My Helpful Kiddos

Millie and Reed helped me out with something I wanted to teach my 4th graders in a few weeks.

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League Day Dunk Tank

Rick volunteered to be in the dunk tank during our league day fundraiser for the ball park the kids play at. Millie and Reed were very excited to dunk their dad. Reed may have cheated a bit but Millie did it the old fashioned way.

Reed Graduates Kindergarten

Reed had his Kindergarten program last week. It was very cute, much better than I had expected. They sang some super cute songs and I was surprised when Reed got an Attendance Award. I didn't know they did that. He was very excited about that! I was so happy my mom and dad could come and watch, he rushed right up to my dad afterward to show him his special award.

"Hi Mammy and GG!"

Singing

Waiting patiently for his name to be called

Excited about his attendance award, he only missed 1 day

Showing GG his award after the program

Reed's teacher and classroom assistant, Mrs. Batliner (assistant) and Mrs. Briscoe (Teacher)

Reed and his best buddy, they were in PreK together too

Reed and his buddies, these 4 love playing together and they all played basketball and baseball together

Reed with his biggest fans

So proud of this boy.

Floyd Knobs All Stars District Champs

This past week our ball park has been hosting our district Babe Ruth Division softball and baseball tournaments. As host field, we have been asked to do lots of volunteering including announcing, ticket and shirt sales, book keeping and concessions. We have been busy. The benefit of this is as host field, your teams get an automatic advancement to the State tournament which we will also host beginning Friday.

Our announcer one night was especially entertaining...

To really tell this story, we need to go back to the Lanesville Slugfest from last weekend. We played North Harrison and beat them during the week. Then they beat us in the championship game of that tournament (which was not related or connected to the official Babe Ruth tourneys we played this week and coming up). Let's just say the North Harrison coach was a jerk. Plain and simple. We won't go into details, just take my word for it. The parents and the girls were looking forward to meeting them again during Districts. As last week progressed, we won all of our seed games and so did North Harrison. However, North Harrison crushed all the teams they played and none of those teams scored against them. We did not meet up with North Harrison during the seed games. So North Harrison was #1 seed and we were #2 seed. This is what sets an honorable coach apart from North Harrison's coach. During a game when you are winning by a lot, an honorable coach will play his bench or bring his outfield in to play bases. There's no point in driving your win down the throats of 7 and 8 year olds and it gives your girls who may not always get much ball time to do some extra fielding. North Harrison did not do this and they even kept using pinch hitters. It's just a game and they are just kids. Yes, we want to win but there's an honorable way and a jerky way to do it.

So it was us against North Harrison again in the Championship game. We had just played a game right before that one so it was a double header for us. Fortunately it was not hot so our girls were feeling pumped up. Millie was feeling especially pumped because she hit a home run during this game and she caught a pop fly. The girls were fired up and ready to go. Here is Millie's home run.



North Harrison's coach was already making us mad before the game started. One of our moms saw him throw his empty drink bottle on the ground and start to walk away. Her (being much like myself it seems) went up to him and told him he needed to pick it up. He was, of course, jerky to her and even went to the umpire and tattled and told the umpire to keep us in control. Check yourself North Harrison Dude, you're on our turf.

When the game finally started in the rain and after 2 delays for lightening we were looking good. We were home team and we got a lead after the first inning and kept it until the third inning. We were up 12-6 but North Harrison had a great inning and got the lead on us. We slowly closed the gap over the next few innings and when they were up to bat in the 6th our coach called a time out and our girls in the field gathered for a quick pep talk when we only needed 1 more out. North Harrison's coach was so jerky he began to pitch the ball to his batter when our whole team was in a huddle. The ump looked at him and yelled "time" like the guy was an idiot, which of course he was. The coach just rolled his eyes at him like he sure didn't know any of our girls were not on the filed. Jerk, plain and simple. I feel bad for the girls who had to play for him. Well, they ended up scoring 0 that inning so we only needed 2 runs to win.

We had Presley on third with no outs and we now only needed 1 more run to win. It was looking promising...

Jerky coach called a timeout, I guess he thought we did it to be jerky so he wanted to do the same thing. Whatever, you can't get us down. Lydia was up to bat and her mom gave what must have been a good pep talk.

Lydia made a hit that was good enough to let Presley score! We were super excited of course. Our girls have played really hard the past 2 weeks practicing and getting to know each other and their new positions. I found out just yesterday that North Harrison plays these girls together as a team all season, not just in All Stars. We would be even more amazing if we did that but we like to be fair to all of our girls and let them all learn the game on equal footing. Not create a super team that our other girls can't beat. Jerky.

Trophy time. Millie was really concerned because the got plaques instead of a trophy. She was not happy, what was this plaque thing and where was her trophy she wondered...We explained it was fine and that a plaque was a different style of trophy. She reluctantly bought into it.

Our amazing team and coaches!

Part of Millie's fan club.

So who needed that automatic entry into the state playoffs because of being the host team??? Not this team. We earned it fair and square! Bring on the next round.

Home Run Hitter Up To Bat!

I can't believe I forgot to post a video of Reed's first Home Run. It was right after this that he sat down in the dugout, took his helmet off then had a punk teammate whack him over the head with a baseball bat which landed him in the Emergency Room.

I love in this video how you can hear Millie cheering him on.

One Fish Two Fish

I finally got my kids in some swim lessons. Millie had some when she was 4 in Knoxville but Reed has never had any. They took them at Highland Hills and I was really impressed with the program overall.

Reed was going under constantly, he was fearless. He was even the only one in his class that jumped off the diving board with no hesitation. He loved it!

Millie improved a lot as well. She is now nose plug free which was my main goal and she is swimming pretty comfortably freestyle. Her backstroke is not as strong but she's continuing to work on that.

Millie at age 4 at her last set of lessons...

Unrehearsed Synchronized Diving

Congrats Vince and Holly

Warning - This will be a very long post...

We flew out of Louisville on Thursday morning and arrived in Denver, CO with no problems. We hopped in our rental car and headed through the mountains to Durango where we were excited for the upcoming wedding of Vince and Holly. If you remember the RV Trip 2011 from last year, that is where we first met Holly and I was hoping then that they would get married. So were my critters because they loved her instantly. We arrived in Durango with no major issues, just a small hiccup when Rick was pulled over for going 5mph over the speed limit. We were lucky that he just got a written warning so we slowly took off and continued on to Durango.

After a quick check in at our condo and a change of clothes, we met Vince and Holly along with her family and their friends at The Lost Dog for supper. While there we witnessed our first flash mob. I have to admit, I was not impressed. They make it seem much cooler on TV. Oh well. We were exhausted after supper and crashed when we got back to the condo. It was past 11 our time and we were feeling it. We would come to find that these late nights would be common but the kids adjusted well.

Friday morning it was the beginning of the wedding festivities. The wedding party was going white water rafting on the Animas River. Millie and Rick were pretty fired up but I convinced Reed to stay with me. The water was pretty calm but cold. I was told Millie went in face first when she started goofing around and tried to jump on Rick's tube. It didn't go so well but she recovered. I was also informed she considered the rafting a race and insisted on being in front of the group of about 30 or so people. Millie: always the competitor.

Reed played in the river a little further downstream while we waited for them to go by.

Lots of rafting photos...

Millie left in a tube, goes by with a lady I didn't know with a dog in a canoe. Go figure.

Friday evening it was rehearsal time and after a quick run through we headed to Ska Brewing for a meal and wonderful entertainment.

The Lawn Chair Kings were playing for our private party and they were very good. But they got even better when their replacement drummer took the stage and showed them how it was done.
Needless to say, everyone loved Reed on the drums and he talks daily of needing his own drum set.

Saturday morning was wedding day so the guys were given instructions on setting up things and getting everything where it needed to be. The kids and I and Hannah went in town to the farmer's market where funny enough, Reed was recognized from his drumming debut from the night before. He is already famous around Durango.

Photos before the wedding became interesting when a storm was brewing and the wind really picked up. Considering it was an outdoor wedding and reception, we fared well with only moderate rain after the wedding and no real storm to speak of, the worst went around us.

The wedding was beautiful and my kiddos did great. Millie's hair was a little wild due to the wind but other than that, nothing major.

However, nothing was without incident. The entire wedding party, including Millie but not Reed (they don't rent bikes small enough for him), was riding bikes down the mountain road from the wedding to the reception. This is when the rain picked up and I was so thankful I brought a change of clothes for Millie and had a jacket in the car for her. Her dress would have been ruined and she would have been a Popsicle otherwise because she was not going to let a little rain stop her from biking. I was less then thrilled but there was no stopping her. I led the party down the mountain (in my car of course) and only 1 person crashed, Rick's brother Jeff. Turns out is was no fault of his own but he was able to keep going after going head first over his handle bars. I really hope someone got a photo of this but I'm afraid not and it will only be left to our imaginations.

The kids partied until Reed literally fell asleep on me. I think he danced with every female there from age 3-43. Every time I saw him he had a new lady dancing with him, I didn't even know them. He really is making quite a name for himself in Durango.

Monday morning all the guys took the roof off Vince and Holly's house (how's that for a honeymoon) and Reed helped too. Millie and I and the girls headed up to Silverton for the morning. This is where we rode the train home last year but this year I was driving happily in our car. After losing my earrings and my phone (and nearly my lunch) on the train last year, I had had enough of that. Lots of photos of Millie...

Lots of photos of Silverton...

Tuesday morning finally and it was the day we were leaving Durango to go back toward Denver for our flight out on Wednesday morning. We (I use that term loosely) decided to hike Engineer Mountain. I wasn't thrilled to do it but it was kind of on our way to Denver, via a really long and windy scenic 6 hour drive toward the interstate. And everyone else was doing it so I might as well go along.

To make a long story short, no one stayed together, Rick, Pat and Amy made it to the top, I basically never saw Millie after we took off, the views were beautiful, Reed is a champ, and I think Lyndsie, Reed and I did pretty darn well. Special thanks to Jeff for helping out with that.

And that pretty much sums up our trip. Oh, except for this little tidbit. If you recall our hitch hiking along I-70 story from our Shitter's Full RV Trip 2011 where Reed was forced to wear women's underwear... we stayed in that same hotel on our way to Denver. But this time it was our choice to stay there and we had all our own clothes and underwear. As soon as we walked in Millie looked around and said "OH, I remember this place, they have waffles for breakfast." And that's what she remembered. She does like waffles.

If anyone is still reading this, God Bless you. And welcome, Holly, to our family.