Baseball Ready!

I am the Coach for the kids Baseball team.  "I didn't know you knew anything about baseball?" you wonder.  Well, you're right.  I don't.  Aside from the Marshall 8th grade softball team and showing up for this summer's ward softball team.  I am a complete novice.  

No one signed up to coach the kids YMCA team, so the YMCA sent around an email asking for volunteers.  I expressed a mild interest (I believe I sent an email saying, "What is the time commitment.").  They were so desperate that they signed me up, and the next thing I got was a phone call telling me where to pick up my coaches packet.  Well, I don't know much about baseball, but I am pretty good at managing kids.  So I took hints from past T-Ball coaches that had great practices (lots of different activities, small group work) and ignored T-Ball coaches with boring practices (all the kids standing in the outfield the whole time).  The YMCA provided me with a great book about baseball and coaching young children. So off I go.

The team makeup really fit our family because it is a 1st and 2nd grade team and I happen to have a 1st grader (Phoenix) and a 2nd grader (Heidi).  This was important because in a previous year we had gotten really burned out attending 2 games a Saturday, anywhere from 8 am to 4 pm.  It just ate up our weekends.

We have had 2 practices so far and today was our first game.  Apparently, we tied 20-20.  Phoenix hit the ball for just about the first time.  A great hit.  Heidi was a great fielder.  She'd rather be batting, but she was able to stop that ball!

Shield Parade

The kids school has a mascot of the Knights, so the first event of every year is the Shield Parade.  Everyone in school makes one and then parades around the school for the parents.  Here is Phoenix with his friend David.  One side of the shield has stuff about him and the other side has the class mascot, in this case, a golden retriever.

Here is Phoenix marching along.
Heidi is looking so tall and grown up. Her class mascot is the giraffe.
Actual photographic proof that I exist.
Adam loves to take pictures and is always begging for "cheese"(a photo).  He's in a lot of pictures.
Here's some photos from past parades.  Phoenix in Kindergarten. Flamingo class.
Heidi, last year, in first grade.  Zebra class.
And here is Heidi from Kindergarten. Flamingo class.

The New School Year

I have to make some mention of the new school year.  Heidi is starting 2nd grade.  We are all glad.  The last few days of summer she kept complaining that she wanted to go to school.  Even the day we went to Volente Beach Waterpark, she said, "I want to go to school."  Well, we said right back, "You're going to swim and go on waterslides and you're going to like it or you're GROUNDED!."

She has turned into a great reader.  I take some

 of the credit because I taught her to read in kindergarten with Hooked on Phonics.  She took off after that and now is fun to listen to.  She does voices for all the characters in the books and reads with great expression.  

Even Phoenix could not resist Heidi's relentless eagerness for school.  He was actually looking forward to it.  This was such a blessing because last year he did NOT want to go to kindergarten.  But 1st grade is turning out well.  He has Heidi's teacher from last year (Mrs. Reed), which was a plus since Phoenix already knew her.  I feel like we have finally turned a corner on Phoenix's reading.  That first bit is just so painful.  Slowly, painfully sounding out each and every letter is no fun for the reader or the listener!  But now, Phoenix can read his phonics readers pretty easily.  Here's to good progress in first grade.

Adam is not in any kind of school.  He just hangs out with me and we play and run errands.  He misses his siblings.  All day I hear, "Whey Hi?"  Translation:  Where's Heidi?  He likes Phoenix too, he just can't say his name in any recognizable form.  Can I just say that Adam is so darn cute?  We ask each other all the time, "Were the other kids this cute when they were two?"  It seems to be different with Adam.  Cortis and I are just more relaxed and not so panicked about everything parenting.  So I think we have more time to enjoy what is going on with him.

Pace Math

Something interesting happened at school recently.  Heidi (in 2nd grade) was asked to try the Pace math class at school.  Pace math is an accelerated math curriculum.  My neighbor told me they are trying to get the Pace math kids 1 full year ahead.  So it is more challenging and at a much quicker "pace."  She passed half of the screener test.  She did great on the problem solving test but couldn't do her math facts quickly enough. So they put her in on a probationary basis.  She lasted 1 week.  She got so overwhelmed and felt like she couldn't hack it.  Some of the other kids were starting on multiplication tables and she still had to work on her addition facts (in 1st grade, they just studied addition up to 10 (4+6=10) and but 1st grade Pace math did addition up to 20 (7+13=20))  The day she quit, she came home sad because she felt like she'd failed.  The class was "skip counting."  I could never figure out what kind of skip counting it was (counting up by 3's or something).  But she was lost and lost her confidence.  

I am really proud of her that she has such good problem solving skills.  Certainly, I can't complain about her math facts, I still can't remember all of my multiplication tables.  But math facts are just a short part of mathematical education (my math minor illustrates), so I bet the Pace math question comes up again.  

I recently "discovered" some blogs of friends.  I knew that blogging existed and that many people did it but I couldn't really myself doing it.  I have a family website that I update rarely.  So I started thinking that this could be an easier, faster way of keeping friends and family up-to-date with our family happenings.  Well, I'll see how it goes.