Week In Review

Our new Tuesday night tradition - not ice cream, but t-ball!

Violet is on a t-ball team - the Dodgers! - and her practices time is on Tuesday evenings.

In t-ball, the children players hit off a plastic "tee," and everyone runs to the first base.

The defense isn't exactly up for fielding the ball; in fact, in practice so far, the children haven't even been taught fielding yet. They are working on throwing toward first base, though.

Stace is helping the coach out; so much so, he was named assistant coach and will have his own uniform t-shirt! Yes, my Englishman is coaching the American pasttime. Too funny.

Here's Violet with Coach Mike, after throwing the ball. So far, Violet is enjoying her t-ball experience very much.

On Thursday night, we were expecting sprinkles so we brought in the patio cushions. Violet saw her little foldout beach chair, and thought we should have a beach day in the house. The cushions are the sand. We had fun with this, pretending to spot dolphins and pelicans out in yonder playroom: "Look! That pelican just picked up a dolphin from that pod of 40 dolphins!"


Also this week, we moved our chrysalises into the butterfly net habitat, while we await their emergence. Morgan gave this as a present to Violet, and included the mail-order set of five tiny caterpillars. We have enjoyed watching them so far and can't wait for our Painted Lady butterflies!

And, out in Mockingbird Bush, we are the proud owners of three chicks. I realize the photo is hard to make out - it's dark in the bush and the flash was blinding them and washing out the photo. But you can see three grey things, with the yellow beaks.

So far, the cats have stayed on the ground under the bush, rather than making the easy climb up to investigate further.