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.