Outdoor goodness

We spent some time outside these past few days.

Friday was the end-of-the-year picnic for Jansse's school with the "Kick-ball-a-thon" thrown in. He and his class mates played the obligatory kickball to earn their pledges. Thank you to all who pledged for him! He was the third highest pledge collector of the school and won a prize for that. That was so good for him, especially because the day before he had not won a single ribbon in the "Field Day" at school - he is just not a fast runner, and much of that competition depended on running. Poor guy was pretty down on himself after he came in last place in one of the longer distance runs.

But, on Friday evening he finally had his first full game - no rain out, no trouble finding the field, it was great. Except, that I was not there because I had a prior obligation. Ugh! But, Uncle Daniel, Aunt Stacy and Danielle were there, and that was a boost! Jansse had a great time! He played catcher at least one "inning" and was excited to tell me about it. I spoke to him on the phone after the game, and he told me he got three hits and made it home twice, plus he made a great play in the field, getting someone out. Pretty exciting!
He also had a game on Saturday, which I left my activity early and went to see. It was fun to watch. I realized that this is beginning baseball. Everybody bats every inning. Everybody gets pitched to until they hit the ball. There are fielding outs, but nobody keeps score. All games are just "a tie" which the boys seem to be perfectly happy with. Jansse is a fair to strong hitter, and he did make two fielding plays this game that were pretty darn good. One at first base and one at third base. The one at third base even the opposing team coaches were complementing him about. So, today (Sunday) as we were getting into the car for church Jansse said to me "I loved my baseball game yesterday" Well, there you have it, we made the right decision to do this.
After the game I decided it was time to get out and attack some of the weeds in my garden before the blossoms come. This was the first blossom that I saw, and I was determined to get rid of it.
But, while I was out there I found this hardy geranium was beginning to bloom as well.
I did lots of weeding, and cleared two spots to put in the bare root roses Andy and Jansse gave me for Mother's Day. I have a lot more weeding to do, and, if I can get the office billing done tomorrow, I think I will attack weeds again on Tuesday.

In the mean time, we are enjoying the apple blossoms - and crab-apple blossoms. here are a couple peeks at those:

Hopefully tomorrow I will have it together enough to post another layout or two. Until then, I've got so much to do I can hardly believe it.