Team Banner

Just thought I'd share the team banner that I designed for Charles' baseball team. I used MS Publisher and Paint - yep, really fancy stuff, haha!

It is 40 inches by 24 inches. Now I just have to figure out how to get this on a poster board or banner. If you have any great ideas let me know. My thoughts were to just print it out on a color printer, pasted the pages together and glue them to some poster board and then figure out some way of laminating the poster or protecting it from water etc. If you have any great ideas, let me know.

Baseball Season

Well, it's officially Baseball Season at the Smith household. Here are a few pictures taken on Opening Day. Ryan already had his team pictures, Charles will have his taken tomorrow, so I will try to upload more pictures of Charles and his team later. Here's what I have so far. Oh, and both boys are having a blast!

 Charles is on the Mets minor league team, mostly 6-8yr olds. Coach pitched, 5 runs maximum per inning, 3 outs and you switch teams. Each team does have a catcher though. As Team Mom, I get the fun job of helping the catcher get the gear on. Being catcher is apparently the cool position and so the coach has to rotate the players.

This inning, Charles was assigned the catcher. He is intensly waiting for the ball.

 

Here is Charles' entire team. What a great bunch of smiling baseball players!

 

Ryan is on the RockHounds minor league team. Mostly 5-6yr olds, also Coach pitched, but each team cycles through all of their players each inning (and a few more if the other team has more players). Outs don't count other than the fact that that player doesn't have a chance to score a run.

Here is Ryan carying his team banner for the Opening Day Ceremony. Charles' team is already out on the field (they are directly under the flagpole), I accidentally turned my camera off instead of clicking the "take picture" button. Grrr...on this camera they are only mm away from eachother.

Here is Ryan lined up with his team.

Trip to USS Alabama

In February, on President's Day weekend, we took a mini-vacation to Mobile, Alabama. While we were there, we toured the USS Alabama Ship and a Submarine and the following day we went to a children's museum. Here are some fun pictures from our trip.

Kids standing in front of a canon in front of the visitor's center at the USS Alabama.

Here is Ryan sitting in one of the 100 or so gunner seats on the ship. This is his 'ready for battle' look.

This ship is apparently the only US ship/museum to allow visitor access to the heavy bomb storage room. They aren't loaded anymore, and the kids had fun playing with them.

Here we are making our way over to the smaller submarine. We had 30 minutes left before closing, so this was a quick tour through the sub. Fortunately there aren't many side rooms in a submarine, you go in one end and walk in a straight line from room to room until you come out the other end.

The gang, being goofy!

This was the submarine captain's room. Pretty cramped, but he is the only one to not share his cabin with someone else.

Here we are inside the submarine. Ryan couldn't wait to discover the next room, so he is probably already through the door behind Seth. I love Amy's backpack. I got it for "free" (exchanged for 2 points) at the clothing swap that I co-run at our church. It had never been used and still had the tag on it. At the time this picture was taken, Amy was not quite potty trained, so it held a couple of pull ups and a small container of wipes. Nothing like having your own child carry around their own diaper bag! :-)

This was taken at the children's museum. Amy was a "Wharf of Wonder" Kid. The only one under 5yrs old in our family who was able to go in a special area for little kids. She had fun for a little while but I think she preferred being with her brothers, so we soon joined Seth and the boys who were in the room next door.

Amy fishing plastic crabs and fish out of the ball pit next to the fishing boat.

Kids being goofy again. They are posing in front of their hand prints.

 

 

Silly Amy

Amy is cute and funny and mischievous. She constantly makes us laugh with the things that she does or says, and sometimes she doesn't even need to say anything, her facial expressions are just hilarious!!! She is quite the celebrity at her new Daycare. It appears as if every parent who has a child at our Daycare knows Amy very well. And the same goes for Amy knowing each and every parent. Apparently several other mom's and dad's routinely get hugs from Amy too, sometimes before their own child! Consequently, Amy apparently gets daily comments from other parents who say that she is so adorable and wish that they could take Amy home with them. Yep, and here we thought Ryan was the social one of the family!