I finally got a new camera battery a few weeks ago, and since then I’ve been taking tons of pictures. Consequently, I have multiple items I wish to blog about. Luckily for you, I plan spread them out over a few posts; however, today I have something too awesome to wait.

The kids’ baseball games on Friday we played in the pouring rain. Being a giant wimp, I spent the first half of Anika’s game in the van yakking with my buddy Lana, whose kiddos also play. About halfway through though I started to feel guilty about not watching, so I grabbed my camera and off I went. Anika had batted before I got there, so I watched the rest of the inning and her on the field and then they were up again. She was the very last kid to bat, and it was the last bat of the entire game. Here’s what she did:

Clever ducky!

Rachel

Church softball season has started up and I’m on the team again this year. Two years ago was my first season since high school (and we won’t discuss how long ago that was), and I had soooo much fun. Last year Henry was just a teeny tiny so I sat the season out. Last Thursday was our first game, and we won 18 to 4. I’m pretty sure it was my best game ever! I scored three runs (didn’t even strike out or get out at first! How’d that happen??), and got three people out from my post as second baseman. One of them was by catching a pop fly. Yay!

Then last night was a lovely jolt back into reality as we got slaughtered 22 to 3 by one of the best teams in the league. Even their girls hit way out past our center fielder. Plus, their pitcher was pitching short balls that seemed to find the plate at the last moment. The first time I was up, I let three strikes whiz on by without even swinging because they looked like they were going to be balls. Duh!

Also from yesterday, now I have a beautiful two square inch purple bruise adorning my left shin right below my knee. It matches the one and a half inch bruise on the same shin just above my ankle that I got last week (and yes, I did measure both bruises, ’cause why wouldn’t you??). Apparently I need to work on catching grounders on grass. Those tend to pop up at all kinds of weird angles because the ground is uneven, and they seem particularly fond of hitting me in the left shin. At least they aren’t popping me in the eye! Since I play infield most of the grounders that come my direction are on dirt which is much smoother. Good thing too! My next ball-related purchase is going to be shin guards because hey, me = wimp. I don’t really mind having purple lumps on my legs (when I was in Jr. High I played touch football with the boys on the blacktop every lunch break for two years and had permanent scabs on both knees for that entire time), but I don’t like not being able to sleep because my leg hurts any time anything touches it. Kind of obnoxious.

Otherwise things are going pretty well around here. We’re starting to settle in nicely, and I’ve been working on school curriculum for our next term which starts next week. In addition to our usual coursework, we’re starting two new subjects, Botany and Drawing, both of which I’m pretty excited about. The Botany book is put out by Apologia and is awesome. I come from science nerd people (like sand people but without the sand and the Banthas), and Apologia’s stuff is just as in depth as any science person could hope for when teaching their nine year old. When a book explains in Chapter 1 the term binomial nomenclature including the breakdown of the Latin roots of each word, you know that the book is going to be great.

Okay, well I’m off. You guys have a lovely holiday weekend, and may your 4th of July partying be safe and include lots of nice weather.

Rachel