Tired with Summer Time Activities

Well since being done with my daughter’s softball things have moved into filling in summer time activities. This means packing every night with as much stuff as possible that we don’t normally have time to do with sports in full swing.
I am finishing up our adult softball league now also. We have 1 more game next week and then the tournament on the 11th of August. This means Monday nights are still filled.
We have been going boating a couple times a week and my kids love it. Both have learned to ski this year. My daughter just had a birthday this last weekend and we bought her some skis off eBay that she will try tonight for the first time. My sister bought a set of skis last week that had the full boots on them. I was a bit leery of them but took them out anyway. I didn’t particularly like the way they pulled but did fine. My son got up on them and being a beginner, young, fearless teenager, started showing off. He promptly fell and what I thought would happen happened. The skis with the boots like that don’t release. They stay connected to you and twist your legs. His knee bruised up and we took him to the doctor last week. He has a grade 1 MCL tear. Just be careful and let it heal and we will use a brace on his leg tonight for skiing.
Wednesday nights are late night swim at our pool. So that means we take go every Wednesday to swim until the pool closes at 10pm. This makes for a tiring Thursday morning for everyone. Then Thursday night we try to go boating again.
The weekends hit and we end up on picnics, trips to the mountains, more boating or jet skiing and dinner with family. Sunday I spent most of the day at the Stanley hotel in Estes Park. This is the famous hotel where the Shining was filmed. It was beautiful sitting on their front porch looking over the valley drinking Mojito’s all afternoon. I felt fine but it was wise to have my wife drive us home just to make sure.
I will post more next week. The teaser is though that I will be running a 195 mile 12 person relay this weekend. I did this relay last year and it was a blast. I am running the same legs 1, 13, and 25 of which 13 is the killer. Feel free to take a look at the site http://www.wildwestrelay.com/ and if you don’t hear from me then I might be lying on the side of the road along stretch 13.
Now if I could put together some money, time off and a team there are these relays to do also. http://www.coloradorelay.com/ and http://www.rtbrelay.com/index.shtml and http://www.greenmountainrelay.com/. Maybe someday I will be able to run all of them.

Softball in Utah

I knew you would be complaining and needing a post but I was waiting till I returned from Park City Utah.
I bet your wondering why I was there. Well my daughter as you know plays Fast Pitch Softball. Park City is where the Triple Crown World Series is held and we were there to compete against teams from around the nation. It is a huge event that covers a total of 3 weeks to get through all the age divisions. Last week was the week for the 10U and 12U teams. Here is how it all went down.
Monday we spent the day traveling to Park City. We got there in time for the opening ceremonies where all the teams come together and you see how many people are really there. The girls also trade pins. We have a pin for our team and we trade for other team pins. My daughter has all kinds of cool pins from all the other states such as CA, AR, AZ, UT, CO.
Tuesday we began pool play. We had 2 games that we apparently struggled to remember to play in our new surroundings. The 1st game we should have won. The 2nd game we should have competed but probably not won.
Wednesday we showed up. We won the 1st game. The 2nd game we won and had it wrapped up to make it into the Championship bracket. Some coaching decisions were made and we let some other girl to a bit of pitching and let one girl do some catching since her Grandma from CA came to see her play. We were to end the game as 3rd in our pool but with the decisions the game slipped enough that the points put us in 4th. We were now first in the International Bracket for this tournament. We as parents were happy with this and all was good.
Thursday we only played 1 game and we won it moving us into Friday. Friday’s game though we were up 5-1 and only had to finish the inning to win. Just get the outs at first base girls and don’t worry if they get a run or two. That is when one of our older girls seemed to freeze. FOUR errors later by this one girl lost us the game. We fell to the loser’s bracket to play 5 games on Saturday.
Saturday we showed up to face the Phoenix Heat. They smoked us 11-1 as they hit a couple of home runs off some very large girls. We headed for home after a great week of softball.
Now time for me to brag on my daughter. This tournament was very worth it for our family. Two tournaments ago my daughter was the last name on the batting order. She was watching strikes go by and just not batting at all. At that point we dropped her from the batting order and only used her as a defensive player and didn’t send her to bat. The last tournament she started batting at the bottom of the order again. This last week in Park City she came alive. She moves to the middle of the batting order beating other girls that had been at the top and making great contact. She got her confidence back and was elated to be in that batting position. She is also the ONLY girl to play in the World Series as a starter for 2nd base and was never pulled for errors. She played her 2nd base position ever inning of every game we played and she did awesome.
I am VERY PROUD of my girl and the player she has become. I am excited to see her try out for her junior high school. I have great confidence as a new 7th grader coming into this sport she will make the varsity team.