June

June revolved around a lot of baseball but it is always such a fun experience getting to hang out with friends! We were thankful to be able to fit in the June Smyrna concert series to see Electric Avenue, a work/golf trip to Oklahoma for dad and seeing the Barenaked Ladies at Chastain. And in sad/exciting news we finally traded in the minivan for a new SUV for dad.

Twins!

Avery (8 years, 10 months) - Avery spent a lot of time being a baseball sister in June between games, practices and carpools. Thankfully there are often fun concessions to help and she had a few friends who helped provide her alternate activities to escape the heat.

Keeping it fresh with a new vantage point to watch the game

Some of Avery's favorite monthly activities were learning about the joy of the Costco food offering with the Langemans, seeing the Little Mermaid with Gabby and pool time with friends. 

Sleeping with mom while dad is out of town

Parker (11 years, 7 months) - Parker's month mainly revolved around baseball or resting for baseball. When not playing baseball on the field, we was watching baseball, playing wiffle ball or hanging out with baseball friends.

Carter (13 years, 1 month) - Carter's month was also heavily baseball focused with tournaments for his travel team every weekend, wiffle ball during the week and Braves games/practices at night. We had conflicts the last few weekend of his travel season and Carter lost steam with the rigor of travel baseball but he enjoyed finishing the season with the Father/Son baseball game. Carter enjoyed the year of full travel ball but realized it was more than he wanted so he is excited to go back to rec ball in the Fall so he can keep playing but have his weekends free for football games and sleep overs!

Carter and Coach Nico

Finally getting to hang out with friends on the weekend!

Siblings - As soon as school let out the boys started a neighborhood wiffle ball league which played in our front yard. Daily we had 10-20 boys hanging out and putting on games. The boys quickly organized themselves into 4 teams (names changed daily), set up a league in Game Changer to score/stream the games, built a strike zone, developed rules, found announcers and figured out how to do walk up music. It provided daily amusement for the parents who streamed into to watch the games and gave the boys some good lessons in teamwork and organization. The regular season ended at the end of June but don't worry, there are playoffs to come!

Setting up the stream and testing the radar gun

And of course there were braves games together and cheering each other on at the field!

Nashville

Parker's all star team decided to sign-up for an out of state tournament this summer so we all packed up for a long weekend in Nashville!

We decided to head up a day early with some friends so we could have some time to explore the city before it was all baseball! We headed out early Thursday morning so we had a full day in town. We stopped for lunch and a quick visit to see Aunt Shea at work before heading downtown to drop off our car at the hotel. We spent a few hours at the Country Music Hall of Fame before heading to Broadway to check out some live music, shop and grab dinner. We ended the evening at the hotel pool where the kids had a blast with some blow up flamingos (unfortunately none were still blown up when we left).

The next day we decided to take an epic walk around downtown Nashville. We headed over the Cumberland River, around the Titans Stadium, back over the Cumberland River, by City Hall, made a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts for nourishment, then it was on to the State Capital, Farmer's Market and we finally stopped for a bit to explore the Tennessee State Museum. Then we walked to Germantown for lunch before heading back to pack our bags to move to Smyrna for the weekend (Smyrna, TN that is).

Once we decorated doors, regrouped with the team and headed back to Nashville to watch the Sound take on the Gwinnett Stripers. The boys split their time between cheering and playing wiffle ball and by the time the game ended we were beat so we headed home preparing for a long day the the ball field!

The next morning we headed to Murfreesboro for 2 baseball games. We were excited that Aunt Shea and Uncle Charles were able to come join us! The boys played hard but faced some strong, experienced travel ball competition and couldn't pull out a win. Parker was excited he got to pitch an inning and proud he didn't give up any runs. But that didn't see to dampen their weekend as they spent the evening swimming, playing wiffle ball in the parking lot, eating dinner in the lobby and generally running amuck together at the hotel. 

We woke up the next morning and packed up before heading back to the fields for more baseball. The boys were in the first game so they got to start the day with the opening ceremony before they played their best baseball of the weekend and won the first game. We had some downtime between games and the boys started the second game strong but ultimately the long weekend of fun caught up them and the lost the game at the end as they struggled to keep up the energy level. Parker tried his hardest to help pull it out hitting a LL homerun late in the game to pull within 1 (double with 2 fielding errors he was able to score on).

It was such a fun weekend with a great group of families and the boys all had a blast which was the goal!

Carter liked getting in on the warm up action