Are You Ready For Some Softball?

Softball season has started!!!!

Last weekend was Opening Weekend. The girls met their team and coaches. All three of them have at least one coach that knows what they are doing. I think Babe's coach is going to rock!!! I'm trying to fly under the radar and not let anyone know that I played ball for years and years. I really hate coaching. I don't think I would mind coaching kids that already know the basics. The strategy of the game would be fun, but I get frustrated when a kid throws with the wrong foot forward and I tell them over and over to step with the other foot. It's kinda funny to watch the coaches try to explain things to Babe because she's a lefty and that can really throw you off. That will make her an excellent first baseman. Freddy wants to see her play somewhere else b/c she has a great arm. I just don't want her to play catcher and share the gear. Lice. Babe's team picked out the name of their team - the Purple Platypusses. We've tried to explain to them that it should be Platipyi, but they insist on Platypusses. It's quite a mouthful to cheer on. The girls also got to pick nicknames. Freddy was encouraging "Audzilla" really hard. She ended up with "Audball" because she's Aud, odd (the number - she's nine) and odd (she's strange - like her dad, not her mom). Last night was her first game. She had a really nice line drive and she made a great catch at first to get an out. At this point, there are no outs b/c the girls have no idea what is going on. The girls just hit, usually by coach pitch b/c the girls are just learning how to pitch and won't get it over the plate for a few more weeks, and the inning ends when there is a five run limit. So Babe getting an out was a huge achievement. She had such a fun time! The songs are a lot of fun to listen to and all my girls are singing them ALL the time. This year the team changed one of the song endings and Thomas is having a struggle. He wants Babe to form a coup with her friend Hayley and get the song changed back. I agree, it is kinda lame now. We have softball Monday (Babe), Tuesday (Lou), Wednesday (Babe and Divy), Thursday (Lou) and Saturday (Divy). Oh yah, we have swimming on Friday. Thank God we love to watch softball. We are hoping this year it is warmer and less rainy than last year. We are not sure how Divy is going to handle this. Once again, she has informed us that she doesn't like people telling her what to do. Should be interesting.

This past Saturday was the neighborhood garage sale. We brought up a bunch of stuff we have been carrying around with us for 12 moves. It was supposed to be rainy and windy so we decided to let the girls skip softball so they wouldn't be wet and miserable. Also, they wanted to help out with the sale. The garage sale started at 8am and we didn't have anyone until almost 8:30am. The first lady told us she only came down our street to turn around and that's how she found us. At the beginning of our street there is a sign that says no exit so I guess people didn't want or know that we were down there. So we dragged Lou out of bed and put her with a sign down at the main corner and then we put Babe at the next corner and told them to wave the people in. Freddy had to bring the girls waffles b/c we sent them down without breakfast. People started coming. Everyone kept asking if they were our girls and said they were doing a wonderful job. Thomas had written "Garage Sale" with arrows pointing different ways depending on which way the traffic was coming and this one guy said Babe was so cute b/c she kept looking down at her sign and flipping it around trying to figure out what arrow to use. He said he had to watch her for a bit b/c it was so adorable. Finally she gave up and started pointing. I guess the girls had a lot of enthusiasm and smiles. Of course the rain came and both girls tried to quit and I sent them back out with rain jackets and told them they were the only reason we were getting customers. Then it really started to rain, so I had Freddy take umbrellas down. Well some neighbor on the corner felt sorry for Babe and had already brought her an umbrella. We thought that was pretty funny. All in all, the girls were out there for about 2 hours - in the rain and wind. So much for not wanting them to get wet at softball. They are such troopers. We made about $120 and got rid of some of our stuff. The girls each got $10, Subway and Marble Slab ice cream. We will not move the left over items back to the basement, instead, we are taking them to the Goodwill. We want them out of here.

So I'm a bit displeased. In January our oven door kept locking when we would use it, which wasn't good b/c there was usually food inside. We would have to wait for it to cool down before we could get the food out. We had it looked at and they put in a new circuit board. That seemed to fix the problem. Yesterday it started doing it again. Of course, the warranty was up 2 weeks ago. The place we went to were not sympathetic just told us they would come out and look at it again. We decided to use another company, kinda a second opinion. The guy back in January took the back off and spent about 5-10 minutes looking at the oven and then deemed it very broken and had us get a $400 part. Today, the guy took the entire oven apart and spent about 25 minutes looking it over before he deemed the locking mechanism kaput. He told me he could get a new piece and replace it for around $400 or he could disengage it and I won't be able to use my self-clean feature (which really isn't a big deal b/c I've only cleaned it twice in three years). I went with the $130 disengaging option. My oven is now fixed. What really freaked me out was while he was cleaning he left the kitchen and went to the bathroom. He didn't even ask, not like I would have said no, but it was kinda weird. I didn't feel like he washed his hands long enough after using the bathroom so I cleaned it down when he left. Is that weird?