Team Elite

Here's a good look at Tess during her demonstration performance the other night. Good stuff. They are Team Elite.

Water dumping

This was taken just moments after we won the league championship - that's a three-peat for us, going back to t-ball. Abbie dumped ice water on daddy, and it was very cold. Felt good! All the other girls then took turns dumping individual cups of water on me. We had to win the last game of the year to clinch the title, and we did, 4-1.

Father's Day weekend

Had an awesome Father's Day weekend. On Saturday we had a softball tournament, and we tied one game and lost two. The good thing is, we played better in the last game than we did in the first two, so I suppose that's progress. Still, it's hard for us to play against leagues that have a larger pool of players from which to choose their team. We have our sectional tournament this weekend, and we probably need to win at least a couple of games to advance to the next round.

Abbie made on particularly tough play Saturday - fielded a hot grounder up the middle and threw for the out at first.

Later that night, I took Abbie and a friend, Emma, to the Round Rock Express game. Including some photos and a video here. Had a great time. The girls talked a player from the Memphis Redbirds into tossing them baseballs, and they had them both signed by J.R. Towles, a catcher who was with the Astros earlier this year.

Wonder World

I've been meaning to mention our Wonder World Girl Scout trip from a few weeks ago. Had a fun time - Wonder World is a little park in San Marcos that has a cool cave (above which sits a gift shop, of course), and we all went to check it out on a Girl Scout field trip.

After going down into the cave, we were able to drive through another area and feed deer, and we went up on a tower of some sort, too. Temperatures in the cave were much cooler than above ground, where it's been brutally hot.

The cave guide led us down into the cave, and told us about old card games that used to be played in the various chambers, and explained about the geology of the deal. Part of the cave walls are big bolders, and the guide flipped the lights at one point to show everyone how dark it can be. He also talked about the time frame of things, i.e., if someone was caught down in there and was unable to espace, they'd have "x" amount of days of oxygen, and he said that madness would set in after about a week. Not so sure if it would take that long, personally.

Check out the photos...

Happy 46th to daddy

Ran across this video a few nights ago. I hadn't seen it before. It was taken sometime in February, obviously, at Mamacita's in San Marcos.

Quote

Read a recent newspaper column that had the following quote from a letter written more than 100 years ago by an Austrian poet named Ranier Rilke:

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything."

I'm assuming that basically this means worry only about the stuff you can control and let the other things go. Easier said than done! What this has to do with who is going to win this week's U.S. Open golf tournament, I'm not sure....

Miscellaneous

Hey - well, where do we start today? It's been a long couple of weeks, so we haven't updated lately. We'll touch on a bunch of topics:

*NBA - Kobe and the Lakers should win tonight (Tuesday), now that the series is back in L.A. Celtics shot 38 free throws compared to Lakers' 10 the other day in Game 2. I still think L.A. has a decent shot at winning the series - the Lakers haven't been beaten at home since March.

*Kids - the kids are gone to Abilene for a few days, so Angie and I have a bit of an empty nest. Angie took them to Goldthwaite to meet with Debra and everybody else, and they all are having fun. We wondered how Miles would do, but he did great - slept with Abbie all night after Debra slept with them both initially. Way to go Milesy!

*Angie - Angie's working a pair of marathon, 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. shifts on Tuesday and Wednesday, since the kids are gone. She may be dragging tonight! Love ya, Ang...

*Abbie - Abbie was Camper of the Week at her basketball camp last week. She has softball camp next week...

*The Governor's mansion was gutted by fire this past weekend, and evidently it was arson. I went over and took some "far away" photos - couldn't get too close. Investigations are still ongoing - the structure is more than 150 years old, so they'll try and save it. The Austin American-Statesman had some pretty devastating-looking photos of the interior today. What motivates someone to do this kind of thing?

*We've got a practice game with North Hays Optomists tonight. It'll be weird to be coaching without Abbie being in town to play.