The Lone Pink Batting Helmet

Last year, Jenna played t-ball in California and it was an extremely positive experience for our whole family. Jenna loved it, Nate got to coach her team, I hung out with the other moms, and Abby got riduculously dirty playing in the dirt.

When we moved to New York, we knew t-ball would be in our future. We signed Jenna up, Nate gets to be the coach again, and Abby gets to be the "assistant coach." In CA, four year olds can play and she was looking forward to being on the team, but here in NY, she can't play until she's 5, so Nate made her the unofficial assistant coach. They even had a meeting last night to go through all the equipment and make sure everything was ready. She's taking her role very seriously:)

T-ball isn't going to be what we expected it to be. Jenna is the only girl on her team. Yes, the ONLY girl. Apparently, little girls don't play t-ball so much here and there are only 1-2 girls on each team, which is co-ed. When we signed her up, I asked about girls being on teams and only got the response of them only being co-ed. I was sure that there'd be at least a few girls on the team. But no, she's the only one.

At first, I was furious about this . . . more at myself for not getting all the information before we committed to this, but also for the fact that no one bothered to tell me that girls usually don't play t-ball in our community. I mean, we can't pull her out. Nate can't not coach. But I am just not sure how she's going to handle being the only girl on the team. She seems okay with it and only cares that her daddy is the coach.

But this is what I see in my head: All the players lined up ready to go--all the boys in their navy blue helmets and brown leather gloves. Jenna will be in her pink helmet holding her pink glove that also happens to light up:) Will they make fun of her or accept her? Will she be able to keep up with the boys? Will she be known as that girl who played on the boys t-ball team?

I am pretty much over my fears and anger now and think it will be good for her. She'll get to know some new people and play on the team that Nate coaches (which is a fun thing to watch), and she'll have to do something that might be uncomfortable at first, but will be beneficial in the end. Hopefully she'll show some of those boys up with her mad t-ball skills!

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was beautiful here . . . I mean really beautiful. It was 85 degrees on Saturday and gorgeous all the other days. My kids even got a little sunburn the first day and I had to break out the sunblock for Saturday. From what I understand that weather is not normal for Buffalo in April, but we enjoyed every second of it and were thankful that it showed up for Easter weekend!

We live close to the community park--close as in walking distance. So we went to the egg hunt Saturday morning where the kids got to do a craft, see the Easter Bunny (although Jenna insists it wasn't the real Easter Bunny because she saw his tennis shoes poking out under his feet--smarty pants!), and hunt for the plastic eggs. We really enjoyed being there that morning. We saw people from church, dance class, Bible study, and people we've come to know from our frequent park trips. It was really nice.

The parents were instructed not to hunt eggs with the kids, so Nate let Abby go on her own and she ended up with zero eggs. She just isn't that aggressive and didn't push her way through the crowd to get the eggs. Thankfully, a nice lady noticed Abby crying after it was all over and threw some of her son's 20 eggs on the ground in front of her so that Abby could pick some up. Then she was a happy camper.

Happy Abby after she found her five eggs!

27 weeks pregnant

Proud of their loot!

Sweet Easter girls

Annual Easter picture

The best part of Easter is celebrating what Jesus did for us on the cross and this year, our weekend was full of conversations with the girls about how that all happened. They get confused about celebrating or remembering something (like Good Friday) and it actually happening. But the most precious statement came from Abby who, on our way home from Good Friday service, said something like, "You know . . . the Easter bunny isn't the most important part of Easter--Jesus is. Those guys were mean to him and he died, but don't worry, he will be alive on Easter." That was the absolute best part of Easter.

On a side note, we had a mild breakthrough in church this past weekend. We made it through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Services without me wanting to tear my hair out after trying to keep kids quiet and entertained in church. No one talked so loudly that they distrubed the others around them and no one pulled up their dress at the children's sermon. Evening services (Thursday and Friday) are not our strong points. I don't take the kids to Lenten or Advent services anymore because I ended up feeling like a crazy woman by the time it was done. But we made it this year. They both sat through the services and were pretty well behaved. And this is a breakthrough because I've been working on teaching the kids to sit in church for a long time. Three services in four days, two of which were evenings---small miracle!

I hope your Easter was as wonderful as ours was:)