The Littlest Tsarina: Making Progress Slowly, But Surely / Baseball Season Ends

We mailed our C.I.S. form today! Now, we are just waiting for a letter of invitation, an appointment time and place to be fingerprinted. Has anyone ever wondered why they call it a "letter of invitation". It sounds like they are inviting us to a fingerprinting party! Granted, I have never been fingerprinted before, but Martin has when he was in the Army. Funny, but he never mentioned it being a festive event. Just curious...

Martin finished writing his autobiography this weekend. Actually, he wrote it in one afternoon. (Mine took almost a week to write.) That was something he was not looking forward to so I am really proud of how he "knocked it out". My home study interview is tomorrow and Martin's is Wednesday. The reference letters are trickling in. That's progess!

News from the homefront:

Since we were not in Jamaica on Saturday, Garrett didn't miss his last baseball game. He was happy about that because the coach had promised to let him play in the catcher position the whole game. He usually plays in the pitcher position, but for some reason, he really wanted to be hindcatcher just once.

See the photo below. You could hardly tell who he is with all the gear, but it's a very good thing he had it on. It was a great game and they had a solid victory of 25 to 9, which is good considering that they won very few games this season.

I have included a few photos from our baseball season this year. Here is a recap: We had three boys playing on 3 different teams in 3 different age brackets. This kept us at the ball park many hours a week. Martin was an assistant coach for all three teams. Several Saturdays, we had five to six games from 9:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. But, overall, the boys had fun and the consession stand made a lot of money off us.

Preston - Moved up to the 9 -10 year olds where the kids pitch. This is a whole new ball game from coach pitch (pun intended.) It is much slower paced because each team has to warm up a new pitcher every couple of innings and it is much harder to get a hit since the pitches can be pretty wild. Preston played for the Pirates. The highlight of his season was playing 2nd base, catching a pop fly, tagging 2nd and getting a double play. He also assisted with a triple play and enjoyed getting to steal bases.

Garrett - Moved up to the 7-8 year olds. He had a great season with the Brewers. Highlights include catching a couple of pop-flies and getting a home run. Preston's coach needed an extra player so they wouldn't have to forfeit their last five games. He pulled Garrett up to play with the Pirates. Garrett learned to bunt the ball just enough to get to 1st base without being thrown out. He really liked stealing bases, something you can't do in his age group. It made mom nervous to see him playing with kids so much bigger, especially when a wild pitch hit him in the helmet!

Nolan - At 4 years old, this was his first year and he played for the Reds. He loved the uniform and wore his hat everywhere. Nolan got a few hits this year, but had a hard time staying focused in the outfield. He had fun and made a few new buddies. At one practice, he discovered that it didn't hurt when his little friend hit him in the head if he was wearing his shiney new batting helmet. Maybe 4 is a bit too young to start! :0)

Nolan is the one searching for four leaf clovers:

Liam - At age three now, he has been going to the ballfield since he was one week old. This year he enjoyed cheering on his brothers, playing in the dirt by the dugouts, and the ring pops at the concession stand. It almost never failed that he had to go potty just when his brother was up to bat.