Baseball, piano and kids

Well, it's spring around here... and spring brings busy-ness.

Baseball is officially in full swing. We've had two games so far and one rain-out. Whenever baseball season comes, we live and breathe baseball. It's not that we have a ton of games and practices, but the boys fill their days with playing baseball in the backyard. Even Nathan has a baseball obsession (any kind of ball, really, but his favorite is "bay-ball").

We tried to put all 3 of the boys on the same team this year. It would've narrowed us down to one practice and one game per week. The Christian Youth Center is pretty relaxed in their competition and if you think about it, baseball used to be played in the neighborhood park with kids of all ages, and everyone had FUN. At their age, our focus is more on the kids having fun than obsessing about a college scholarship, but we couldn't quite pull it off. We decided to move Caleb up to the next level because he actually needed more challenge to not get bored. He got to pitch in the last game and did really well.

Noah's one of the littlest guys on the team, but stands his ground pretty well. He can knock the ball over the infield's heads, but he insists that he's going to get a home-run which will earn him a "large" ice cream cone (instead of the usual "small").

Seth played catcher for an inning and loved it. It's one of the boys favorite positions (because it gets a lot of action, I guess).

Ellie, Grace and Nathan find ways to pass the time (since we're at the ballpark from 11 until 4). They make piles in the gravel, play at the park, OR have Grandma buy them funky colored candy from the concession stand (I'm sure the latter is the favorite).

This week, before their games, Caleb and Seth had their spring piano recital. They both have the "getting up in front of people" jitters, but Caleb can hide it a bit better than Seth. At the Christmas recital, Seth absolutely refused to go up and play his piece, and as soon as the first student began to play, we could see that this was starting to turn into a repeat of Christmas-time. Paul was trying to give him a pep-talk throughout the first 4 students to no avail, so he moved back a row so Seth wouldn't be able to express how he "didn't want to do it". Right before he was to play, I got up and walked to the back of the room as well. When his name was called, he didn't move. Everyone was looking around trying to figure out who was next and after an awkward minute or two, the piano teacher flagged Caleb to go next instead.

Seth had practiced his piece a lot, so I knew that wasn't the problem. He just has the same phobia that I had when I was little. I HATED anything that had a recital at the end. Ballet, piano, tap... it didn't matter. If it had a recital at the end, I'd quit. But for Seth, I decided that he WAS going to go up. If he didn't do it now, he probably never would in future recitals. I sweetly told him that if he didn't choose to go up by himself, I would have to drag him up. Then I asked if he wanted me to walk all the way up to the piano with him, or halfway. After he got the "Do I have to?" answered with a firm "Yes.", I walked him halfway up the aisle after Caleb was done, and he did FANTASTIC!

Caleb played a piece from Bach and did great too. Next week he has a judged piano competion where he's going to play the same piece, but he has to have it memorized.

And in-between the action on Saturday, we had our final baby goat bringing our total to four kids (two boys and two girls). They are so fun to watch. The newest babies are only 2 and 3 days old, but are so cute how they romp around and play with each other. We have been getting fresh goat's milk from the first doe for about a week now and it is soooo delicious. We all prefer the raw goat's milk to cow's milk any ol' day. Mmmmmm-mmmmmm. Just gotta get one of these kids (MY kids) to bake up some chocolate chip cookies....