It has been a rough few weeks for my website (*boring explanation below). I would like to apologize for the confusion. My website was down for a few days, along with my email. Things are back up. Some things are still a bit wonky but they will be fixed soon. Thank you for being patient with me.
In the meanwhile, I would like to share with you an email my husband sent to my in laws this morning that gave me a good chuckle. It is recapping the events of Trey’s first T ball practice that was last night. I am so grateful that my husband can make me laugh even when I am stressed; his humor is one of the many qualities that made me fall head over heels in love with him.
Yesterday was a chain of appointments and gasp I forgot to bring my camera to the practice. Since I can’t bring myself to post without a picture-here is one of us from Easter weekend.
*you may need to have a 5 year old just starting t ball to appreciate the topic and related humor.
Trey had a 45 minute practice last night. Not exactly an “instructional video” quality experience.
About 12-13 4 and 5 year olds were gathered up in front of the local junior high school. Met the coach (Coach Emily) and her husband, who assists. Trey got a hat and t-shirt with team logo and uniform number.
Kids were playing “catch” before practice started and Trey paired up with another little boy he met while walking around the school trying to find the right practice field. First throw from other guy hit Trey square in the mouth. Lots of tears. Not a great start, but he shook it off in about 20 seconds.
They positioned all the kids in the makeshift infield – yes, they line up 4 kids in a semi circle about 25 feet in front of the tee – if there are any 5 year old A-Rods in the league someone is surely going to get drilled – but the balls are softer than real baseballs. The next 4 fielders line up in the traditional first, 2nd, 3rd, and SS positions, and the remaining kids fill in whatever gaps there are.
Kids took turns hitting off the tee, running to first (half ran to third, a quarter hit and just stood like statues until a coach directed them to first, including Trey). Not going to be a lot of defensive put-outs, that is for sure. Trey is the only batter who batted left on the team, which earned him some oohs and ahhs from the coaches. He hit a decent grounder to the general vicinity of the 2nd baseman, who watched it roll past with a detached expression. Lots of detached expressions overall.
Trey was first positioned in the field on the inner 25 foot circle. About 4 grounders came toward him, but the concept of bending over to catch them is something we will be working on. He did at least follow the balls with his eyes as they went by.
Trey then played “2nd base”, but nothing was hit toward him.
They wrapped up practice by lining the kids up at home and running them around the base path a few times, then gathering in a circle for the obligatory Go Team! cheer. I think Trey liked running around the best.
All in all, I predict not a lot of defensive gems this season – games are 3 innings and all kids bat each inning. They do not keep score, which is a good idea. If the kids can learn the concept of running to first, and get some basic instruction on how to step and throw, how to swing the bat, and how to at least not catch thrown balls in the teeth, it will be a good season.
I volunteered to be a team coach – it was near impossible for me to watch from the sideline and not go out and instruct Trey to at least actively defend himself from errant throws.
Next practice is Thursday.
-T2
*I mentioned that about 6 months ago our hard drive crashed and I lost so many files it makes me well with tears just talking about it. My website files were amongst those that were lost, so when I went to update my galleries last month I had to use an old copy of my website.
For some reason this old version wasn’t uploading and so we had just a blank page saying flash was required and that was it. We went back and forth with the design and no matter what we tried we couldn’t get it to work. I decided to start from scratch-remove and reinstall the software and rebuild my website and see if that would solve the problem. Well it did not solve the problem and so all fingers pointed to my website host (which I have had multiple issues with the past two years).
So my beloved husband transferred my domain hosting from Yahoo Small Business (absolute disastrous hosting service) to Bluehost (so far so great). In the process we also updated to the ProPhoto3 blog theme. Needless to say it has been a bit unnerving. My website and email were down for 2 days. My website has been on my husband’s server (thank goodness he managed to link it so it is not too obvious that when you click on the website link on my home page-it brings you to terencecoughlin.com). I haven’t been able to blog for a week. Finally last night it was up and running, but then none of the photographs on my blog were loading. It has been stressful. I have done my best to keep my cool, since my husband is doing all the grunt work helping me and I am indebted to him for his help and don’t want to make him so miserable that he quits:)
by Thea
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