Grandpa & Anja visited!

We were blessed with a visit from Grandpa Al & Anja last week. The kids had lots of good quality grandparent time! Anja taught Adam how to catch a ball (see video below). Grandpa taught Jason how to swing a bat (his tball coach was super impressed at his improvement!) And Beth always had her choice of laps where she could sit and talk and talk and talk...It was a great week complete with a visit to the beach, a tball game, and a huge bubble bath (Bubblefest show at the Discovery Science Center). The visit was too short! Hope to see you again soon, Papa & Anja!

Swimming Lessons

As summer approaches, I've decided that I need at least one swimmer among my three kids. It's just too much responsibility! After researching and seeing how expensive effective lessons actually are, Andrew told me he would teach them himself. So we headed to the Keenans heated pool last week and attempted swim lessons. Beth was a flop. She is nowhere near even putting her head under water and doesn't trust us at all so she spent her time in the pool clinging and whining. She needs a stranger to teach her. Ok, one child that's going to cost us hundreds to make water safe. Jason, however, gets in and on his first try, he floats! You have to understand, we could not get him to float at all last summer and wondered if maybe he was too physically dense to actually be able to float but he just up and did it! He wowed us. And then he actually swam some strokes. Yea, we may save a few hundred dollars not paying for instruction for him. He just needs practice. I took video of him floating cuz we're so proud :)

Play Ball!

Spring is almost here and you know what that means, BASEBALL! Now for this family, we're not usually aware of baseball until maybe the World Series in the fall but this year Jason is playing teeball so we're well aware of what season it is. It's his first year in little league. He's a Yankee (I know many of you probably aren't Yankee fans but for the next 16 weeks we're all Yankee fans, ok?) Saturday was opening day complete with a pancake breakfast, procession of teams around the major field, a pitch by the Mayor of Costa Mesa, and everyone's first game. After the game we asked Jason what his favorite part of the game was and he answered, "I like the parade best." We better warn him that there will not be another parade next week. It seemed like such a little thing to us but to the kids, that procession first thing in the morning turned out to be very memorable. And then to make it even more special, Jason's team made it into the paper as they were on "parade." I'm so excited that Jason's favorite part of baseball got this extra attention, and out of all the teams, his team (with Jason himself standing proud in the center) got their picture in the paper. Who knows, maybe it's the beginning of a very lucrative career with many more newspaper clippings. He is a leftie after all...The last picture is Jason happily on first base. Those kids at his feet are the other team (the Tigers had very similar uniforms). It was amusing to watch the kids all go after the ball every time while the batter proudly makes it to first base everytime because, in case you didn't know, there are no outs in teeball. Everyone bats, everyone runs all the bases one by one, and, it would seem, everyone runs after the ball and then wonders what to do with the finally obtained ball. You should come out and see a game. It's a lot of fun!