Diary of a Softball Addict

Haydn, Tyson and Brody in Raymond at the
1st of July Parade. Kristi made their shirts with their
own hand prints. She is so Crafty!

Summer 2012

I was doing so good in keeping up to date with this Blog. Every month I was updating on what our family was up to and what was going on in our lives. BUT then summer hit and I stayed far away from my computer. So how do I summarize everything that went on this summer? It probably would have been more detailed if I would have kept up month to month, but summer was crazy and I am doing the best I can "Get off my Back!!!". I think the best way is to use a lot of pictures and let them do the talking. A picture is worth a thousand words right?

Backyard Projects

We had a few projects in the backyard that we wanted to accomplish this summer. One of them Kristi came up with while she was visiting the house of one of her friends. We tore up all the big cement squares we had in the back yard and leveled the area around our fire pit. We then broke up all the cement squares into smaller parts and spaced them out around the area. We then hauled tons of sand to the backyard and filled the paces between the now laid out broken cement pieces. Kristi was the visionary and I was somehow roped into being the grunt labourer. Good times.

We also had Troy Stewart build a shed in our backyard this year as well. Haydn has had 3 bikes stolen since we have lived in Cardston, so we thought it was finally time to build something that we could store the bikes in. We also have way too much stuff in our house and it would be good to have a good reliable shed that we could store stuff that we don't need in the house all the time. Of coarse the boys we so excited about the new shed, and we decided to have a celebratory sleep over in the new shed. This was at the very beginning of summer, so the nights were still pretty cold and I froze my butt off. Haydn says he was warm, but thats because he had like 4 blankets to cover him and I had 1. Haha. It was fun though, we brought out a little TV and watched a movie with some treats.

July 1st Festivities

All of Kristi's family is from Raymond, so the July 1st parade is a Huge deal. All of Kristi's family sits together at the parade and catches up on how life has been for the year. After the Parade we had a great time hanging out and eating at Kesty and Katie's house. Haydn and Brody rode a motor bike for the first time. Haydn was a little scared at first and so Brody did it first. This would not sit well with Haydn, so after he saw that his little brother could do it, he had to.

Camping and Not Camping!!

I think we started a little tradition last year of pulling the trailer to Fort Macleod to stay at the Daisy May campground. The boys absolutely love it there. It is a pretty simple campground with a park, a free (old) mini-golf coarse and a swimming pool. The boys just bring their own putters and from the minute they wake to the minute they go to bed they are at the mini-golf coarse. This with a few trips to the pool and bike rides around the campground make for a great place to stay.

Kids can't leave their gadets
at home

This is one of the hail stones. This was
not even the biggest one that hit the
ground.

So camping season was on and we were ready to roll!!! BUT it was very short lived. Cardston was hit by a massive hail storm that demolished all the houses, cars, trailers and yards. The windshields of our van and truck were cracked so bad that we could not see out of them, the shingles on our house were all wrecked, and our trailer was destroyed. So camping was out of the question for the remainder of the summer. BLAH!!! The Town looked like a war zone after the storm. Windows smashed out of houses and cars, trees everywhere, water flooding the roads, and everyone in town out in the streets surveying the damage. STORY -- When the storm hit, I was at the junior high doing some photocopying. just as I was leaving I could see that it was starting to hail. I pulled out my phone to start to video and I walked out the door of the school. As the door slammed shut I quickly realized that I had locked myself out of the school. So here I am stuck out side with golf ball to tennis ball hail bouncing off the ground and hitting me. I quickly called Corallee Williams and asked her to come and "Save Me" and let me back in the school. She waited till the storm was done and helped me back into the school.

Trailer that looked like it was hit with a thousand
golf balls. Broken window and the roof was
really beat up.

How it looked while I was locked out of the
school during the storm.

Softball in Canmore

We took a weekend away from the kids to play in a softball tourney with Ryan Harris and his team from Edmonton. We had never been to Canmore before so we thought it would be a great way to spend the weekend with out the kids. Haha. We had a blast with Ryan and Brandi playing ball and hanging out. We Stayed in a great 2 bedroom suit, and had a blast playing cards and hanging out in our robes....Hahahaha. After the tourney was done we took a day and drove up to Banff to see the National Park there. It was a beautiful place! We took a hike to a waterfall.

What a great backdrop while playing in a
Softball tourney.

Family Softball Tourney

This years family softball tourney had a different feel. Uncle Mark passed away earlier in the year and it was the first year we have played with out him in about 5 or 6 years. We decided to get shirts made up with uncle Marks nickname on the back, "Wally". We had a great time playing with family and playing for Uncle Mark this year.

The Beach in Wabamun Provincial Park

Well our Trip to Spruce Grove to visit Ryan and Brandi lasted an extra 3 days because of problems we had buying our Van. We had bought a 2010 Dodge Caravan and took it out on the highway and the brakes were shot. We had to take the Van back and we test drove a 2011, and it had problems as well with the brakes. So we had to stay a couple of extra days to get the Van fixed. The best part was that we got the 2011 van basically for the same price as the 2010. During the extra days we decided to go to a lake that was near by with a good size beach. The kids (and parents) had a great time building sand castles, swimming and hanging out with each other. We had so much fun the first day that we decided to spend the next day at the beach as well.

NSA World Softball in Calgary

We took our Lethbridge team to NSA Worlds in Calgary this year to play softball. This is one of the biggest tournaments in the counrty. Teams from all over Canada come and play. This year there was over 200 teams in total playing all over the city of Calgary. I have played in this tourney before, but we have never taken the team we play with in Lethbridge. The Tournament runs during the Labour Day weekend from Friday morning to Monday night. It was alot of fun playing with the team and we played pretty good. We went 6-2 and ended up 7th place out of 112 teams that were playing in the Rec division. At night we would sit and watch some of the "Open" division games cause the players were so good. The girls on the open teams would be putting it over fences that were 290 feet.

Jeff, Perm, Kent, Tim, Mike and Jordan
Amy, Jakki, Jodi, Kristi, and Erica

Back to School

Well the summer flew by, and I probably missed a lot of the little things that we did in the summer, but that was the summarized version. Kids are now back in school and we are back to a normal schedule, which is also kind of nice. Haydn is in grade 4 and Brody is in Grade 1. Brody has to be bussed up to the old Grandview Nursing home (which was converted into a school) to attend school while the elementary school is going through new renovations.