The Birthday Boy

Our "baby" turned four this week... I guess he's not so much of a baby anymore! Grandpa and Grandma arrived on their way home from a wedding in Ohio just in time for birthday dinner (mac'n'cheese -- at his request) and the rest of the celebrations. We intended to do some birthday fireworks but got rained out -- we got to watch a very impressive lightning storm instead! We'll try again with those fireworks tonight.



This year Elijah wanted a duck cake...

... which he helped make!

A Song to Celebrate Vacation

Okay, everybody all together now, to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Ready?

As I pack for vacation these thoughts go through my mind...
Twelve chores to finish
'leven kinds of snack food
Ten tons of crayons
Nine Disney movies
Eight kid sized sandals
Seven loads of laundry
Six eager people
Five states to see
Four bags of clothes
Three days left
Two boogie boards
And one jumbo pack of car sickness pills.

Laundry, Summer Style

Dude, I'm so gonna try this!

For those who may want to read Baby Blues every day, you can find it at www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/comics/Baby_Blues.dtl

The Sky is Falling!

We had hail tonight -- big hail!

These doozies left a few marks on our vehicles (thankfully nothing major and no broken windows), and also further shredded my poor hosta plants that were already tattered by the quarter-sized hail last night! Amazingly the garden is still fairly intact. If you click on the picture of Wade you can see more of the big white stuff on the ground outside in the gravel area.

T-ball time!

Our awesome little town t-ballers played their first game on Tuesday against Scranton. I'd like a show of hands here: how many of you would drive 30 miles to watch a bunch of 5 to 7-year-olds play t-ball? I could now introduce you to over a dozen.

I must admit all of us parents were pretty impressed by the Scranton team. They wore cleats. Our players mostly wore light-up shoes. We sported a lot of Buzz Lightyear, Thomas the Tank Engine and Transformers footwear.

Our team has been practicing for about three weeks, and they really have improved a lot since the beginning of the month. They can now run the bases in the correct order. Our coach is a great, kid-friendly guy who has worked very hard and patiently to educate the children on the basics of t-ball. However, we've only covered the very basics.

One of the things we haven't practiced is what to do if you get out. Nobody ever gets out during our practices, so of course everybody runs all the bases, one at a time, and eventually they make it home. Things were a little different on Tuesday. The other team knew how to catch. This is a key element in being able to get people out, and get us out they did. Our players found this very confusing. They'd run to first, like they always do, and expect to wait there until the next batter hit. They didn't really understand why, when an opposing player beat them to the base with the ball, they had to go back to the dugout. Thankfully the agreed-upon t-ball rules allowed each team to go through their entire batter list each inning regardless of the number of outs.

Another much-relieving t-ball rule is that the game always ends in a tie. Doesn't matter how many runs were actually scored, the game is always a tie. However, Wade ran into the coach in town this afternoon and he confided that, although nobody kept an official score, he thought it really was a pretty close game. He also confided that the team we played was Scranton's 7 and 8-year-olds, which may explain a little bit about their impressive athletic ability.

All in all, the kids had a great time, which was enhanced even more by a picnic at a nearby park afterward. And they are eager to play Scranton's "big kids" again on Friday here at home. Wish us luck!