Well this year Dillon started T-Ball. It sure seems early in his life for him to start T-Ball, but here in Kent they can start playing the year prior to them beginning kindergarten. It has been somewhat entertaining to go to his practices and seeing a bunch of 4-year olds trying to comprehend and learn the complex game of baseball. Dillon has had 4 practices now and today his Jamboree and I would confidently say that Dillon has no idea what is going on :-) To help him polish up on his T-ball skills we went to Big 5 and purchased him a T-ball with a practice bat and ball. We've been practicing in our back yard from time to time. When he's with me, he will swing hard and hits the ball well, but when he's at practice all that I have taught him seems to disappear.
Today they had his first "game"...well it was really a Jamboree where they played one inning where everybody hit the ball once and played in the field. It was quite hilarious. At any given moment, 5 of the 12 players on Dillon's team would be playing in the dirt in some form or another. Dillon informed me after the game that he was "building sand castles".
The best play of the game (and by best I mean the funniest) was the last play of the game. Dillon's team, the Skysox, were in the outfield. The kid on the other team hit a hard ball into the outfield. Everyone on Dillon's team then proceeded to chase after the ball into the outfield leaving their positions vacant. There was one little boy who stayed in the infield playing in the dirt which just so happened to be Dillon. Finally after a wrestle in the outfield someone got the ball and threw it to Dillon. Dillon was still playing in the sand and didn't even notice when the throw came in and bounced right over his head. He was more concerned about his sand castles.
Well, I guess I have a lot more to teach Dillon about baseball!
This weekend we packed up and went on a very long and adventurous vacation to the exotic Snoqualmie Falls. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit, so what if Snoqualmie Falls is only like 30 miles away and we were only there for 30 minutes, but any trip that involves driving more than 20 minutes with two kids is an advenure. Well in my last post I spoke about our Chirstmas and you probably noticed a lot of snow, which is very rare for Seattle. We had historic snowfall that hung around for weeks. Well all of a sudden it warmed up and then rained a ton, so we had massive flooding throughout the area. In fact during a 48 hour time frame Snoqualmie Pass received 12 inches of rain and melted 2 feet of snow! Well, here are some pictures from our trip and a video. We went with our good friends the Browns and the Porters.
Well it's been awhile since I've written. It doesn't seem like we've done much lately, so that may be why no posts for over 3 months. I thought I'd take a minute and post some pictures and write about our December. Well Seattle received it's biggest snow storm in over 20 years. Here in Kent (in which we are virtually at sea level) we had about 8 inches. Other areas were hit much harder and had between 12"-24". It was a mess! In fact, there was so much snow that I didn't work for 10 days. It was great! The kids sure loved the snow! I usually enjoy a good snow storm, but it was so cold. It didn't get above freezing for almost 2 weeks. I guess I should not complain, Spokane had over 60" of snow in the month of December and I don't know if they have even been above freezing.
During our snow storm, Natalie's parents came from Texas and visited us for the first time in Seattle. I don't know how they did it, but they flew into Salt Lake, then went to Boise, then came here, then Spokane, then back to Boise and finally ended up in Salt Lake again to catch their flight home. This, all during the worst snow storm! We sure enjoyed having them. It's too bad the roads weren't better as we have so many places we wanted to take them, but for the most part we were stuck at home.
Because I was off work, we took advantage of a break in the storm and headed to my parents house in Kennewick for Christmas. Christmas was on a Thursday, and we left here on the Tuesday before and came home the Sunday after. The way home we opted to take the longer, but safer route through Portland home to avoid going over Snoqualmie Pass. We had a great time at my parents. Tyler and Heidi flew home from Utah, so everyone was there, but Jake, who is in the Dominican Republic. During our vacation I became an addict of the board game Settlers of Catan. Unfortunately, Tyler was the one who received the present, but I think everyone knows what to get me next year! In Kennewick they had about 16 inches of snow. When we first arrived it was just too cold to play in the snow, but the last few days there it warmed up to the point where we could play in the snow. We made a family of snowmen...including the snowmen family dog. We also made a little playground for the kids with a slide...all out of snow. The following day it warmed up enought to basically melt everything away.
Well we have lived here in Seattle(Kent) for 6 months now and have not gone to a single Mariners game. Well that changed this week. First on Monday night the Snelders, Browns, Brittany and us went to the Mariners game. We sat in the upper deck, which actually wasn't that bad. The kids sure had a fun time and Dillon was so excited to get some "fuzzy wuzzy" (translation: cotton candy). Ironically, my secretary had tickets to the baseball game the following night and could not use them so she gave them to me. They were incredible seats! I was down on the field on the 17th row right behind the Angles dugout. I was so close to the field that when the players were batting I could see their eyes. So in two nights I went to two baseball games.
A crazy coincedence was on Monday night at the game, our family was sitting in the bleachers waiting for our friends to arrive and up the stairs comes Richard Bird, my old friend from high school when we lived in Boise. Ended up that he was in town on business so I invited him to the game with me the following night.
The Mariners have struggled this season and will finish the season with the worst record in baseball. They were playing the Angles both nights who, on the other hand, have the best record in baseball. Ther first night the Mariners lost 2-1 (which made for a rather boring game), but the next night they won 9-6. I secretly was hoping the Mariners would lose that second game because it would have been the first time ever in baseball history that a team with a payroll of $100 million lost 100 games.
