Tea Party

 During May, Adley and I learned about the country of England for her Around the World activities. I figured it was only fitting to organize a tea party to give us a true taste of England! Before Jaden and Cody got out of school for summer break, Adley and I invited Grandma and Grammy to join us for an afternoon tea. Adley was soooo excited to dress up for our special tea. She picked out her dress-up pearls and her Easter dress to wear and even let me curl her hair.

A couple days before the party, Adley helped me make four fascinators using dollar store flowers, headbands, feathers, and loofahs. They prettied up our outfits quite nicely!

We set the table using china place settings that had belonged to my mom's mom, Adley's great grandmother.

I wasn't sure whether or not Adley would actually drink tea for the party, but I set out a wide variety of options for the rest of us anyway. I had apple juice on standby for Adley. :)

Adley was so proud to hand out the fascinators to Grammy and Grandma when they arrived. Both grandmas dressed up so nicely for the event too!

Here is our fancy foursome!

I divided the tea party into three courses. Our first course was fresh fruit cups and cranberry-almond scones with Devonshire cream. While we ate, Adley drew out discussion questions from a jar. We talked about everything from favorite cartoon characters and where we'd most like to travel to the best gifts we've ever received. Adley was so talkative and excited to answer each new question.

The most surprising thing about the tea party was finding out that Adley actually LOVED the tea! As long as the tea was lukewarm, she downed her cup in no time and tried multiple varieties. Who would've guessed?!

For our second course, I served three different kinds of sandwiches-- egg salad, cucumber & cream cheese, and PBJ. The sandwiches were on regular wheat bread as well as pumpernickel. We also had baby carrots and cubed cheese.

Finally, course three was dessert. We had strawberry thumbprint cookies, homemade brownie bites, and chocolate eclairs. I made the treats small so we would feel no guilt about sampling all three dessert types! For each course, we all filled up our tea cups with a new variety of tea.

While enjoying dessert, we played a game of tea party bingo.

We were so thankful that Grandma and Grammy could join us to help make this tea party so special. What a delightful afternoon!

Braves Baseball

 This spring marked Cody and Jaden's 5th year of playing baseball, and their 4th year of playing with the same coach. Cody and Jaden have come so far since their first baseball practice! They have gone from not knowing which hand to put their baseball glove on to pitching solid strikeouts. They have learned a lot about the rules and techniques of the game and have advanced so much in their skills. We sure loved watching them play as Braves players this year.

CODY

Cody had a great season overall. He especially grew in his abilities as a pitcher. He pitched consistently and didn't easily get flustered. Because of this, his coach often brought him in as the relief pitcher when our team was in a hard spot. Cody did a great job of closing out some tough innings, often without much chance to warm up at all. We loved watching him on the mound!

There was a tough learning curve this year with batting. Last year, the league still had a combination of kid pitchers and coach pitchers, but this year it was solely kid pitch. Because of this, there was still a fair amount of wild pitches and even occasionally kids getting hit by pitches. It wasn't easy being a batter! Over the course of the season, Cody learned to have a good eye for balls (and even ducking away from wild pitches!), so he most often got on base by getting walked. He got a fair amount of base hits, though, too. When he did connect with the ball, Cody was such a fast runner around the bases!

Cody was most often placed as a shortstop or outfielder. He had some wonderful catches and nice put-outs in both spots. He was an attentive player with a great throwing arm.

Here are some of Cody's action plays (two doubles, a single, and a stolen base):

We loved watching our #6 this season!

JADEN

Jaden also had a nice season this spring. He, like Cody, got on base often by being walked, but he had some good power hits, too. Jaden even hit several home runs this year!

Jaden was one of the team's top pitchers. He was very accurate and had some amazingly fast pitches! In fact, one of his teammates who played catcher said he didn't prefer when Jaden pitched because his hand would hurt by the end of the inning! Jaden pitched a lot of strikeouts and had several innings that were 3-up, 3-down. This kid was a talented pitcher!

Both boys liked being able to steal bases again this year. Quite a few runs were scored from stealing home on wild pitches!

Jaden played a variety of positions when he wasn't pitching-- outfield, first base, third base. He learned to be a versatile player!

Here is Jaden in action (home run, two singles, stealing home):

I didn't take many fan pictures this year, but we had a faithful and consistent group of family members come to support Cody and Jaden. Both sets of grandparents attended nearly every game, even when the weather was chilly at the beginning of the season, drizzly at times, and HOT at the end of the season! The boys' aunts, uncles, and cousins came to multiple games as well. What a blessing to have all this loving family support. Here are Nathan and Adley trying to capture a picture of Cody during one of the games.

The Braves team consisted of a wonderful group of boys this year. We picked up two players from our biggest rival team, the White Sox, from last year and kept a large number of returning Twins players too. All of the boys were seasoned, heads-up players on the field and consistent hitters. It wasn't uncommon for them to win games by 10+ points. They ended the season with only 1 loss and 1 tie game. After every victorious game, the Braves' tradition was to run the bases. This was always such a joyous game-end event for the boys.

At the end of the season, the Braves had a tough series of playoff games. They ended up playing 3 games on the same day in some crazy humid, sweltering Texas heat. Their last two games were back to back and added up to four hours straight of baseball! The Braves fought hard, though, and ended up winning the championship title for their 10U division!

Coach Bobby, Coach Josh, Coach Billy, Coach Derek
Adrian, Eliot, Connor, Korbyn, Jaden, Mack, Cody, Jason, Ascher, Dylan 

The team was awarded these championship T-shirts. How exciting!

We loved our fabulous grandparent fan support! In addition to attending faithfully all season, they stayed through all three hot tournament games right alongside us!

The Braves capped off their season (and tournament success!) with a pool party at one of the players' homes.

Coach Josh spoke about each player individually and gave out championship rings. We loved Coach Josh's positive, Christ-like example for the boys. He was a great encourager for the team and cared about each player as individual. What an incredible coach!

What an amazing season! Goooo Braves!