What a difference a week makes! Gone are the humid, rain-soaked days. It’s suddenly summertime…just like that! As much as the Forth of July is a cherished holiday in our home and Christmas obviously holds a special place as well; the Memorial Day holiday weekend is the one that we look forward to more often each year more than any other, I think. Through the month of June, we look forward to Independence Day and Christmas sneaks up on you after Halloween – you long for it for about 6 weeks. BUT; the Memorial Day weekend is anticipated from January through May…about 5 months – and it’s worth savoring. 😛 It is a unique time in the year when school is ending, the summer break is just ahead of us, the pools are opened, people are out working in their yard, the kids are running around the neighborhood, the largest spectator event in the world – the Indy 500 takes place and of course the real reason we take time this weekend…we honor our fallen heroes – such a blend of emotions. To celebrate, we have our traditional party with family and friends. I’m thankful we get to spend this time with them and make memories for the kids to have the rest of their lives. I’m sure glad we opened the pool a week earlier than normal; we had temps in the upper eighties the entire week with bucket-fulls of sunshine!! We started off this week right where we left off last time – out at the ball diamonds! Gigi gave me a couple memory cards last weekend that I didn’t have a chance to get posted in to our last entry. We’ll start there – off with the newest stuff she had on it. She was able to capture a bunch of good ones from Matt’s final junior high band performance. In addition, I had some leftover pictures from last week where Ann went up to Natalie & Mike’s house for Brayton’s 14th birthday party.
On Monday, we had a doubleheader of sorts out at the ball diamonds. We started off with Lukey’s game. He was still relegated to the outfield and had been moved down to the bottom of the lineup in some sort of juvenile effort to punish he and I for not being at practice last week (Matt had his band concert). I’m so over the childishness on this team already. Not only are Luke’s talents stagnating, he’s actually regressing due to playing the outfield exclusively. It’s like I’m reliving a couple of Matt’s old teams over again…which drove me to be a head coach in the first place. God, I’m getting too old for this… The boys lost again that night, but that’s not the important thing. They really weren’t even competitive. …too much yelling; too much putting down; too much pressure… Thankfully Luke is so easy going; he just loves the game and could care less about all the extra stuff. He continued crushing the ball. He went officially 1 for 3, blasting a double to the outfield, but he got picked off 2nd (actually he thought he was out, so he ran back to the dugout 😛 – which are the basic things we should be working on as a team; not so focused on winning, rather learning the fundamentals so that he will be ready to compete at the next level). So, I find myself pulling him (and other kids) to the side to point out fundamentals and explain why they should do certain things at certain times and really getting them to understand the game of baseball – not just doing something because an adult screams at them until they do it…but I digress. It was good to see Kenny (who doesn’t look half bad as a bald dude) & Becky who was there to watch their grandson. They were sitting with Ally and her newest little one who is absolutely darling. Ann ended up sitting with them. I didn’t get a chance to see Luke’s other two at-bats, but I think Ann said he had a fielder’s choice and a ground out where the shortstop made a really nice play on him. Instead, Matt stood in for me as 1st base coach (thanks again, Lil’ Scheu!) as I went over to take pictures with Abby’s team before helping coach them. Abby played first base and catcher and was much improved defensively! She made a couple of very nice plays. At the bat, she continued ripping the ball as she hit another double. She also grounded out to the shortstop in her only other at-bat of the evening. The other team played very well defensively and retired our batters in order in 3 of the 6 innings we played. We played OK overall, but not nearly at their caliber. Whereas Luke’s team is staying the same, skill-wise; the girls are all improving…