Piranha In The Water

Charlotte is back in the swing of swim - She is a Piranha!  This year she is competing on a different level, since she is now in the 9-12 age division.  Last year she was at the top of the 7-8 year olds, and now she's at the bottom of the 9-12 year olds.  But she's only at the bottom if you count by age.  If you go by speed - she's at the top of her division!  Scoring in swimming is not cut and dry (pun intended...).  The most important time to beat is your own time, but, secondly, the USSA produces guidelines for each age and stroke.  Basically, you take Charlotte's time, apply it to a chart, and you see how she stands up with national averages.  These times are gold, silver and bronze.  Ideally, you want to always beat your last time and swim gold in each stroke.  With already three meets under belt for the 2012 season, Charlotte is: gold in freestyle; silver in backstroke; gold in butterfly; silver in breaststroke; and silver in IM (individual medley, one lap of each stoke, all done in one race).  In short, we are pretty proud of Charlotte - and so are her coaches!  She's on fire in the water!

In this video, Charlotte is in lane two, second from the top.  Green cap.

She was so excited that they called out her name at the end!

Beach Balls

Go 'Stros

On our last full day in Texas, we played on the beach by day and in the afternoon, we headed to the big city of Houston.  Houston really is big.  I was surprised at the size of the buildings and the amount of traffic.  Of course, it was late Friday afternoon and the Houstonites were all on the move.  In the downtown area, there were shadows, but no trees.  The buildings were all so tall they made canyons for the streets.  I wouldn't want to live in a big city, but, it was fun to visit.

Once we found our parking space, we made out way into Minute Maid Park.  The ballpark is pretty new, and I was impressed with how airy and spacious it was.  We found our seats, got some ballpark food for supper and we settled in to watch the game.  The Astros played the Cincinnati Reds.  I think I actually sat and watched about three at-bats.  Most of the game I spent walking around with Charlotte and Josephine.  Rachel and Samantha weren't interested in the game at all, so after they ate, they walked around and checked out all the decks.  They actually sat and watched about half of the game, asking questions and getting into the music and filler stuff that live baseball games use to keep everyone entertained between batters.  The "Kiss Cam" showed a guy asking a girl to marry him and she said yes.  Rachel and Samantha decided that's cool if you're a baseball fan, but, it's not how they imagine being proposed to!  Jay Michael was entranced by live baseball and was great company for James, who really wanted to see the game itself.  While I was exploring with Charlotte and Josephine, we found the play area - amazing.  It was a huge indoor playground with a baseball theme, of course.  It was about four stories high, full of slides and bridges.  It closed during the seven-inning stretch, so we headed back to watch the last play of the game.  Reds over Astros - 4-0.  Oh well. 

This is our view from behind the right-field pitcher's warm up area.

The whole ballpark is air conditioned, but, the roof is retractable.  At the end of the game, the next show began - fireworks!  In this picture it's hard to tell, but, those lights are on the top layer of the stadium seating and the roof rolled along the very top until it disappeared into itself like a collapsed telescope.  I went up to the higest level to take this picture and it doesn't do it justice.  This place is huge!

Around town

One day - just one day - while we were in Galveston, it rained.  We made it to this museum, Bishop's Palace, before the rain began.  This is one of the oldest houses in Galveston, and it survived the 1900 storm with no major damage.  The woodwork in the house is amazing and the history of it was fascinating.  It was a great glimpse in time.  The kids did not find it so interesting, and the only saving grace was the fact that the orignal family, the builders of the house, had a mom and a daughter named Josephine.

After the rain passed, we explored the town a little.  We found Ball High School, but, school was letting out and the pictures are full of high school kids.  We also found Ball Avenue, and got a picture of the Ball Team on Ball Avenue.

This first picture is a cruise ship - immense!  I've never been this close to a cruise ship, and I was shocked at how big they are!  Galveston, apparently, is a cruise hub and a few lines had their ships at the dock or anchored just off shore waiting for the next cruise.  This picture is Samantha and her crab legs.  Charlotte and Samantha are the seafood lovers on the BallTeam, along with James and I, too.  The others are land-lubbers, but Samantha ordered crab legs and had to play with her food!  After an amazing lunch - our best and fanciest meal of the trip, the rain was gone, the skies were blue and we did what we enjoyed most - we headed to the beach to play in the surf and relax.

Home Again

While in Texas, we went to visit James' high school stomping grounds - Sweeny. Home of the Bulldogs. We took a few shots of the little town, which was much the same as it was when he graduated a few years ago. (ahem, twenty-five years ago) We met up with his friend, Tim, and his family.

This is the new high school marquis - fancy.  And the house where James' family lived almost thirty years ago. 

This is James' friend from high school, Tim Moss.  We had the pleasure of hanging out with him and with his family for two of the days we were in town.  This next picture is greater metropolitian downtown Sweeny, TX.  James says not much has changed in thirty years!

Beach Bum Horse Rides

While we were in Galveston we tried to let each person in the family choose an activity for everyone to do. Samantha's choice was to ride horses on the beach. I found this family and we had a great morning. I think the pictures say it all!

James tried to sit in that chair to fly his kite - but the brreze was perfect and he was flipping his kite all over the place.  This is great, 'cause the kids were off riding for about two hours!  Aren't the clouds in all these shots beautiful!  Love the beach; love it!

More Galveston

Another day on vacation, we decided to ride go-karts.  We had drive about twenty minutes off of Galveston Island to find a track, but, the drive was worth it.  First, it got us out and exploring - always an adventure.  Second, we had the place to ourselves most of the time we were there!  The lady at the counter gave us a deal, adding rides with game tokens and throwing in two extra rides for everyone, just 'cause she thought we were nice.  It was great.  The track was twisty and we cooled off with games in side.

This picture is the jackpot-winning Samantha, modeling the latest in hot pink tickets.  She hit this game at the jackpot and won over 250 tickets.  Luckily, they had one of those ticket-eating counter machines.  In the end, winning is fun, but the total of everyone's tickets amounted to a pack of Skittles for each of the kids and a pack of m&m's for James and me to split.

Joey is still too short to ride alone.  From the looks of this chart, it may just be years before she can solo.  She is rooting for a growth spurt, but, I think she is a perfectly beautiful petite little lady.  (Who, by the by, packs quite a punch, so don't let her little frame fool ya - she's scrappy thing when she wants to be!)

We tried to do as much water fun as possible.  I love this shot of Joey and Charlie jumping the "waves".  The fantastic benefit of staying at the beach for a week is being able to spend any time of day on the sand.  I especially love the later evening, after the heat of the day, and when the beaches are deserted.