It\u2019s been a busy few days.<\/p>\n
Going back to last week, our friends the R\u2019s visited from KC for a long lake weekend. They met us down there Friday afternoon and stayed through lunchtime Sunday. As a lot of you know, the R\u2019s have two boys and they\u2019ve not spent a ton of time with our girls. So we really weren\u2019t sure how that would all go. Our concerns were without need, because after a few moments of awkwardness, they all got along famously. They entertained themselves which gave us parents lots of time to hang out together and catch up, which was excellent.<\/p>\n
Crazy that we only have two more lake weekends left this summer.<\/p>\n
Monday was kickball day. We closed registration on Friday and Monday was my day to divide up all the teams. Four of the grades have a single team, so they were easy. But the other two I had to take the results from our last round of evaluations and do my best to make even teams. This was much easier than last year, when we didn\u2019t have any evaluations to work with, but still involved a lot of adjustments until I had them where I wanted them to be.<\/p>\n
And then a lot of emailing. To coaches, to the parish office, to league officials, to parents. Then making adjustments in our management system. For a day it was like I had a real job again!<\/p>\n
I think things turned out pretty well. The hard part is I can create two 5th grade teams that are 100% equal in terms of talent, but then one team will get put in a very difficult division and the other will get put in an easier division, and suddenly it won\u2019t look like the teams are all that even. I shared with the parents how I got to the final rosters, so hopefully there won\u2019t be any complaining.<\/p>\n
All three of our girls are playing. M\u2019s team again seeking that elusive city championship. C\u2019s grade is an interesting mix: there are some really good players at the top,[1]<\/a> and then a lot of really weak players. The in-between players are kids with talent who need to learn how to focus a little better. Both of those teams could either be really good or kind of suck, it all depends which direction those middle girls go. And L\u2019s team is going to be a trip. It\u2019s their first year of playing, so they have a lot to learn. Third grade games are brutal because no one can play defense, and you end up having 90 minutes of 20-run innings back-and-forth. We\u2019ve done some summer pickup games and there are a few girls on her team that are going to be good from the first day.[2]<\/a> We have a couple girls who don\u2019t seem to be afraid of the ball, which is a huge bonus in the field. We\u2019ll see how it all shakes out.<\/p>\n And then we watched my 14-month-old nephew from Tuesday evening through yesterday afternoon while my sister-in-law helped run an event downtown. The last time we watched him for an extended period was in April, when he was just getting mobile. Now he\u2019s walking which made it a little more challenging to keep him corralled. Fortunately he\u2019s a really sweet kid and was no trouble at all. He slept great overnight, took a good morning nap, but wouldn\u2019t nap in the afternoon. That was about the only negative in the 24 hours we had him.<\/p>\n L and I tried to teach him how to play Nerf basketball in her room. When he would get the ball, I would stretch out my arms and say, \u201cM! Pass me the ball!\u201d He would walk over, grab my hand, then turn his body and try to sit on my lap and hug me. I told his mom we need to work on his will to win a little bit. Although the hugs were nice.<\/p>\n Some schools in the area started fall classes today. Our girls are two weeks away from their first day. Once we get M home this weekend we\u2019ve got some work to do on our Summer To Do lists before the school year kicks off.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a busy few days. Going back to last week, our friends the R\u2019s visited from KC for a long lake weekend. They met us down there Friday afternoon and stayed through lunchtime Sunday. As a lot of you know, the R\u2019s have two boys and they\u2019ve not spent a ton of time with our girls. So we really weren\u2019t sure how that would all go. Our concerns were without need, because after a few moments of awkwardness, they all got along famously. They entertained themselves which gave us parents lots of time to hang out together and catch up, which was excellent. Crazy that we only have two more lake weekends left this summer. Monday was kickball day. We closed registration on Friday and Monday was my day to divide up all the teams. Four of the grades have a single team, so they were easy. But the other two I had to take the results from our last round of evaluations and do my best to make even teams. This was much easier than last year, when we didn\u2019t have any evaluations to work with, but still involved a lot of adjustments until I had them where I wanted them to be. And then a lot of emailing. To coaches, to the parish office, to league officials, to parents. Then making adjustments in our management system. For a day it was like I had a real job again! I think things turned out pretty well. The hard part is I can create two 5th grade teams that are 100% equal in terms of talent, but then one team will get put in a very difficult division and the other will get put in an easier division, and suddenly it won\u2019t look like the teams are all that even. I shared with the parents how I got to the final rosters, so hopefully there won\u2019t be any complaining. All three of our girls are playing. M\u2019s team again seeking that elusive city championship. C\u2019s grade is an interesting mix: there are some really good players at the top,[1] and then a lot of really weak players. The in-between players are kids with talent who need to learn how to focus a little better. Both of those teams could either be really good or kind of suck, it all depends which direction those middle girls go. And L\u2019s team is going to be a trip. It\u2019s their first year of playing, so they have a lot to learn. Third grade games are brutal because no one can play defense, and you end up having 90 minutes of 20-run innings back-and-forth. We\u2019ve done some summer pickup games and there are a few girls on her team that are going to be good from the first day.[2] We have a couple girls who don\u2019t seem to be afraid of the ball, which is a huge bonus in the field. We\u2019ll see how it all shakes out. And then we watched my 14-month-old nephew from Tuesday evening through yesterday afternoon while my sister-in-law helped run an event downtown. The last time we watched him for an extended period was in April, when he was just getting mobile. Now he\u2019s walking which made it a little more challenging to keep him corralled. Fortunately he\u2019s a really sweet kid and was no trouble at all. He slept great overnight, took a good morning nap, but wouldn\u2019t nap in the afternoon. That was about the only negative in the 24 hours we had him. L and I tried to teach him how to play Nerf basketball in her room. When he would get the ball, I would stretch out my arms and say, \u201cM! Pass me the ball!\u201d He would walk over, grab my hand, then turn his body and try to sit on my lap and hug me. I told his mom we need to work on his will to win a little bit. Although the hugs were nice. Some schools in the area started fall classes today. Our girls are two weeks away from their first day. Once we get M home this weekend we\u2019ve got some work to do on our Summer To Do lists before the school year kicks off. C is in this group. If she wasn\u2019t so goofy and giggly, she could be the best player in her grade. I kind of like her being a top 4 player and spazzy, though. At least I know she\u2019s having fun that way. ↩ Again, including her. ↩<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,98,158,14,30],"class_list":["post-6486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-family","tag-kickball","tag-lake","tag-parenting","tag-youth-sports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13586,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486\/revisions\/13586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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