sportsmanship award

Nathan was selected from his baseball team for the sportsmanship award.  His coach picked him for his positive attitude and enthusiasm for the game, for cheering his teammates on and always being a coachable player.  Congratulations Nathan!  

His team had a little bit of a rough season.  I think they only won 1 (or 2?) game in the regular season.  But during the playoffs, they did great.  They came in as the last seed in the tournament.  They won their first game and lost their second.  It was a double elimination tournament, so then they were working their way through the losers bracket.  They won their next 2 games, beating the #1 seed and #5 seed.   They had one more game to make it to the championship game.  They had to play the team that they lost to in the 2nd round again.  Unfortunately, they lost that game, but made it a lot further in the tournament than anyone expected.  It was fun to watch Nathan play.  He improved so much during the season.  We were hoping he wouldn't enjoy playing baseball, since baseball has such a long season and long games.  But he did have a good time and wants to play again next year.  

butterflies and dinos

lil' peepers

Hope the neighbors don't mind little peepers!  They love looking out the front window, watching the neighbor's dogs playing or whatever else is going on.

summer blooms

We moved into our new house just in time for summer fruit and pretty flowers blooming in our front yard.  We pulled some lemons off our "lemonade tree" (as Owen calls it) and made lemonade.  

Love seeing these pretty hydrangeas lining our front porch area

We discovered a blackberry bush in our back yard, but they don't last long.  Jared finds and eats all the ripe ones.

Apricots anyone??  As soon as the apricots ripened, Nathan ate 11 apricots in a row!  We got tons of apricots, much more than we could eat.  We gave some away and invited people to pick apricots off our trees.  And we still had to throw a bunch away.  We started giving the boys a penny for every rotten piece they picked up off the ground.  We owed Nathan $3 the first time he threw apricots away.  This might get expensive!  Guess I better figure out how to make jam, can, or dry apricots.