Tournament Time

Can I just start this post by saying that the summer has been FLYING by?! How did it get to be the middle of July already? I am not looking forward to school starting again--we are having just too much fun! But I realized how quickly the summer is going by last weekend when we had Wyatt's end-of-the-season baseball tournament (which at this age equals 2 or 3 games over the weekend on the baseball fields at the high school with grass infields and getting some type of trophy or medal.) Wyatt fondly remembers his T-ball tournament last year and was even more excited for the games this year.

What a handsome ball player, if I do say so myself!

And of course Sadie and Blake were at every game. However, they were usually playing at the park that was close to the field Wyatt played at during the rest of the season. So last weekend, they weren't too happy about having to actually sit and watch. But I know Wyatt loved it as he commented on more than one occasion during the season, "Why don't Sadie and Blake want to watch me play? All they do is go to the park?"

Wyatt's classmate Lawson was there for his game which started right after ours, so Sadie and Blake took the opportunity to have a playmate for a bit!

...but back to the game...

Wyatt was on a really great team this year and they were, by far, the best team in the league. This was the first year of coach-pitch and there were many teams who had kids who struggled to even hit the ball. But Wyatt's team not only hit the ball almost every time but they also made great plays and really understood the game. When each batter got up to the plate, they would call out which base the play was at and they even caught many of the pop-ups or would field a ground ball and throw it to the bag where the play was and the kid would catch it to make the out. It made watching them so much fun and hopefully we can keep this team together next year because these boys loved it! As you can see from this picture, they even learned who was the backup for each position, so the right fielder would always come over to back up 1st base. And these kids were really into it!

Although Blake did love playing on the playground, he also enjoyed getting to see Wyatt play. He mostly wanted to be on the field and would get frustrated if we held him back, but occasionally he would give up and just watch Wyatt.

...on deck...

Our friend Missy brought her kids by to watch Wyatt's big game and Danny, who absolutely loves all sports, stood and watched almost the entire game. You can see Wyatt crossing home plate in this picture, just behind Danny.

Wyatt had a great coach this year who had 2 rules for the kids: (1)Have fun and (2)Play your hardest. The kids began noticing that when they lined up to shake hands, some of the teams would say 'we won, we won' but Wyatt's coach Tony quickly got on that and told the kids that we say, 'good game, good game'. As a parent, I really appreciated Tony's desire to help the kids have fun, get better and learn how to be good sports.

Blake finally got his chance to get out on the field and boy did he love it!

...leading off...

Wyatt's coach Tony wasn't able to make it to the last game so the assistant coach Mark handed out the medals--the best part in the boys' opinion!

(After looking at these pictures I realized how badly we needed to get Wyatt's glasses adjusted and finally went in this morning. I guess all those times Blake has ripped them off Wyatt's face actually affected how they were fitting him)

The fam

Baseball is possibly Wyatt's favorite sport right now and he really loved playing this year. But he is looking forward to machine-pitch (in 2 years) and also when he gets to wear a belt with his pants, like the 'real baseball players' do! Great season Wy--we are so proud of you and how hard you worked!