take me out to the ball game

We're knee-deep in baseball these days. Jacob is playing in a machine pitch league. Wow -- does that ball ever fly out of the machine! I was really surprised that it would be pitched that fast for these little guys and wondered if Jacob would ever learn to hit it. I'm happy to say that he has. He is thrilled every time he gets a hit, and if he gets all the way around the bases (with others batting, too) he does a happy dance. Love it. I just wish I had a picture/video of it -- pure joy! In the meantime, here he is warming up:

And finally, the view through the fence as Jacob goes up to bat.

To compensate for being one of the smaller kids on the team, Jacob has had to learn that he has to stand near the back of the batter's box, rather than the center, in order to hit the ball. If he doesn't, the pitch tends to be too high for his swing and he'll strike out. I'm glad we got that figured out!

I spend a lot of my time at Jacob's baseball games watching what Matthew is up to -- he's all over the place. One evening however, there wasn't a game being played on one of the fields and so Matthew decided to commandeer the pitching mound. Watch him throw out that (pretend) pitch! Step one: take the mound and eye the batter...

Step two: pick up the ball...

Step three: wind up and let it fly!

Hmmm, I wonder what position he wants to play when he grows up?

lego mindstorms

Ryan has been participating in a Lego Mindstorms afterschool class for the past few months. About a week ago, it was time to put his robot to the test at a maze competition held at Lagoon as part of the USU Physics Day.

The kids got to ride the rides for about 1/2 the day. Oddly enough, one of the favorite rides of the day was the ferris wheel. Maybe that was because there wasn't a lot of kids riding it, so if you did, you actually got to ride it, rather than just stop a bajillion times while people get on and off.

The kids got these awesome yellow t-shirts and a pain-in-the neck name tag.

The kids worked in pairs over the last few months building a robot with legos and writing the software to make the robot negotiate its way through a maze. This is Ryan and his buddy Connor checking their computer software at the beginning of the competition.

Just a look a the 20 kids (10 teams) checking out their computer programs before taking the robots to the maze.

Ryan and Connor with their robot.

The kids had plenty of time to run their robot through a practice maze before the competition.

Part of the competition is an interview with two different judges, where the kids have to explain their computer program and talk about their learning experience with Mindstorms. Both partners are supposed to be equally knowledgeable about their computer program, but Ryan seemed to do more of the actual "explaining". He did a great job at this. The judges were awesome too -- they really sat down with each team and talked with them about their robot. They had some great conversations. There was none of this "hurry up, I'm bored", polite nodding and scribbling notes business from any of the judges.

Here's Ryan putting the robot into competition maze action.

Here's the robot going through the maze. The maze is timed. The faster the robot goes through the maze, the better. There is a time limit though -- 5 minutes. Also, if you have to "help" your robot, you get point deductions. Ryan and Connors robot was doing awesome and just about to cross the finish line, when it decided to back-track. Grrrr! They ended up helping it once and it finished the maze somewhere in the 2 minute range. The fastest robot finished in 46 seconds without help and the slowest robot finished in 4 minutes, 55 seconds, with a few helps. So, there's quite a range and Ryan and Connor finished in the middle. Well done!

I love the look on the kids faces as they watched their robot do it's thing. GO! Go! Go!

Oh man, why'd it turn around? It was almost done! Is it gonna make it back to the finish line?

In the end, the girl team won first place and actually won robots of their own! Wow! Here's the school team.

There were four schools competing in the maze competition. Our school came in second overall --woohoo! Everybody got t-shirts and gift certificates to restaurants and Boondocks. It was a fun day at Lagoon too. The class is a bit pricey in my opinion, but I think it was a fabulous opportunity for the kids and I would recommend it to anyone.

rain, rain go away...

and don't come back till the groundwater level goes way way way down!! At 6:30 a.m. this morning we found ourselves on the roof of the house in the pouring rain trying to clean raingutters so the basement windowwell (Ryan's room) wouldn't flood. By 7:30 a.m. we were in a snowstorm and hooking up the pipe for the sump pump -- just in case. We've had so much rain lately that the groundwater is really high. We need some sunny and dry weather for a few days to get things under control. In the meantime, here's to hoping the basement stays dry!

grrrr!

1. Matthew coloring the kitchen table with black permanent marker.
2. Door to door salespeople -- springtime really brings 'em out.
3. Carbon monoxide detector batteries determine they're dead and need to chirp at 2:00 a.m. (I determined it was the co detector after ripping the fire alarm off the wall)
4. Jury duty.

hangin'

Matthew's newest trick: He's not afraid to drop when he's done hanging either!

birthday boys

We recently celebrated birthdays for Matthew and Jared. Since it's just me and Matthew at lunch time, we stopped at Wendy's (and the grocery store) to pick up some lunch. Matthew's request was nuggets, fries, and chocolate milk. He actually only ate one nugget, most of the fries and nearly all the chocolate milk. Who cares about nutrition when your celebrating your birthday?? Matthew got a new dump truck and digger to use in the sand box this summer.

He's totally into Cars, so he was way excited to get his new pj's on for bed. He's doing a great job getting those fingers up to show his new age.

On Matthew's birthday, we actually had Jared's request for birthday dessert -- ice cream sandwiches.

On Jared's birthday, we had Mark's family join us for a spaghetti dinner (the b-day boys favorite) and then we celebrated with Matthew's choice of dessert -- a brownie cake with a racetrack and Cars cars on it.

The boys totally gave me a hard time about the cake, saying it was an "8" year old cake, not a racetrack. Oh well, I am just going to file this idea away to use again when Jacob turns "8"! Finally, it was Jared's turn to open gifts and he's officially decked out for summer camping adventures. Showing off his new internal frame backpack:

And a new fishing pole!

Happy Birthday, boys!! Love ya!

got more awards

Ryan received a few more awards at pack meeting. Next stop -- Arrow of Light!( Gotta love Ryan's sticky-uppy hair!)

After the awards the kids got to make their own worm farms. Way fun! We now have fishing worms all ready to go, Eric!

spring sports - ha!

This is our tree in the front of our house. (Heidi, obviously I swiped your picts!) Aren't they springy and beautiful? I love seeing this tree in bloom in the spring. It's gorgeous. By the looks of the blossoms, you'd think we've been having nice warm spring weather. HA! This past week we have had Jacobs sports every evening of the week. We have watched him play baseball and soccer through gusty wind, rain, cold, and even a few snowflakes. I found myself adding a layer of warmth with each days game. On Monday, a light jacket, on Tuesday a light winter coat, on Wednesday a winter coat, on Thursday a winter coat with a hood and Jacob's winter coat tossed over my legs, on Friday, my winter coat, hood, and a big blanket. On Saturday, we gave up and didn't go!