Indoor football...

Henry has a new favorite activity...indoor football! It starts with setting up the cones (or plastic cups) for the endzone...


When we play indoor football we have to have everything just so. For example, when you're the coach you have to wear the headset (or in our case, the toddler neck pillow)...

The coach has to call all of the plays. (When I'm the coach I have to call "Blue 88" because that's Henry's favorite play).

Henry also has to practice his 4-point stance...

Apparently when mom's not doing a good enough job as coach, dad replaces her. When dad takes over as coach, he now has to wear the headset and call the plays...


Once the game is over Charlie joins the boys on the floor for some tackling practice...

Whew...indoor football is quite the workout!

Outside...

We haven't been spending much time outside lately due to the abundance of allergy problems in our house. However, last Friday it was clear that Henry really needed some outside play time. So, I grabbed a blanket, Charlie's bumbo seat, and a few magazines and we went into the backyard to play...


Henry's latest sports gear obsession is with John's old ankle braces. He discovered them in a box under our bed and I told him that daddy wore those when he played basketball in college. Big mistake. Now, every time he wants to shoot a basket, he has to put on daddy's ankle braces...


Charlie spent lots of time lying around on the pillow I brought out for him...

It will be great once the boys can play together outside

Baseball with dad...

Henry's latest afternoon obsession is playing baseball with John. His interests definitely follow the sports seasons. He loves tennis during tennis season, basketball during basketball season, and now baseball during baseball season.

He's pretty impressive to watch. He always has to wear a baseball shirt when he plays and he always starts out wearing his Dodger hat (it usually ends up on the grass because he likes to wear it low and it prevents him from being able to see very well). He has also found a pair of my winter gloves and likes to put those on when he bats (We have no idea how he came about this interest in batting gloves, but he's pretty committed to it). He has also recently learned, from watching Dodger games with John, that catchers crouch down when they catch. He absolutely WILL NOT play catch with John if he is standing up. He always runs over and pulls John down into a crouch, then he runs a few feet away and kicks up his leg and throws a pitch. Pretty funny. Only time will tell whether his sports obsession continues with such fervor, but I know that for now John is certainly enjoying sharing his love for sports with his son!


Sometimes Henry gets confused and thinks that a pitcher needs to crouch when they throw...that's what he's doing here:

And sometimes he thinks batters need to crouch too:


I wish I were better at taking pictures, this picture has such great potential:

Here's Henry telling John how he needs to stand:

More crouching:

One thing that we can learn from watching Henry play sports is that he is extremely observant. He notices every little detail about the games he watches, both in person and on TV, and he likes to do things exactly as they should be done. In our town, kids can play youth sports at the age of 3 1/2. I used to think that this was too young, but I can already see that Henry will be begging us to play even before that. I can just imagine him telling the other kids how to hold their bat or run the bases, or even getting mad at them if they don't throw the ball to the right spot. We'll have to wait and see how this all plays out :)

This is getting ridiculous...

Henry wanted to take all 4 of his balls to bed with him tonight. A 21-month old + 4 balls = quite a handful. Good thing John was on bedtime duty tonight :)

Golf...

Now that the tennis season is over John has been enjoying late afternoons in the backyard with Henry. Their entertainment of choice? Golf. Henry loves to carry around the club and chase the yellow ping pong balls that John places around the yard. I think all 3 of us looks forward to these late afternoon golf dates.

Daddy's boy...

...this is how football was watched in our house last Sunday.

Sports fan in training...

John is teaching Henry the finer points of watching multiple sporting events at once...3 games to be exact. The Laker game on the TV, and 2 baseball games on the computer (one being the Dodger game, of course).

Special Olympics...

Today was the annual Kern County Special Olympics event at North High School. Because Bob coaches the Kern County Crushers tennis team, the whole family gets to be a part of this fantastic event. The highlights are shown below...

Coach Bob (aka: Bob the Builder)

The Prize Court

At the end of the competition, a prize court is set up. The athletes are fed balls and attempt to hit the buckets with the prizes on top. Whatever they manage to hit is their prize. There was a multitude of singing & dancing stuffed animals this year, and boy were they a hit!

Billy with his loot from the prize court (although the athletes were supposed to stop trying for prizes after they won the first time, Billy managed to sneak back in line and increase his prize booty)

Da Luna...One of Bob's favorites to tease


My favorite outfit of the day

The prize court line up

Smiling Scott

I told these athletes to show me their most "intense" face. Chris, the man in the back, started laughing hysterically and then said, "We don't know what intense means!" Super funny.

Robin, er, "Pinky" (Her favorite color is pink, so she insisted on a wearing a name tag that read "Pinky")

Dawson, what a cutie

Dalton. He has a beeper.

Cursing Chris (John kept score at his court, and every time he messed up he uttered a curse word)

We love Special Olympics!

It's that time again...

...our local major league affiliate has started their season and I actually asked John if he wanted to go to the game tonight. (It helped that the teachers at my school received free tickets as a result of student participation in a 10 books = 1 Bakersfield Blaze ticket reading campaign). I stumbled upon 2 of the best haircuts I've seen in awhile... I guess I have a thing for finding these things at baseball games. Luckily, I had my camera to capture them. A rather uneventful game from my perspective, but the off-the-field highlights can be found below.

The obligatory scorekeeping photo

My book of choice for the evening

John finds the font used on the Blaze jerseys apalling...he says it looks "bush league"

I've never seen a mohawk with a rat tail on the bottom. Sweet.

Check out that mullet!

The Dodgers at the Coliseum...

March 29th has been on John's mental calendar for quite some time. The day marked the Dodgers' return to the Coliseum, their first west coast home. An historic event in the mind of any west coast sports fan to be sure. We shared our celebration with sister extraordinaire Denise, and brother-in-law, Andrew. We were eager to embrace the public transportation option provided to us by the Dodgers, so we arrived at Dodger stadium at 4:30pm and looked forward to the FREE parking & shuttle that would ferry us the approximately 7-miles to the USC campus, home of the historic Coliseum. Our hopes were dashed as we quickly realized that the Dodgers had grossly underestimated the popularity of their parking and shuttle generosity. (It was revealed after the game that the Dodgers had planned to transport 5,000 fans from Dodger Stadium to the Coliseum, when in reality, 35,000 fans had shown up to partake!)

We waited approximately an hour and 45 minutes to get on the shuttle from Dodger Stadium and arrived at our seats at 7pm sharp. We were pleased that John had insisted on the early arrival time. Amidst our joy at arriving on time, we all shared a bit of a fear of what the after game shuttle line might hold. We forced those pessimistic thoughts from our minds and enjoyed the game and all of the celebratory displays prepared for us.

After the last pitch was thrown we scurried out of the stadium and tried desperately to find the end of the shuttle line. We walked quickly, jogging almost, but our swiftness was no match for the surge of shuttle riders flooding from the stadium gates. We finally found the end of the line, a very disappointing distance from the beginning to be sure. We settled in for what we presumed would be a long wait, and we were not disappointed. The game was over at 10:30pm, and we reached our return shuttle at 12:30am...for those of you who aren't math people, that's a 2-hour wait. We arrived at Dodger Stadium just minutes shy of 1am and quickly headed to the car for the last leg of our journey. Unfortunately for John, his travel mates were quite tired and provided him with no conversation. Being the trooper that he is, he allowed us to sleep and chose to stop at In-N-Out & the base of the grapevine for non-drowsy relief instead.

We all agreed that the trip was well worth it, but maybe we would just have parked nearer the stadium instead. (But then again, if we had done that, what would I have posted about?...)

Andrew, Denise, Katie, & John

John & me

Do we look like sisters from the back?

Me (this was obviously before the game...I'm smiling)

Denise

The line at Dodger Stadium (Did I mention that there were no roped aisles or PORT-A-POTTIES! It is quite remarkable that Denise and I survived...we have a tendency to be frequent visitors)

Our shuttles (we ended up in a retirement home shuttle with wide aisles and lots of leg room...SCORE!)

Yep. That's the line.

Inside the Coliseum

The left field fence

The view from our seats...thanks dad for the tickets!

John doing what he loves...keeping score. I probably have 100 of these exact same pictures, but I still love them.

Dodgers' owner (& John's favorite Baseball exec...sarcasm intended) Frank McCourt with former manager Tommy Lasorda

The Coliseum at night