Saturday

CE had her first choir competiton and EP was at the State competition for Science Fair. I dropped EP off and zoomed away to see CE perform. Her choir did fantastic and received a 1 (this is the highest rating incase you are not familiar with the scoring system). Zoomed back to get EP and see how she had done. She received an EXCELLENT rating and was 1 point away from a SUPERIOR rating. The projects on either side of her were essentially the same thing and she blew them both away so there is a small side victory for her as well.
Now that those two things are over we can re-focus on ball and 4H again. If I survive through June it will be a miracle :)

Add To The Insanity

Look at me making sacrifices! I am NOT playing hockey this session because simply we don't have the time. CE is on a 12U travel softball team and they are currently into two-a-week practices. What this means is every Tuesday and Thursday we are running to softball practice. The last weekend in April will start the first weekend long tournaments. May will bring 3 more tournaments as well as practice days as before. Then it all breaks loose! June starts the "season" with games on Tuesdays and Thursdays AND tournaments every weekend. So we are going to have softball 5 out of the 7 days of the week. All of this will culminate in July with the trip to Georgia for the Fastpitch World Series. So what? Let's not forget that every other Tuesday are 4H meetings. There are also Girl Scout meetings on Tuesdays. To add to this, our local fair, the wrap up for 4H (essentially) is mid-June!

Can there be more you ask?
OH YES THERE CAN!

Two days ago I received a phone call from a coach. He needs another player for his 14U softball team. He was told to call me to see if EP wanted to play!
She does. I think the real clincher to her wanting to play was the idea of her playing against her OLD team. I don't know if she's looking to meet up with old friends or hopes to drive them into the dirt with a crushing defeat! Either way, she really wants to play. I can't very well tell her "no, because CE makes life too crazy for you to do anything". That wouldn't be very good parenting ... although, it would prevent my brains from leaking out my ears. Hmmmm. Anywhoooo. She is gonna play and their games are in ... well ... JUNE! Tuesdays and Fridays. YES ... TUESDAYS!!!
What I really need is ONE more thing to do on Tuesday. So I called the coach and told him. Yes she wants to play ... BUT ... and I explained the schedule conflicts and that she may need a constant ride to games and practices. He seemed happy to have her and said we'd work something out. So here we go! Hang on tight! It would have been better to have had games on Monday and Wednesday though as that would have put softball seven days a week! Rock on!

Oh There You Are!

I've been really bad about posting something here. Some of it is time, some of it is because I wanted to say something earlier but wasn't sure how to put it in words.
The past few months have been absolutely crazy and sad. At the end of December my father-in-law died. I'm lost without him! He was such an amazing man that not having him around has really crushed me.
As if that wasn't enough the young woman that we rent our OTHER house to was killed in a car accident in February. She was a wonderful, friendly person who will also be missed, especially by her 4 children.
Our two sheep had lambs and of the four lambs that were born, only 1 survived and we nearly lost the one mother. We're done with the tragedy. Let's move on to the GOOD stuff shall we???
So in recent news ...
EP did well at the the school science fair and ended up with a spot at the District science fair. We sat through the awards ceremony and as it was nearing the end still had not heard her name called for anything. Then she was awarded a microscope as a prize. There were only 3 of these given out so that was very cool. Shortly after that they announced that she was going to go to the STATE science fair. She had won a spot! She was ranked 27th of the 50 people that get to go to the State competition!
CE continues to play softball. She had to write a paper for her coach explaining the intricacies of the positions that she plays and then name 3 players who play(ed) that position(s). She did such a fantastic job the coach said she had the best paper and wondered how much of it I had done. Admittedly I helped find players, however, beyond that she did all the other research and wrote it herself. He also complimented her last night at practice too. He said, "I just love her! She always listens and does what she's told - without complaint - she works hard always and puts it all out there EVERYTIME!" She's a great ball player he says. We knew that! Just goes to show you don't have to be a fantastic pitcher in fastpitch softball to be a "great" player!
Hopefully all her hard work pays off. Come May it is gonna be one busy softball season!
Okay I know ... that's enough for now ... first nothing then this overload of stuff.
Hopefully I can get back to you soon and let you know what's going on more often.

Current Netflix movies: High Spirits, Bad Girls, CSI Season 4
Current Hobby / Fixation: Learning Japanese

Awesome job girl!!!!

We are almost done the XC season. Next weekend is the final meet. However, so far, the ultimate XC meet was this one!!!! To give you a frame of reference. Last year, at this very same meet, EP ran a time of 17:04.61. Now considering this was a solid 4 minutes off of her time at the beginning of the season, this was good. The fact
that she had run her best time and had taken 4 minutes off was fantastic. This year she has improved quite a bit ... oh yeah, hang on. The time last year allowed her to place 58th out of 82 runners. Okay, now where was I? Oh yes! This year EP has been trying to really push herself and improve on her running as well as her times and she has set herself the goal of keeping up with and beating the one girl on her team who gets first place. So how did it all turn out??? Well, hang on a sec, I'll tell you ... her time? 14:52.35 (which in itself is AWESOME, especially since her time goal this year was to break 15 minutes. Where did that put her? Well it was good enough to beat the girl on her team that usually comes first. Yeah it was only by 3 seconds ... but she DID it! So that placed her first on her team. So how does that compare to everyone else you ask? There were 83 runners, almost the same exact number as last year ... and she ended up 16!!!!! Freaking 16 out of 83!!!!! How awesome is THAT!!!!!! Way to go Mongoose !!!!!

Never A Dull Moment

AE and LE are moving out of their rented house into their newly purchased house. However, since they have to be out of the rental about 15 days prior to moving into the new one they are moving all their stuff into BL and JK's garage and then coming to stay with us. What we need are a few more people living in my house. With my brother living there even two bathrooms is not going to be sufficient, although if I can get ONE more male living in the house I'd be allowed to leave the seat up :)

BL was rear-ended by some woman last night, sufficiently smashing up the backend of their brand new truck. They have only had it for about a month or so.

While taking the trash out this past weekend I happened to look out in the pasture and see a bunch of little brown fuzzy things running around. No, they weren't Tribbles! They were, however, 10 little chicks. Apparently one of the hens has been stashing and sitting on her eggs. Apparently we didn't have enough to do!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention too that EP ran a 15:42 two XC meets ago. This was good enough to make her FIRST on her team AND placed her high enough in the ranks of ALL the girls that she got a medal (20th)! That rocks. This past weekend she ran a 16:27 on a very TOUGH course and got a ribbon for being 53rd overall. I know that sounds like it's real bad but when you consider there were 139 girls running, that's awesome. Even though she has not run this course before and about 1/4 mile of it was uphill, 16:27 is still her second best time this season too. She got 3rd on her team which means so far she has scored for her team every meet, and she wasn't that far behind the first and second girl. She has a meet tonight. It's a smaller meet and i'm hoping she does real well. Good luck EP!!!! Go get 'em!