Its going, Its going, ITS....

GONE!!!

thats right, as I am sure everyone saw, M hit his first Kid Pitch Homer over his B-day weekend.

At Rangers Youth Ballpark  (what better setting could there be)

OVER the wall in left field...

I realize its not that far to the wall, but that wall is pretty tall..

and it looks pretty far from here

The ball will find a nice safe place next to other baseball memorabilia in M's room.

Thanks to M's dedicated fan base who were there and able to watch him go long   (My Dad)

M's Big Day

Did I mention that Saturday was M's B-day?

He is the big 11 now.

He got to play baseball on his B-day, what better B-day present could there have been?

Well maybe cupcakes...

Well maybe cupcakes to share with his team

Well maybe cupcake icing spread across his face by his coach while the team looked on

Baseball

as if we dont talk about baseball enough around here, wanted to make sure everyone had heard.

Tryouts were last weekend, and M made the team!

here's looking forward to another great season of Tigers Baseball!

Mental Note

Never leave my child alone with a camera...

When Dad is Away....

As most of you know by now, Edd has been off on the other side of the pond working on the Olympics.  Some of you are wondering what we did while he was away so I put together a little photo diary of some of the things we did:

Played Baseball

Traded Pins at the Tournament

Watched the Riders

Finished the Fireplace!!

Spent A Day at Main Event with Boy Cheese

Bought Stuff at Estate Sales

Checked on the Hangar

A LOT of Laundry

Took the Dog to the Hotel

Picked the Boy up from Camp

The Cats took a lot of Naps!!

Went to the Ranger Game

Bought some Antiques

Took the Dog to the Vet because he Sprained his leg...

Bought New Nerf Guns

Bought a LOT of baseball cards...

And we wait....  Only 1 more week until Dad comes home!!!

End of Season Party

Like I said, most teams use the AAYBA as the end point of the Summer Season.  So, what do you do when a season comes to an end?  Have a party of course.  We hosted the end of season party at our house, the boys swam, ate pizza, I think had a great time.  It was nice to have some "down time" with the team, even Coach Cameron came out!

There was even a dance party of sorts in the living room, but we shouldn't talk about that....

AAYBA

For those of you in the baseball world you know what AAYBA is... for those of you who don't, it's a National World Series that's held in Texas, Missouri and Colorado every year.  Just happens to be nice that the town that hosts it in Texas is Flower Mound.  So, for two weeks every year there are baseball teams from everywhere converging on Flower Mound to play ball.  The great thing about this tournament is it's a guaranteed 6-8 games for the week, a LOT of baseball which is great experience for the teams.  Most teams use it as their "end point" for the summer season, the Tigers are no exception to that.

So, to give you an idea how big the tournament is - there were 76 teams in the 10U division....  yep, 76 teams.  They come from all over, from the Valley (of Texas) to Kansas...  LOTS of teams.

How it works is during the 1st two or this year three days of the tournament each team plays 3 games.  Your record during those three games determines your ranking among the teams.  The Tigers went 1-2 in those games and ended up 56 out of 76.  Not bad but not great.

The fourth game determines which of two possible divisions you go to.  The top two divisions are Platinum and Diamond, then Gold and Silver, then Copper and Bronze.  If you lose game 4 you go to the lower division, if you win you go to the upper division.  The Tigers won game 4 so they played in the Gold Division.  From there you work your way up to a North/South Division title.  The Tigers played for the Gold South Division title but lost, so they played for 3rd or 4th place of the Gold Division.

They WON!!!!!!!  The boys played so hard, M pitched and did a GREAT job!!  We are all so proud of how well they played.  If you look at total team rankings they improved their position from 56 to 35 out of 76 teams, quite an improvement.

The Tigers has been such a great experience for M and he has learned so much.  Select baseball can be quite stressful at times but it certainly helps to have a solid team who play well together.   Here is a picture of the team and coaches with their medals:

Oh, and look closely in the background of the 2nd picture - know who that is?  M's old coach...  he was handing out trophies when M's team finished - very special.

Go Tigers!!!!