Summer Blog 2015

Summer is flying by. I spent a week in Chicago in June and a week in Pittsburgh in July for work so that made things a little crazier than normal. 

Usually by this time in the summer Brian and I are counting the days until school starts up again, but this summer has been a lot easier on a lot of fronts. With my work being way busier than normal we knew we’d need to adjust expectation. We told them up front that they would be making their own breakfast and lunch and entertaining themselves most of the day. The trampoline is in full use most days, Tanner is spending lots of time playing baseball with neighborhood friends, and Jake is doing a basketball training program. 

Jake spends most of his days out and about in the neighborhood. He is old enough to go to the pool himself and he is often hanging out with friends from 9-9. He also started a pet sitting business with our neighbor and they have been really busy walking dogs, feeding bunnies, keeping fish alive, etc… They are making a ton of money and earning a great reputation in the neighborhood. He also has a weekly babysitting job which he loves. He spends time the night before planning things to do with the kids and apparently he is the kids’ favorite babysitter ever! One week it was making kazoos; another it was rice crispy treats and bouncy balls. Last week he let the girls “do his hair”- which was pretty funny. 

Faith has been really loving swim team. Practice is daily from 830-930 and she has had 4 meets so far with one left to go. Halfway through the last meet she was so sad because she didn’t want it to end. As soon as we got in the car to come home she said, “I can’t wait until Monday for swim practice!.  It’s been so amazing for her confidence and stamina and strength. She plays with her friend Abby a lot during the week and uses her two hours of video game time daily to play Minecraft. She is still in gymnastics once a week and just mastered a skill she’s been working on for months.  

Once All Stars ended Tanner started daily hitting practice with Brian- which they both love. Tanner also hangs out with our neighbor, Tyler, and rides bikes, builds forts and plays at the creek.  The Xbox has gotten some use, too. The kids are often up until 10PM, playing outside or watching movies with friends. This makes it a little hard for Brian and I to get any time alone- with the kids home all day with us as we are working and then frequently awake until after we go to bed. 

Fourth of July was really fun this year. We delayed in planning anything and realized a few days before that the Hawks weren’t in town- which is our usual place to watch fireworks on the 4^th. So we opted to brave the annual event at Ann Morrison Park downtown. Slide the City was in town so we bought tix for that, loaded up the car around 5PM and hung out at the park throughout the evening and through the fireworks show. Jake brought his friend Dillon and we all had a great time! The waterslide at Slide the City was pretty tame- but I went behind the kids on my tube and kept running into them to keep them sliding and twisting. After the slide Tanner and Faith used the inner tubes in all manner of play- building forts, creating ball toss games, stacking and hiding in them, etc… They had a blast. There was live music and food trucks and chalk art festival.

We had a big heat wave at the end of June/early July and we used one of the 105 days to raft the river. We left in the evening and packed a picnic dinner. We have our own boat so it was easy and free. Faith was scared again and she literally cried all the way there but once we got on the boat she was fine and had fun. It is very tame but at one point Jake was swimming behind the boat and I got distracted and Brian couldn’t keep us out of the trees on the edge and I found myself face to face with a very large tree limb. I ducked in time to avoid another concussion but got pushed off the boat and it was a little scary. It was a great way to spend a hot evening, though, and we stopped on the way home for milkshakes to round out the night. 

Sheila and Wayne finally arrived on July 7^th and we’ve been enjoying hanging out together like usual. On Friday night we have an evening of Bocce and cocktails planned with another couple friend of ours, Rich and Kim.  

One week of work left then we leave on our much-anticipated summer vacation. We are spending a week in CA- 3 nights in the Bay Area and then 5 nights in South Lake Tahoe for Eric’s wedding. CAN’T WAIT!!

All Stars

We just finished Tanner's 09/10 All Star season. Jake played All Stars at this age as well. Just like with Jake's team I helped coach and just like with Jake's team we got a pretty quick beat down. 

The Outlaw team in a prior post, the Roadrunners, was a 9U team that was pretty good against other 9U teams. Most of the best players in this age group are 9 years old. For All Stars they combine with the 10 year olds to form the 09/10 team. The 10U players weren't as good as the 9U ones across the board AND now we're playing the 10U's from every other team as well. 

We played in a couple of outlaw tournaments with the AS team; Diary Days in Meridian and the East Boise Classic. We lost our first game in Dairy Days to the Mustard Seeds (a really good outlaw team, with a lot of NBLL 10 year old All Stars from the prior year, who weren't playing All Stars this year on it). We figured we would lose that one. Then we won our next game against the North West Ada Royals pretty easily. We then went on to lose every other game we played. 

We were out by Saturday morning in Dairy Days. Didn't win a game (didn't even get close) in the East Boise classic (and were also done by Saturday) and went 0-3 in the District All Star tournament to end our season. 

The tournament stuff is kind of to be expected. The competition is Cal Ripken teams, who are just generally more talented than Little League teams and play together, in tournament format, all year long. These two tournaments are in the heart of summer. It was 110 degrees for a couple of these games and the Little League kids just aren't used to playing double headers in this heat everyday of the tournament. The Ripken kids are. So by the second game of the weekend our kids are toast and start playing like it, making physical and mental mistakes that we just couldn't overcome. But, like I said, that's kind of expected. Some of the teams in these tournaments are Little League teams in disguise (like we were) and a couple of them were really good, so that didn't bode well for our future either. 

The first Little League All Star game was a disaster. We were playing the South West Ada All Stars. This was their "B" team. The more powerful leagues generally field two All Star teams; an older one (mostly 10's) and a younger one (mostly 9's), to make a really good team and a team that is getting experience for the next year. As we were a combination team, we should have been able to handle this team pretty easily. But the All Star tournament is a different beast. Everyone lines up, they play the Star Spangled Banner over the PA system, they play the Little League pledge, each kid gets introduced over the PA system, they shake hands with the opposing player and exchange commemorative pins....it's a big deal. So it made all of the kids a little nervous and threw them all a little off their game. Tanner was supposed to start that first game on the bench, but the starting catcher was so nervous he threw up in the dugout heading out to warm ups, so Tanner was the starting catcher. The other kids were such a mess that we made seven errors in the first inning and were down 8-0 when we came back into the dugout. 

They tried to fight back, Tanner's friend Evan hit a grand slam out to straight away center field to pull us even, but we couldn't hold it. Next we played a Nampa team, more errors, more of the same. Infield defense was one of the strongest parts of this team, but we just lost it at some point. For the last game we played the South West Ada 'A' team that we played in the tournament and they just beat up on us 18-1. 

Tanner really enjoyed the experience. He struggled to hit a little, but played really good at catcher and did such a good job defensively that he ended up being our starting first baseman, even though he had barely played any first base previously. He also was one our most consistent pitchers, throwing a ton of strikes, some of which got hit, allowing our defense to make some plays and some of them didn't. He did really really well overall and came out of the experience loving baseball more than ever. 

I have already signed him up to play Fall Baseball as he doesn't want to play football anymore, so he is looking forward to getting back out there and putting his new experience to use.