Once I fill out the forms in March for the girls to play tball and softball, I hoard the rest of the free Saturdays like the precious gems that they are, because once the tball/softball season starts, our evenings and Saturdays belong to the baseball fields.
This year, Julia is in the oldest of the tball groups--the 5 & 6 year olds. Evan is an assistant coach, which Julia was super pumped about.
For some weird reason, all of Julia's games are at 9am. She only plays the 3 other tball teams from Ft Sam, but there are no 10am games at all for 2 whole months! At first I was a bit grumbily (she and Evan have to be there by 8:30ish), but now I kind of like that it's a set time and we just have to work around Elisabeth's softball schedule.
Let me tell you how great it is having Evan around this season. Not only does he help out at all of Julia's practices during the week, but he helps drive the girls to practices and is here to take one girl to one game while I take the other to an away game if need be. It really, really sucked last year doing all of that solo when he was gone to Ohio for training for a month. Plus, he's been wanting to help coach for the past two seasons and now he is able to!
I love watching Julia play tball because she adds her own little Juju twist to the game. She still wears skirts and dresses to practice and bright neon pink shoes to games.
Elisabeth is on a girls softball team this year. Last year there wasn't enough girls for a softball team, so she was on a co-ed baseball team. She transitioned seamlessly back into softball. Her softball coach from two years ago is back and keeps telling us how much Ebeth has grown as a player. He's all proud of her and she's all proud that he's proud. Actually, both girls have coaches from previous seasons, which is kind of rare for being on military teams; there is so much moving that the odds of having a coach be there for consecutive years is not common.
Elisabeth plays either second or third base. She has proved to be very good at covering bases, so her coach rotates her from those two bases the whole game. Elisabeth loves not having to sit out.
She is also hilarious at bat. Since the age range is 11-12 year olds, most of the girls are still learning how to develop their pitching skills, so there are a lot of balls thrown instead of strikes. Ebeth is like a freaking statue, staring down the pitcher, refusing to budge if it not a perfect strike. We realized that she might be psyching out the pitchers by her stone solid stance and her coach agreed. It's pretty amusing at how stubborn she is about it all.
When we signed her up two years ago to play, I didn't think she'd love it so much. She asks Evan to help her play catch, she never complains about her 1.5 hour long practices (2 days a week). She's excited about games and is very loud about cheering on her teammates. I'm curious to see if she keeps up playing through junior high and high school.
And then, there's Vivian, who is pretty ticked that she is not allowed to play tball. She invades Julia's dugout and insists on stealing batting helmets and baseball caps.
She has a little friend who is the little sister of one of Julia's good friends who she hangs out with in the dugout. She tries to encourage her little friend to also steal bats and helmets, but so far, it's just Vivian who is the thief.
Vivian also insists on warming up with Evan. She wears Julia's little glove and throws the ball with the glove and absolutely refuses to accept that she needs to throw with the non-gloved hand.
If I bring her snacks and her dump truck, she will generally stay near by and not try to run onto the fields to interrupt the games. Usually.
After the tball games, Evan helps her run the bases, which she thinks is the most fun thing ever.
You guys, the cuteness here is too much:
This will be our life until the end of May. It is completely exhausting but so very fun to watch them play a game they love.
