May madness 3 on 3 hoopfest

Well, were do I even begin....... The boys love Basketball and we decided to take it up a notch and enter them in the Spokane hoop fest in June. For the past 2 months they have been training once a week for 2 hours learning plays,screens and what ever else they do in basketball.(keep in mind they are also doing baseball right now 2 days a week) There was a local tournament in W Seattle this past weekend and we thought it would be a good practice tournament to see kind of where they stood with the other competitors.....Well, was that ever interesting or what some may say"an eye opening experience"
First off, when Mr Patterson(their coach) asked them what they wanted as a team name a couple of weeks ago they all kind of agreed on (the heat) and the second choice was just(Fall city) well, the parents kind of thought it would be cool to represent the city their school was in so we went with their team name being "fall City heat" First thing I learned.... Listen to your kids..they know what a cool team name is...and in this tournament with our skills... we looked like we were the local farm team...One of the refs even asked what the hell do we do in Fall city.
When we entered the gym the boys where wide eyed and I think some of them were looking at us and thinking "what the hell are you trying to do to me! I am in 2nd grade for God sake" And I think in our defense we as parents were praying this wasn't going to scar them for life.... Watching these other teams play was pretty incredible.To give you a better idea who these other teams were: Rainer beach (Hello, these kids eat,sleep and live basketball. They do this 7 days a week all year long) I think white center, and to try to be politically correct there were some other "Caucasian" kids there too. Other than us..

I think the boys are sizing up the players and praying .

This is there 2nd game against Rainer Beach. After a really rough 1st game they did pretty well against them.... it was like 15 to 33 or something like that.... But it could have been worse. I just couldn't post the picture of their 4 th player.. it was the little brother that was 4yrs old and about 3 feet tall. They just threw him in now and then during free throw shots. But come on...really?

The look of pure defeat is the best way to describe this one.... or in adult terms "what the hell just happened" Being a parent watching your child play through this was the longest 20 mins of our life. I was wondering which one of us was going to have a full on heart attack first...

I have to say,considering they are not use to losing like this. After the initial shock and disappointment and a couple of tears they rebounded (no pun intended) pretty fast with a great sense of accomplishment and a "thank God this is over with".

After losing the first 3 game they actually won there 4th game. One of the players was a girl that was an unbelievable player. She had been on the news about how well her skills were.if that paints a better picture.BUT they did win by 2 points and a win is a win... They didn't even realize that they got to play another game and when they did, you would have thought they had won the whole thing. There were high fives all over the place jumping around. Which made the whole experience worth it.

All in all, I feel it was an amazing learning experience for them. There is a big world out there full of wining,losing,disappointment and pure joy. But at the end of the day as I told Brayden "it not about winning every game. Its about learning what you did right and wrong and how you played as a team. Did you support eachor,help one another and have a good time through it all." That is what is going to caring them farther in life. Learning this at a young age maybe hard but it can only get better and easier from here... at least that is what I am telling myself...I hope to God it works...

Baseball,Baseball and More BASEBALL!

I don't know how families with more than 2 kids do it. Having both kids in sports at the same time is very demanding.. we either have baseball games 4 or 5 days a night or double headers (4 friggin hours) 2 to 3 days a night. I don't know which one I prefer. All in all the kids are really enjoying the sport. Its been so fun watch Kaitlyn. She definitely has a "natural" ability with any sport she tries.. it just comes so easy for her.... and she always has this huge smile on her face when doing it. Don't get me wrong Brayden is good as well.. But he has to try a bit harder... and sometimes there are smiles and sometimes "NOT"... we are still working on the whole sportsmanship stuff with him. "win or lose, its about how we play the game as a team,and having fun while we do so" is our motto. But he sure puts his whole heart into the game. Ya gotta have the "pink" bat and belt...

She definitely blends in with the boys.

All of these boys have been playing on the same team for 3 years now. Its been so fun to watch there progress and friendships grow...

A day at the beach...Laguna Beach that is...

A day at the beach. After spending 2 days at the park,we decided to take a day off and relax. We started off going to Newport beach and worked our way to Laguna and ended at Huntington.. It was an amazing day of just playing in the sand,me reading in the sun and all of us just hanging out. I "love" being in the sun... just give me a towel,book and some sun and I am one happy girl... See I can be a simple girl....right! I swear she could play in the sand all day long!

Ok, I can't figure out how to rotate the dumb pic.I am still learning this stupid "blog"stuff..

I love this picture!

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Disneyland 2010

What to say..what to say... To start with "Thankfully" our trip was rescheduled from spring break because there were absolutely no crowds..Well, at least Tues and Wed there was nobody there... which meant going on the same rides over and over again... I don't think I could handle another upside down roller coaster. I think we went on the dumb ride at least 7 times a day... I'm not sure who actually liked the ride more Brayden or Kailtyn.. But in the pictures it sure looks like Kailtyn was terrified, but she kept going back for more. I will say I don't know if we are a Disneyland kind of family. The kids enjoyed themselves but all in all they went on the same rides over and over again which were about 10 rides all together... that was including California adventure. So paying that kind of money seemed kind of silly for 10 rides. They had no desire to go on anything less adventurous...

On Thursday, we decided to take the day off and venture out to the beaches. Lagunna,,Newport and Huntington beach were so pretty. It made me want to move down there. It was so nice to read a book while sitting on the beach and the kids played in the sand. It was heaven until the dumb wind storm kicked in... I swear it felt like a mild hurricane.

Friday came too soon and it was our last day at the park. The crowds defiantly showed up then... I wondered if people even worked on Friday it seemed like half of California was there. The kids had the patience of a 2 year old and didn't want to have anything to do with any kind ride that was longer than a 10 min wait .. So that meant we pretty much walked and walked...and got the same fast passes.. we decided to just go back to the hotel and take advantage of the pool and come back later in the evening...

That evening we came back to check out the firework show @ Disneyland... that was an adventure in itself.. Kailtyn was so tired and didn't even make it basically fell asleep while I was holding her and Brayden was on his last leg as well.. After finding a good spot to watch, the swarm of people were coming from all sides. About 10 Min's into the show Scott turned around and looked behind us and saw that there were literally thousands of people... If you know Scott he doesn't do crowds very well... I think he was about to have a panic attack and said" we have to get the Hell out of here!" as we were walking out I was shocked myself by how many people were actually behind us..(I mean thousands) it would have been a nightmare leaving with everybody....

All in all. it was a nice 5 days with the fam. But I can say "be there, done that,and never again!"

I can check that one off our list.