Art Show

Reed's picture made it in the art show at school. I happened to be in the hallway with Reed during book fair when his art teacher was hanging his picture up. 

His is the landscape above his head. We couldn't make it to the show at school because we had ball games that night so I was excited to get this photo while his teacher was there. 

Millie had a piece in the Floyd County art show a few weeks before which they displayed at the public library. 

Hanging Out

The girls always have fun hanging out between games. And Reed was showing off his super loose tooth.

Easter

The weather could not have been more beautiful this weekend. My mom hosted Easter for our extended Owen Family on Saturday. She puts a lot of time into this and hides different eggs for each child. The older the child, the harder their eggs are hidden. This makes it much more fun (and fair) for all ages.

She always explains the rules and tells each of the critters what color egg they are looking for. It's about the thrid year she has done it this way so they understand well that they are only to find their eggs.

Reed was searching for baseball eggs. Fitting since he had a game that morning right before we went to Mom's house.

Millie was searching for pink camouflage eggs.

Hercules wanted to be the Easter Bunny...

...but my dad wanted it more.

Jacob was helping Reed count his money.

Our traditional Easter pinata broke again, as usual, from the hook. So after the kids beat it up, Rick climbed a tree and dumped it on them.

It was a lot of fun! On Easter Sunday, Rick's mom hosted and hers is always fun too. She does one for the little kids and the big kids. I forgot my camera so no photos of that one. We could not have had a prettier weekend for the wonderful family time.

Go Giants

Millie's not the only one in full on ball mode. Reed's loving baseball again this year. He's still in Tball but there is such a difference in him this year vs last year.

I never have to yell at him to pay attention, he is very alert and ready for the ball every play.

He's great at fielding and throwing, his catching needs a little improvement but if it's a good throw, he can mostly always catch it. His age group doesn't keep score and they bat everyone every inning. That's good for this age because most of them are still playing in the dirt and waving to their parents so keeping score would be a bit pointless.

He's having fun, though, and if you ask him, his team is undefeated.

Millie wanted to take some pictures...

Grantline Tourney

I'm hoping to not post every tourney Millie plays in but this was their first one. Last one was just a scrimmage but this past weekend was the real deal. There were teams from Indiana and Kentucky. We lost the first game about 9-0 but honestly, our girls didn't have too many errors, they are just still a bit slow in their decision making process and that will improve with more play and experience in this new league for them. I was happy to see that they still had their spirits up and were not discouraged.

The second game that day was against Indiana Pride, which they played the weekend before in the scrimmage. Indiana Pride beat us in the scrimmage but we beat them in the tourney. Our girls played great and our pitcher was on fire and Millie hardly let a ball get past her at catcher. The girls really got fired up after that win and went into the third game with lots of confidence and energy.

Millie had her first steal at home plate and she slid right in and was safe.

She also caught a pop fly at catcher and made a great out at home plate when the other team tried to score and slide in on her. She blocked it like a champ, took a pretty hard hit but stayed firm and got her out.

Our last game was against Triple Threat, another team from Floyd Knobs, but they are all older than us and have been playing together for 2 years. We ended up beating them as well and the girls were super excited about that. We ended up being seeded #5 out of 9 teams for the playoff the next day and we all thought that was great for our very first tournament.

The bad news was our number one pitcher could not make day 2 and we couldn't quite pull off the win on Sunday. That was ok though. We were all very happy with how the girls played and how they worked as a team.

Millie's rec team is doing great and they are undefeated. Millie fields most every ball playing pitcher and gets them right to first base for the out. She had a home run in last weeks game and really likes the relaxing 8U rec league. We will enjoy it while we can this year because she has to move up to 10U next year. I won't get many photos of that team because I help coach but I though I would mention it.

Fusion Softball

After the All Star season ended last year for Millie, the coaches decided to keep this set of girls playing together as a travel team. I said I would never let the kids play on a travel team because I have heard horror stories of hotels every weekend and you do nothing else. At first we told the coach no but he explained that we would only do local tourneys and only 1 a month. I thought that sounded doable so we agreed.

This team is older than Millie so they are 10u which means the girls are mostly 9 and 10 year olds and they all play in the 10U rec league except for Millie and one other girl. So Millie has a total different set of rules for rec than she does for travel. The team played 1 scrimmage game last fall and we got beat by a lot. They have been practicing all winter and spring and had 3 scrimmage games this weekend. The one Friday night was freezing cold. It was so cold the girls (and myself) were crying because it actually hurt. It was painfully cold. We lost. I don't know the score for sure but it was about 9-4 maybe.

Sunday we played 2 games and the weather was beautiful. The girls did great and looked great in their new uniforms. We did lose the first game 3-0 but we had several girls in scoring position each inning and as a team, they really did well.

The second game we ended up winning in the last inning by 1. Millie scored and she slid for the first time in a game. She caught both games and really did well. She has a lot to learn because kid pitch is so new to her and her rec league is not kid pitch. There is so much to learn, even for me. I was lucky to be sitting by a dad who was explaining everything to me. A strike out isn't always a strike out and a girl who gets walked can make it to second base, so many things I'm not used to. And Millie isn't either so as catcher, she has to know these things so she knows where to make plays. I think a few more games and we will see a big improvement with her.

It's a good thing there are several other little brothers on the team because Reed loves going and playing with his friends.

And if you noticed, Millie's name is spelled wrong on her shirt, so is Rick's. And it's probably bad that I just noticed on Sunday after she and Rick had worn them 3 times. Rick didn't even notice until I pointed it out.

Play Ball!

It's that time of year when this blog and our lives are dominated by diamonds...ball diamonds. Wether it's baseball or softball, it's all we do. This weekend was opening day and both critters had games. We were lucky, or unlucky depending on how you look at it, to play at 9am and 10:30. Millie and Reed's games were back to back, that was good. But it was about 40 degrees that morning, that was bad. 40 degrees felt warm compared to her scrimmage game the night before, that was miserable. It was damp, about 40 degrees or less with about 30 mph wind.

 

But this post is about the rec league so lets focus on that, we'll get to Millie's travel league later. Millie's game was at 9am and she plays peewee with 7 and 8 year olds. She is on the Reds and her coaches are Rick and Rick's boss who also coach her travel team. Millie's rec team seems to be pretty strong and they won 14-4 I think it was. They do have the first and second draft pick on the team so they should be pretty strong. We will see how the rest of the season goes. 

Reed played at 10:30 and he is a Giant. They don't keep score in his league but Reed did great. He got on base every time and had great hits. They never had to bring out the "T" of shame to hit off of. I don't call it that around the kids but we all know the truth, that's what it is. Reed fielded the ball great and he made several outs at first. 

The critters couldn't wait for the season to start and neither could I. Now we just need some warm weather to go with it. 

Battle Of the Books

The main thing I liked about the EXCEL program that Millie is in in school was that every spring was Battle of the Books. The EXCEL kids from third and fourth grade are combined into groups of 6 to read 12 books over 4 weeks. The groups decide who will read which books for their group. The goal was for each child to read at least 4 assigned books so every book in the competition was read by at least 2 students.

Millie had already read 2 of them so those were quick reviews for her. She ended up reading 10 of the total 12 books assigned to the teams. 

They set aside 1 day and all the kids do that day is battle it out. Many of the parents stay to watch and help out. I was the time keeper all day and it was so much fun!  I could not believe how much information these kiddos were able to retain from these books. Along with the answer, they had to tell the author as well. 

I could see that although Millie's team was doing great, Millie was contributing to almost every answer. I was so proud of her. And she volunteered to be her team's speaker during 1 round. She did great. 

Millie's team ended up in the championship battle of the day and won! The kids were very excited!  They all did great and worked very hard during the 4 weeks leading up to this event. Millie wants to have them every month, not just once a year. She even requested to have a Battle of the Books themed birthday party. I told her that although that was a great idea and sounded fun, maybe we shouldn't assign kids homework in order to come to your party. Fortunately, she agreed. 

We thought a celebration milkshake was in order after school that day. And not to leave Reed out, but his teacher told me the same day that he was reading at a level they expect to see at the end of first grade. So he's doing great too!