First Day of School

It seems to happen every year...earlier and earlier. School started today, July 31. It just ended last month...last month!! The kids will be in school every month this year. It really makes summer hard, trying to get everything in you want to do...trips and outings as well as visiting friends and family in between summer camps, lessons and sports. And really, sometimes you just want a few days to hang out at home and just play. I like our school schedule but it just turns summer into a 6 week period where you just can't do everything you want to do, feeling guilty about not doing things you intended to and just not getting those things checked off your list that you planned. Oh well, right?

The routine is Millie's alarm goes off at 5:40, she wakes up Reed then she gets dressed and ready in her bathroom before coming upstairs. Reed comes up and gets ready in my room. Rick makes breakfast while I get school stuff together and they feed and take care of the animals. They were out the door at 6:20 for pictures this morning because their bus comes at 6:33. Yikes.

About pictures at 6:20. It's not real light out. This makes picturing taking difficult. I did my best and I'm glad they were cooperating because with little light, I can't have any movement. They did great and were excited about going to school today. Hopefully this keeps up the rest of the year.

Football Time

Getting six stitches this summer during football camp didn't stop this little man from wanting to play tackle football.

The Spirit of Jefferson

My mom wanted to take the kids on a river boat ride so we actually had a free day today to make it happen. We got sprinkled on a little but it wasn't too bad with a few big umbrellas.

Ohio Valley Babe Ruth League Regional Tourney

Millie's All Star Team, The Mini Melons, easily earned a spot to compete in the highest round of competition the 8U group can reach after finishing first in our district and first in our state tourneys.

The Floyd Knobs 10U girls also easily qualified to participate in regionals because they too finished first in district and state. We were able to get a group photo on opening day.

On Wednesday there were just team photos, opening ceremonies and some fun competitions.

Millie's coaches wanted Millie to compete in the "Faster Than The Babe" running competition. There were 4 different events to choose from but each girl could only do one. Well, darned if Millie didn't come in second out of all those girls. She was a happy girl.

Thursday started pool play. Each team played 2 games to determine their seeding going into the tourney on Friday. We won both of our games but so did 2 other teams. Since the other teams allowed fewer runs, we ended up a #3 seed, not too bad. We went in Friday playing #6 seed and won in over time. The next game was against the #4 seed and they beat us by 1 run. That put us in the looser bracket. Hey, that's ok, we were there in State too and came out to win.

We started fresh on Saturday and won both games to keep playing on Sunday to see who would play in the championship game. Our girls were fielding well but just could not hit the ball strong like they normally do. Most of our girls were not getting it out of the dirt and the other team had a girl who hit it over the fence, not once, but twice. That hurt. We didn't win that last game to put us in the championship game but our girls played hard and we were very proud of them. They made it further than any other 8U team from Floyd Knobs ever has and finished in third place in the region, not too bad considering the other 2 teams were travel teams who always played together and our team just a little over a month ago were only a bunch of pitchers and first basemen who were on a brand new team. Millie got MVP that last game and came out smiling and had a good attitude.

A coach from another team came up to one of our parents and told them that our team had the best shortstop in the tourney. That's Millie. She is pretty darn good out there and in one of the games she was able to make her out at second and turn 2 to get the out at first as well. Millie also caught several pop flies and got a home run.

Some action shots...

Some random stuff...