Go Orioles!

I realized something this weekend at the Orioles' game. I've never seen the Orioles play live when they've lost. They've always won. Even when I saw them last year playing the Braves in Atlanta, they won. I think that perhaps I should go to see more O's games and they might just win the World Series!


It was a great game for sure! They crushed the A's...it was like batting practice for them. I took a lot of pictures, of course, but because it was night, it was hard to get stop-action pictures like I'm used to getting. I need to go to one of the day games. The picture on the left of Payton catching a fly ball to left field is the one I'm most proud of. He's totally off the ground and the ball is inches from landing in his glove for an out. If only it was clearer...

My two favorite players for the Orioles are Miguel Tejada, shortstop, and Brian Roberts, second base. They are in the picture at the top of this blog, completing a double play.

The Day of Baseball

Kathryn and I went to Baltimore this weekend for a Memorial Day Little League Tournament that one of my friends was playing in. Before his game started, our little cousin Carter had a teeball game! He's 4 and this is his first year playing. We hung out with Carter a lot on Friday night and Saturday morning and got to experience his crazy active imagination first hand! He wants to be a firefighter when he grows up because his dad and his older brother are both firefighters. Except he thinks he's a firefighter NOW. Like if you ask him if he's gonna be a firefighter when he grows up, he gets very angry and says, "I'm already a firefighter! I went on a run just yesterday!" Then he proceeds to tell you which building was on fire and all the details that happened during that particular event.

He "works" with 3 invisible friends, Harry, Barry, and Girl. Girl is 7 seven years old and has 80 children. Carter told us on Friday night that all four of them were off work that night. We asked him what would happen if there was a fire and he looked at us like we were crazy. He shook his head before leaving the room and said simply, "Pager." Hahahahaha!

Kathryn and I got to see our newest baby cousin too! His name is Pierce and he is 2 months old. He came to see Carter's baseball game, but he slept through most of it! He's so cute!

The Day of Baseball, continued...

After Carter's teeball game, Kathryn and I drove to Aberdeen, MD to Ripken Stadium for the Little League tournament! This is the park that Cal Ripken built for minor league and little league teams. The kid I was watching is named Brady and he is an AWESOME ballplayer. He plays for a travel team called the Charlottesville Tornadoes and they play all over Virginia, with tournaments in other states on the East coast.

They are a hard playing team, defeating a team from New York 10-7. The New York coaches and parents had a complaint about nearly every play, but the funniest ones were about the base runners supposedly interfering with their second baseman's fielding. They kept shouting, "He's running in the basepath!" I started laughing and I almost went to ask them, "And where else exactly is he supposed to run?" Maybe in New York, runners don't run in the basepaths.

Brady played center field and caught every ball hit out there! He hit really well too!

There are about 10 little league fields at the park. This picture shows one of the really cool practice fields where there are four homeplates. That way 4 teams can warm up at the same time. You can also use the homeplates as first base if your team wants to practice plays at first.

This is the main little league stadium. It's a re-creation of Camden Yards! They even rebuilt the warehouse so that it really looks like the Orioles professional ballpark!

This is the main entrance to Ripken Stadium. What an awesome park! It's so cool that Cal Ripken built it! After Brady's game, we went to an Orioles game at Camden Yards!

Cool Dissections!

My class likes to say "Science is never 'ew'! It's always 'cool'!" They reminded themselves of this A LOT on Friday because we dissected a sea star and a shark! Whenever someone said "EWWW!!", the other kids would say "Not 'ew'! It's COOL!!!" Kathryn came in to our class to do the dissection (as she knows WAY more about it than I do).

The kids LOVED dissecting both creatures! It was especially cool to see the sea star on the inside because back in March when they went to the Oceans in Motion exhibit, they learned about sea stars and how they have tubes inside of them that become filled with water. We actually got to see those tubes! We saw the sea star's mouth and stomach (it has 5 stomachs, one for each arm)! The intestines were attached to each stomach in each arm also!

The shark was neat too because we got to see the shark's heart and brain! Kathryn took out the shark's eye and let the kids touch it and hold it. They described it as a squishy grape! It was cool because on the back of the eyeball, you could see where the eye attaches to the brain! The kids were amazed at how big the eyeball was! They said they thought eyes were flat, not like balls! This picture is of D holding the eye! They got to touch the heart also! We also saw the shark's stomach and when Kathryn cut it open, there were lots of little shrimp inside! We saw the shark's stomach and all the internal organs like the liver, spleen, pancreas, etc. Kathryn explained to the kids what those organs do and compared the sizes of them to the sizes of the same organs in humans. The kids felt how rough shark skin is - almost like sandpaper!

They absolutely loved dissecting the animals! I hope we can do this every year!

Tadpole Hunting

So this weekend I was hanging out with my good friends, Juan and Marco. Every year about this time we go down to the pond near their house and catch tadpoles. Then I take the tadpoles to school (with perfect timing for our life cycles unit) and the kids get to watch the tadpoles turn into frogs. We release them into the wetland behind our school after they are frogs.

Well anyway every year we go for a walk down to the pond, forgetting about the tadpoles, and then we realize the tadpoles are there and we have nothing to use to catch them. We usually have to find discarded trash laying around to catch them. This year, however, we were NOT going to forget. We came prepared with buckets!

We were feeling very proud of ourselves for remembering the buckets, until we got to the pond and found that we were too late. There were no more tadpoles. They had already turned to frogs... We looked sadly at the clear water, void of little swimmy tadpoles. Quickly we decided to enjoy our time at the pond by throwing the buckets through a pipe to the person on the other time (which didn't work cuz the bucket got stuck in the middle). Then we threw a tennis ball at the bucket to get the bucket out (which didn't work cuz the ball got stick in the middle). So then we attempted to make a dam to build up the water pressure so the water would flow through the pipe and carry the bucket and the ball to us (which didn't work because we're not beavers and have no clue how to build a dam). It looks so easy when beavers do it. So finally we gave up on the pipe and spent the rest of the time doing flying side kicks and skateboard tricks off of this little bridge thing that covered the pipe.

So much for tadpole hunting...

Great game and angry sister

So...my sister's really angry at me... I don't know why...

I mean I went to watch her softball game at 8:00 tonight and I asked if I could play. Her team had enough players though so her coach just said "maybe". Well by the 3rd inning I still hadn't played and I noticed that the other team was down one player. So I asked her coach if I was on their line-up and he said no. I asked him I was going to get to play and he said "No, you're not on our roster."

Soooooo...I went over to the other team and asked them if they needed an extra player. So I played for them and they won. And apparently I was the reason they won. Not because I did something really heroic, but simply because I held a place in the batting order. See in this league you have to bat guy-girl-guy-girl... If you bat two guys in a row, you have to take an automatic out. And that's what was happening because they were missing one girl. So simply because I kept them from getting an automatic out, they were able to win by one run.

Life lesson: if you go to watch your sister play a sport and you happen to notice that the other team needs a player...DON'T PLAY. Or play and find humor in the situation because I think the whole thing is very funny! hahahahahahaha

Awesome Praise!

I have an awesome praise this week! This kid in my class who has been below grade level in reading since he started school in kindergarten has shown so much improvement this year! He has worked SO hard, trying to catch up. Finally for the first time ever, I can mark him "on-grade-level" because he just read the FOURTH GRADE passage on the reading assessment and totally nailed it! He breezed through the second grade one and rocked the third grade, which is enough to be considered on grade level. But I gave him the fourth grade passage just because I was curious and he passed that one too! Praise God for helping this beautiful little boy to be achieving at a level where he will be successful!

THANK YOU JESUS!

Exciting Thursday

Jesus Christ, you're my savior
and I will run after you!

I'm looking forward to this afternoon because we get to meet our new principal for next year. I've only heard amazingly positive things about her and that her school community is just as devastated that she is leaving as we were to find out that our principal is leaving. I can't wait to meet her!

And we're going to play probability games in math today! Science will be full of animal and plant life cycles and habitats and fun stuff like that! It's going to be a fun day!

Happy Mother's Day!

I spent Mother's Day with my mom and my sister yesterday! We went to visit my grandmother who is living with her sister in Nelson County.

When we got back home, Kathryn and I made chicken and vegetable kabobs on the grill for dinner! We tried to grill a strawberry to see what it would taste like, but Kathryn said it just tasted like a warm mushy strawberry. Dinner was delicious!

Happy Mother's Day, all the moms!!!

Your new favorite is WHAT????

On Saturday, like usual, I went to see a bunch of baseball and soccer games! One game was a teeball game with one of my favorite little guys ever, known as "Goo". I've known him since he was born and he is one of the smartest kids I know. Amazing vocabulary, began speaking in full sentences (in fact one of the first things I remember him saying, at about 12 months, was "I want to go outside and play basketball"). Anyway, he's really in to knights and castles and stuff. So when I saw him at the game I asked him if he still liked knights. He assured me he did, but that he had a new favorite now. I, of course being curious, asked him what that new favorite was. His answer:

"Well... it's kinda... coal mining."

I burst out laughing. "Coal mining, Goo? Your new favorite is COAL MINING????" He just smiled and said, "Yes, I'm really in to it."

Only him. He's the only six-year-old in the world that would be in to coal mining. I love that kid!

scissors just aren't working for me

You know my lawnmower? Well, I realize you don't know it PERSONALLY, but you know that I have one? Yeah well it's broken. It's name was Morris. And it's broken. Okay so this isn't really breaking news since it's been broken for quite some time. But it's just more noticeable now that my grass is growing 17 inches per day. See this picture? It's not actually of my yard, but it could be. So I happened to be working on some schoolwork this afternoon and as I was sitting at my computer, I thought, "What's that buzzing sound?" My brain immediately identified the sound to be that of a lawnmower. I ran to the window and looked to see where it was coming from. Guess what I saw! My lawnmower turning itself on and preparing to mow my yard! No. That's not it. It was Cavalier Lawn Service mowing the yard across the street. So I watched the guy with his GIGANTIC push mower - the biggest I've ever seen. With that big mower and our little tiny yards, he literally had to go up and down four times and the yard was done. As he packed his mower back on to his truck I raced across the street and came screeching to a stop right at his feet.

"How much do you charge for mowing yards?" I burst out.

"I can't mow it today," he replied.

"I understand. I'm just asking how much you charge." I explained to him that my mower was broken and my grass was up to my head and I could no longer see my car from my front door. He looked from me to my yard, back to me, back to the yard, and then he had a momentary look of pity on his face before he threw out, "Give me $25 and I'll do it right now."

I looked at him like he had just asked me to build a full-scale replica of Camden Yards out of saran wrap. I said, "With all due respect, sir, it will take 4 turn-arounds to mow that yard. I'll give you $20."

He said, "People pay me $35 to mow yards that size."

I was like, "Well then people can keep on paying you $35 then. It won't be me." So my grass is still on it's way to breaking some world record for tallest grass ever. I can't keep up with scissors. Annhead suggested a sickle thing - the thing with the curved blade that can cut grass - but that kinda creeps me out. I can't even look at one of those things ever since my sister stuck one through her leg when she was like 12 or something. Creepy.

Nic at Night

So at recess today, I saw one of my kids from last year (he's in third grade this year, obviously). Ben was really excited when he came running up and he told me he was acting in a play at church tonight and he asked if I could come. Of course I said yes, and I asked him what the play was about.

He said, "Well, I'm a pharisee and I even have lines!"

I said, "Ben, that's awesome!"

He said, "No, not really."

I said, "Why isn't that good?"

He said, "Because the pharisees didn't believe in Jesus. They didn't get it. But don't worry! I believe in the end of the play!"

The play was hilarious and it was about the story of Jesus and Nicodemus. It was called Nic at Night. There was this little girl with the "add more sound to the songs" group that was the loudest, most animated singer I've ever seen! She was so funny, just singing out the words to every song with the loudest voice possible (much louder than you would imagine from such a tiny body).

After the play, Ben and I went skateboarding at the skatepark and then I took him home. His sisters, Miranda and Kate, were there and we sat on the hood of my car talking about Jesus and heaven until 9:30. It was so cool talking to them about it and listening to the questions they have. I think a lot of times we assume kids understand things that we say, even simple things like "there's no evil in heaven", when really even that leaves them with a ton of questions. They are such neat kids, struggling, yet wanting desperately to understand.

4 to 0, Juan Serving Love

Okay so that was the most confusing thing I've ever watched in my life! I went to watch one of Juan's tennis matches this weekend. I've played around with tennis balls and tennis rackets on a tennis court before, but I've never actually played tennis. I spent the entire game being confused about the score and who was ahead in the match. It's pretty cool to watch Juan play though, because he has a very calm style. He doesn't get frustrated easily (or at least he doesn't SHOW it) and can therefore keep playing smoothly through the entire match.

From watching so many kids play sports, I've noticed how many kids get mad so easily. They hold themselves to a "near-perfect" standard (which is not inherently a bad thing), but then become so angry when they can't live up to it. Their playing then disintegrates over the remainder of the game. I wish there was a way for kids to hold themselves to such a high standard but then also have patience with themselves when they inevitably fail. Is that something you can teach? Do you have to just model it?

what matters most

This is a really cool picture, although I disagree with the message of it. It really should read "What matters most is how you see God". And then to imagine that even as a little defenseless kitten, God sees him as a beautiful majestic lion. Speaking of, isn't it a lion who is called "King of the Jungle"? Why are they called that when lions don't live in the jungle?

Hershey Bar Cake

Man, WOW, that is some amazing hershey bar cake! Don't you wish you had some? Mmmmm... Happy birthday, Riley!