ECTB World Series

Michael's 8U Eagles travel team travelled to Allentown, PA for the ECTB World Series tournament July 24-26. The team qualified for this tournament by taking 2nd place in the fall end-of-season tournament.

The team finished the tournament with a 3-2 record, but there is so much more behind that record. The two losses were both to the same team - the Lehigh Valley Stealth. They are a professionally trained tournament team. They had an ace pitcher that was pitching faster than just about any kid we've seen this year. And they had one huge hitter that hit 2 home runs (in the park) in our first loss to them, and 2 triples a double and a single in the 2nd outing against them - we considered the fact we held him to a single at the end a great accomplishment for the game!

Michael had a good weekend and one fantastic game. After pool play, we were ranked 2nd going into the elimination round. We played the York Young Revolution, a team that had just beaten the Manassas Generals - our ODBL tournament champions. Michael took the mound as the starting pitcher in this game - and never got off the mound! He pitched a complete game! This is a pretty outstanding accomplishment for an 8-year-old. He pitched 6 innings and about 65 pitches, giving up no runs and only a handful of hits.

Michael also was a consistent hitter for the team - not always getting on base but consistently putting the bat on the ball and the ball into play.

This entire year with this team has been a great experience for Michael, with an exceptional coach, and we look forward to our fall season (provided he makes the team after tryouts this next week)

Memories

Its funny what you do and don't remember from your childhood.

I grew up around a lot of baseball. My brother played it and my dad was involved with the league as well as a coach.

I'm around baseball a lot now!

One thing I was recently reminded of was Little League pins. When players play in a Little League tournament, they get a pin. I can now distinctly remember my dad having a hat full of pins from various tournaments.

Recently, my husband was the tournament director for the local district Little League tournament. I kept score for a few of the games. As such, I was given an all-star hat for our league (since we hosted).

And I earned my first Little League pin! Hope there are more to come!

Eagles Baseball!

Michael is wrapping up his second season on the 8U Loudoun South Eagles travel baseball team. This has been a really positive experience for him and we're thrilled with his team, his coach, and the overall league. Michael is shaping up to be a pretty strong pitcher, especially for his age. His percentage of strikes to balls was close to, if not exceeding, 60% - which is really unbelievable for his age. Because he's a lefty, he also has a natural curve to his pitches, which make him even more valuable as a pitcher because kids his age just can't hit a curve ball yet.

Michael's team had a great regular season - 10-3. He pitched a lot in the last half of the season, including pitching 4 complete innings in the last regular season game, which the team won! He also pitched a "complete game" of 4 innings in the first round of the playoffs, as the Eagles won 12-0 with the "mercy rule".

But alas, the team didn't do so well in the playoffs - not even making it to the semi-finals. It was a disappointing way to end such a great season.

We have one last tournament in Pennsylvania next weekend - the "World Series" for the league our team is affiliated with - a tournament we qualified for when coming in 2nd in the playoffs in the fall. The boys have been practicing and I think they're ready to go. We hope they do well, but whether or not they win, this has been a great season and we look forward to moving forward onto the 9U Loudoun South Eagles in the fall!

Emma Talk

I could sit her all day with my computer open to write everything down, and still wouldn't be able to capture all the funny things that Emma says in the course of a day.

In the past five minutes, she has said two pretty cute and funny things I wanted to share, just to show you how funny she is:

- I wish I had lipstick, so you could see my kisses. When I'm a Mommy, I have to wear lipstick to church.

Then, she asked me what color daisies are, and I said they are white. She was sitting there for a minute, and I asked her what she was doing, and she said, "I'm trying to figure out how to draw the daisy, because my paper is white!"

She's too funny!

Maternity Ward!

It must be. That's what our rose bushes are. Because for the third time this season, long after what I thought bird baby season was, we have blue robin's eggs in the nest in the back. That nest has been there for three years now, and we don't want to touch it. Well, after no visitors for weeks and weeks, a robin starting visiting, and yesterday there was one blue egg - and today there are two.

We will never be able to prune our rose bushes - but we're looking forward to some new babies in a couple of weeks.

Red Belt!

Michael recently had his graduation test for his Tae Kwon Do Red Belt. The Red Belt is a pretty big milestone because its the last belt before Black. Once they earn their Red Belt, the requirements and testing needed to get to Black Belt are a bit different that previous belt progressions.

In addition to learning the new skills and form for the Red Belt level, in order to earn a Black Belt, Michael needs to "re-learn" all the skills and forms from all of his previous belt levels, demonstrate each of these in several belt tests, and ultimately write an essay answering questions about things he has learned in Tae Kwon Do.






















We're all pretty proud of his earning his Red Belt - this is a major accomplishment and we look forward to the next step - Black Belt

Dance Recital!

We've been busy since the piano recital. The irony is that we have been busy enough to have lots to share, but so busy that I didn't have a lot of time to sit down and share.















Samantha had her dance recital the weekend of June 19th and 20th. This was her first recital at her new dance studio - Encore Performers. I have really enjoyed her dance classes this year and was looking forward to the recital - and it didn't disappoint. I am actually looking forward to getting the DVD so I can see it again and share it with family.



Samantha was in 3 dances - tap, ballet, and jazz. Her tap and jazz used the same costume and just changed the skirt.




They hire a professional photographer to take photos during the recital that we can purchase - and I look forward to seeing them in a week or so - in the meantime, these were mine taken without a flash during the Saturday night recital.

Boy, things have changed!

It used to be - a computer cost $2000. Didn't matter which model you bought - laptop or desktop - it was $2000. Then, technology improved, it was time to get a new computer, and the new computer was, you guessed it - $2000.

Not any more.

Last fall, the monitor on my laptop stopped working. Mike took the hard drive out of my computer and put it in an old laptop shell from work. That has worked for a while, but the internet card was slow and the computer is just in need of replacing.

So, we finally went to Best Buy tonight (not my first choice but other electronics stores in the areas have closed down) and bought me a new laptop. Base cost - $399! That's right - $399. We paid an extra $60 to upgrade the memory, so the total was $459!

That unbelievable! Thus, the end of the $2000 computer!

Piano Recital

Samantha and Michael had their annual piano recital this past Friday. I thought I'd share videos of their performance (please pardon the dark and grainyness as it was especially dark in there and also pardon the foreground movement from another student who was unable to sit still)

Michael's hymn: Down in the Garden


Michael: Dangerous Journey


Samantha's hymn: Battle Hymn of the Republic (I missed the first couple of notes because I pushed the wrong button):


Samantha: Pachabel's Canon in D:


Duet: American Patrol

One BIG Happy Family

We've been watching the robin's nest in the backyard. A few weeks ago the first babies left and 5 new eggs were laid.

Last Saturday, we were blessed with four new babies. They had clearly just been born, as they had no feathers and were teeny tiny. There was still one egg in the nest for the rest of the day. Sunday it was gone so we were sure that it didn't hatch.

We've been watching this week as they have gotten a lot bigger and more feathery. Today one of the kids noticed that there were indeed 5 beeks poking out of the nest. Its been hard to tell since usually they are just a big pile of bird, but we indeed saw 5 beeks - so all 5 eggs hatched.

We stood quietly on the porch and watched as two different robins flew around the back yard and approached the nest - and then both of them flew to the nest.

I guess with this many babies, it takes both a mom AND a dad to feed the babies.

This nest has really afforded us some fun bird watching over the past few years.

(photos are grainy because I'm taking them through the screen of the porch - I don't want to go out and get close enough to get photos for fear of scaring away Mom and Dad)

Start of a busy weekend

So we have a busy weekend planned this weekend.

It starts this evening with the kids piano recital. Samantha will be late to it as I will be taking her straight from her dance lesson.

Tomorrow is actually our calmest day with Michael's little league game at 9am.

On Sunday, I head out bright and early to DC to work at the DC JDRF walk (our walk is next weekend). Mike and the kids will go to Michael's double-header travel games - I will arrive just as the games start at 1pm

Sunday night Mike and I have to run to a meeting kicking-off the planning for our little league to be hosting the District level all-star tournament for 11s and 12s.

Wake me up when its Monday.

Kilroy Was Here

Samantha has been a member of a drama group associated with a nearby church for this past school year. Throughout the fall, they had drama lessons, culminating with auditions for their spring production. Throughout the winter, they rehearsed their play with more and more rehearsal hours each week, leading up to 3 2-hour long productions over a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at the end of April.










The play was called Kilroy Was Here. It was based on the World War II character that began showing up all throughout the European theater of the war, and became the American calling card.

Samanthas was Mrs. King, the supervisor of a Long Island USO.



I really enjoyed the play. It had lots of singing and dancing and the kids did a great job - much more sophisticated than I expected for kids from 3rd grade - 8th grade. The costumes and the hair and makeup were perfect for the 40s era. I was overall very, very pleased with the production and I know that Samantha had a great time doing this play and made some great friends in the process.

(You can click on any photo to see a larger version)

Nature takes care of itself

The eggs in our birdsnest hatched a couple of weeks ago. We have been watching the birds and they've been growing quickly, getting their feathers, etc. Its been raining for about a week, and a few days ago we looked out to see all the birds gone. I thought that was unusual because it was pretty quick and I hadn't even seen the birds flapping, etc. I looked to make sure they hadn't fallen out of the nest (this happened to one last year) and concluded that maybe Mama took them to another, dried place.

Today, there are new eggs in the nest.

Do you think the birds getting ready to lay eggs told the other Mama she needed the nest and Mama moved her birds to another location? Sure seems to me. Seems we have the most popular nest in town - for the third year in a row.

Three-peat!

For the third year in a row, we have a robin that has taken up residence in the nest built between two rose bushes on the back of our house. Last year we actually had two cycles of eggs and babies.

Mama robin is staying pretty close to home these days, keeping her eggs warm with this unseasonably cold weather, so I don't have a good shot of the eggs, but we're excited to see the babies when they're ready to hatch!

"Spring" Break

I think not!

I had great plans for some outside things to do this week of Spring Break. But, its not Spring Break. At least, its not spring. I do not call 45 degrees with winds gusting 20-30 miles spring.

So, the flowers I bought on Sunday are sitting in the garage waiting for it to get warm enough for me to plant them.

The sand that I wanted to get out of the sandbox and mix with the topsoil in the garden is STILL in the sandbox.

The tree that has decided that it is happily poised on the neighbor's fence is still there - hanging over their yard - because I couldn't start chopping away at it.

Maybe it will be warm enough by July!

Bliss!

Last Thursday, Emma started wearing a Continous Glucose Monitoring System (CGMS) full time. We have done a couple of trials before but this is now OURS. The proceess to acquire it was actually pretty painless, which is surprising because most people find themselves in a months-long process with multiple insurance appeals - ours was approved in 4-5 business days.

So, we went into Children's Hospital last Thursday to get trained on it and insert our first sensor. The sensor sits right underneath the skin and attachs to a rather large radio transmitter. That transmitter sends readings of Emma's glucose readings every minute to a receiver that we can have up to about 20 feet away from her - which means we can receive these readings on the reciever on MY nightstand while she's sleeping at night.

It alarms us for highs and lows in the hopes that we can catch them sooner than we would with just a planned or unplanned finger stick.

Our goal is for Emma to be within her target blood sugar range as much as possible. What this picture is showing you is bliss. The grey bar across the screen represents her target blood sugar range. And the black line represents the readings that were taken all morning by the sensor on the CGMS. So, from 7am until noon, Emma stayed almost perfectly in range. And after breakfast is usually the most difficult time to control, so I'm thrilled with this.

I look forward to a lot fewer highs and a lot fewer lows as a result of the CGMS.

Oops, it just alarmed that she's going low - guess its time for a finger stick to make sure!

Brown-Stripe Belt

Michael is consistently working his way closer and closer to a Black belt in Tae Kwon Do. A couple of weeks ago, he earned his Brown Stripe belt. This is the 10th belt that he has earned in 18th months (White, White-stripe, Gold, Gold-stripe, Green, Green-Stripe, Blue, Blue-Stripe, Brown, Brown-Stripe) and he displays them all proudly on a belt rack he got for Christmas last year (which is now too small as his next belt will put him beyond the size of his rack)

There is one major level to earn in his belt progression with new material - Red Belt. At the Red Belt level, he learns a few new techniques, but mostly he goes through the process of relearning everything he learned at all the lower belt levels and must demonstrate all of these skills and techniques in order to earn a Black Belt. His Master Instructor thinks that he'll probably earn his Black Belt around October.

One thing Michael has to his advantage is that he has a great memory. He remembers lots of things so I think it won't be difficult for him to remember all of the forms that he has learned to get to this point. A form is a sequence of moves that are put together in different orders highlighting increased knowledge and skills as they move up belt levels. I think the biggest challenge will be remembering which ones are in which forms, since he's had so many, but I have no doubt that it will all come back to him quickly. I hope he earns his Red Belt before the early summer and then he can have the summer to do the 10-week focused training that they do for Black belt. The summer is a lot less busy for us and he'll be able to focus more on it.

Congratulations Michael!

Play Ball!

After having indoor workouts all winter, and a couple of chances to get on the baseball field in the past week or so, Michael's travel baseball team, the Loudoun South Eagles 8U team, played their first game today. Our opponent was a new team in the division this season, so we didn't know what to expect.


After going ahead in the first and second innings, our bats finally starting ringing with some hits and we had some very smart base running and we finally got ahead. In the end, we won the game with a score of 16-9.

















Michael did well today. There are more boys on the team this season, so more that the coach wants to rotate in and out of the field positions. Michael played 3 innings and sat 2 innings, but they bat all the way around so he got up to the plate 2 or 3 times.


Michael had two great hits - one blooper and one strong hit. Of course, he hit each of these with 2 strikes in the count - its almost like he needs pressure before he'll hit the ball!


And, he scored a run, as seen by his running to home!

Another funny video

After watching yesterday's "Danny Boy" video, I saw a couple of other really funny ones and wanted to share this one as well with you:

Happy St. Patrick's Day

This video, commemorating all that is Irish, was shared by a dear friend on Facebook today.


Warning: Do not be imbibing your Guinness whilst watching. This web site is not liable for any keyboard or computer monitor damage incurred as a result of watching this video while imbibing!