Last day of school

The last day of school was rather anti -climatic.  They have the chapel first thing in the morning here, then the kids go back to their classrooms for the last few hours.  I drove up to the carpool spot as usual, my kids were waiting for me, they hopped in, and away we went.  I had taken teacher pictures the day before, so we just drove away.  It was strange!
BUT, an hour before that, a friend called saying a few people were headed to the beach for lunch and fun and did we want to come?  I almost cried, well, I actually did on the way to school.  It was so nice to be thought of, to be included, and to have the bonus of the beach was extra special.  While at the beach that afternoon, I explained Beach Days from MN and they decided it was a good plan!  SO, the past Tuesdays, we have packed up and gone to Beach Day MI style.  Oh so much fun. The kids love having 3- 4 hours with people from school to play with at the beach.  I am meeting a few more moms.

Since then, we have finished up baseball and soccer.  Brandon pitched a few times, played catcher once, and played in the field just about everywhere.  He walked several times - something quite common when you first have kids pitching - but also had some really nice hits.  I think he would say his favorite was being able to steal bases.
Soccer was a whole adventure in an of itself.  We have met several of the people that run the program here. It is a private program - not through the city- but it has both a rec program and a traveling program.  Anika and Maria thoroughly enjoyed their rec teams and coaches and played very well.  Brandon and Jessica struggled.  Both of them had several players on their teams that had never played soccer before so the level of play just wasn't there.  We decided to let both Brandon and Jessica try out for the traveling team, just to see what would happen.  Brandon made the U 11 B team (a year up) and Jessica made the U9 A team (also a year up).  We had only two days to make the decision.  We finally landed on everything is still so new here that we just want to keep it basic for one more year.  So, rec it is again, and who knows, maybe we'll try out again next year.  I'm fairly sure Jessica isn't ready to play soccer year round!
These past weeks Anika has attended both a basketball camp and a softball camp and Jessica and Brandon attended a basketball camp.  Jessica was awarded the hustle award.  I don't want to take anything away from her hustling ability, but I'm wondering if she batted those eyes at the high school boys and they just gave her the award.  Maybe she needed that little boost.  The three of them are all signed up for a few more sports camps yet this summer.