GO HIGHLAND BLUE!!!

Sam's little league team had a pre-season tournament this last weekend. They have the same coach as last year and most of the same boys with only 3 new kids. Last year they won ONE game ALL YEAR ~ including their end of year tournament ~ so we didn't have real high expectations of them this year, despite being hopeful that this year would be better. On day one they won their 1st game 21-3!!! I know that sounds brutal and rude, but there was a good reason they ran the score up. Last week, during their first game they were up by 5 in the 4th inning and ended up losing by 1. You just never know when the other team is going to hit their groove and smoke you! So...in spite of the pain it caused Coach Jason ( he has a big heart for the kids and could not bear doing to those teams what every team did to our boys last year) ...our boys ran it UP!! They were playing under different rules than our league has...Morrow Co. ball does not allow them to lead off, or to run on 3rd strike if the catcher drops the ball...here they could do those things. So Thursday and Friday they had pretty intensive practices working exclusively on that. They did awesome. Really took to the "new" rules great, they were stealing fools!! Here's Sam dodging a close one, or so he thought! In the pic I'm doubtful that it was as close as he thought!

Several of the parents brought tons of food and Jon brought his little kettle grill and between games we ate like Kings! Hot dogs and potato salad, chips, fresh fruit and veggies with dip and chocolate chip cookie bars. It was a lot of fun!

Then it was back to the ball field for game 2...which they won 21-4!!!! The reason they again ran the score up was because the dummies that arranged this tournament set things up so that the teams were seeded based on total runs and we wanted to go home. We were fortunate ~ our boys were 1st place...so we had a bye for the 6pm game Saturday and were able to head home.

After we got home, cell phones LIT UP! Marengo went to the tournament as well and found out while playing their 3rd game on Saturday that the team they were playing was a travel ball team. The whole thing ended up being so unfair. I'm proud of our boys because they did an awesome job playing the 2 rec ball teams they played, but everyone on day one who played the travel teams (yes, there were 2 of them :( ) kind of got screwed. The coaches were told it would be rec ball only on our end...but it wasn't! Marengo forfeited in the top of the second inning, at that point the score was 28-0. WHY you would bring a travel team to a rec ball tournament is totally beyond me. It's not like a rec team in most instances could give you a good game, they humiliated Marengo and I feel so sorry for them. Sam has quite a few friends on that team and they got beat up on bad, it was ugly. Anyway, we went back Sunday and played our last game...we lost 12-3 and found out after the game that the team we played was travel as well. So, I think they did pretty well all things considered! The team we lost to advanced to play the last game, so in our rec ball tournament this weekend the championship game came down to 2 travel teams, duh!?!?

Because my family can never get enough baseball, yesterday evening Jon and the kids spent some time playing hotbox...check out the hot socks!! Yes sirree, those are socks!

This week, we have ball practice every night except for Wednesday, multiple practices on several of those nights! This weekend though, we have a free weekend, no tournaments! So far anyway! Jon's last day at Chase is Thursday. Hopefully then we'll have time to cut the lawn, it's quite unruly!! We just have had no time!! Well, I love you all and will keep you posted!