby is busy being a social butterfly. Last week she attended 2 birthday parties and spent the day with her friend Katy at their house. She's reading a chapter book this summer (Nancy Drew Notebooks) and so far, so good.

Last week I did almost nothing. Cleaned the house. Drove the kids to their activities. Did a little crochet, a little scrapbooking, and a little cross stitch. Didn't go into work even once. I can't even remember the last time I did nothing for a week. It was wonderful. This, I could get used to . . .

Of course tomorrow I am going in to work. They can't go too long without me. That's job security, though . . .

Hope everyone is enjoying the first official days of summer!

All Stars 2008

All-Stars 2008 finished last night. I can't remember an All-Star tournament filled with more drama, battles, and heartbreak, and that doesn't even count the actual games.

First, the fun stuff.

One of the best parts of All-Stars is hearing your name called by the announcer to run on the field. Makes them all feel like the pros:



All the boys line up, say the Little League pledge, and we all sing the National Anthem.



Brady played mostly second base, but played a few innings at shortstop. He was outstanding at second base. Here he is catching a routine pop-up.



Long story short, they won the championship!!!



That was the drama on the field, anyway.



The drama off the field wasn't nearly as much fun. It's hard to say too much in a public forum, but in a nutshell, because they won District 16, they qualified for the state tournament. The tournament was supposed to be at the end of this week. Because of conflict with the hosting facility, the tournament was moved to the weekend of June 27th, which is also the weekend of the USSSA state tournament, which 8 of the 13 boys on the all-star team have been training for. If they skip the state tournament, they can't play in the USSSA world series in July, which we have been raising money for. As it turns out, the second place team we beat to win the championship can't field a team for sectionals either, because they have 5 players committed to the USSSA tournament. Unfortunately, when presented with the options of a reschedule the tournament (we offered to host it at MCLL) b)allow the 5 members of the MCLL all stars to move on and add other MCLL players without a conflict to the team so they can compete or c)send no representative from our district . . . the option chosen by the higher-ups was c. No representative from our district this year.

There was a lot more drama in all this, including some shoving matches between grown-ups with differing opinions (not me, you'll be glad to know), but I'll keep that out of the public forum. It breaks my heart that the 5 all stars who aren't on the Warriors won't be able to continue in the tournament, but we were very up front with MC about our commitment to the USSSA tournament, and we would have gladly played in the next level of all-stars if it had been held at the time originally scheduled. We would also have supported other MC players taking over those spots and competing if it had been allowed. It's all very sad . . .

Is it really a sleepover . . .

Is it really a sleepover if no one actually sleeps?

We had birthday parties galore this weekend, one a bit late, and one a bit early.

KC celebrated her 11th birthday party with a swimming/scrapbook/sleepover. She had 6 girls over and they had a blast.

First the swimming:



Then we had pizza and cupcakes and ice cream (I love the way they use cupcakes to make a single cake-like-object, although I'm not 100% what this is - a bone, maybe?)



Once the sun had started to set, they retired upstairs to begin scrapbooking:



A few brief Oreo and milk breaks later,



they decided it was time to open presents:


After that there was more scrapbooking, video watching, running about, and lots and lots of giggling and screaming. I fell asleep around 11, so I'm not sure how late the girls were up. Brady said he turned off his video game to go to sleep close to 2am and they were still going strong (he's not usually allowed to stay up that late, but it seemed pointless to ask him to sleep in the middle of the chaos). Abby woke up at around 7:30am and KC wandered down with a couple of girls at around 8:30am. They ate Cinnamon rolls and cereal and swam for a while until they all left at around 10:30am.

One down, one to go.

Abby's birthday is actually July 23rd, but for the past 2 years we've been so caught up with baseball that we never got around to having a real party for her. This year, the Warriors are going to be playing in the USSSA World Series July 20-27th, so it was going to be another tight fit to get a 9th birthday party in for the littlest one. It was actually Abby's idea to have a party at the beginning of the summer instead of the end. We decided to go for it!

She opted for a girl party at Club Libby Lu at the mall.

First the girls get to dress up in tween splendor and get a makeover:



Once fully made over into pre-teen beauty queens:


They have a dance party/fashion runway show!


They had such a good time dancing to all kinds of music, there was actually a crowd outside the store watching and dancing along. It was quite a show (the girls had a blast).

After the dance party, we moved to the food court for cookie cake and presents.



Both the girls had a great time, but now the parties are done, and it's on to baseball!!

The 13-year-old All Stars begin play in about 30 minutes! Summer is officially starting!!

KC's Awards

The fifth grade awards ceremony was held this morning, and KC received awards for Texas Reader's Club, Honor Roll, and she was selected by her teacher for the Outstanding Citizen (female) award for her class.



Good job!!

Flying into the end of the school year

June is here and we are flying into the end of the school year. Maybe skidding into it would be a better description. Quick updates:

Brady had his spring band concert. They were wonderful! Brady was selected as one of two Outstanding 7th Grade Band students (he does not get one bit of that talent from me!).

He was also selected to the MCLL 13-year-old All Star Team!

The other team he plays for, the MCLL Warriors, played in a qualifying tournament in College Station last weekend, and they won!

Here's Brady sliding into home on a wild pitch:


Here are the beautiful Warrior sisters waiting for the game to start.

KC and Abby are so good about keeping an eye on the little ones. :-)



Here are the winners! Their win means they qualified for the USSSA World Series in July to be held in Grand Prairie, Texas (couldn't they have chosen some scenic locale? Aspen? San Diego? How does one choose Grand Prairie? Oh well).

KC had her 5th grade graduation pool party last weekend (before the trip to College Station). She had a blast!



The funny thing is that Bill shot that picture from outside the fence with a telephoto lens (he has a real future as a paparazzo). She isn't even posing, she's just naturally cool, I suppose. LOL

Tomorrow is her 5th grade awards ceremony, which I am hoping to attend, but right now Abby is running a fever so all bets may be off.

School is crazy busy this time of year! Hope you are all well wherever you are! Graduation is Friday, but they've already asked me to work Monday and Wednesday of next week. Should be quite a summer. :-)