How could it not be beautiful when it started with donuts, followed by demolishing our hazardous back deck, coaching Rylee and Caleb’s first t-ball game, celebrating Stephanie’s graduation from nursing school, set up and played in the summer pool and ended with a roaring fire in our fire pit.  Of course, the fact that it was another glorious day in the Pacific Northwest did not hurt anything.

Our back deck was on it’s last legs.  Between the rotting wood and the insects that were eating their way through some of the posts, the deck was more hazard than benefit.  So, we decided it was time to do something about it.  Step one…take it down.  The kids were up early, as usual, and after some donuts, we decided that we could begin our demo at 9am.  Hopefully that was kosher with the neighbors.  Everyone pitched in and it was pretty much gone by noon.  Demo’ing  a deck is actually a lot of fun, hard work, but fun.  I probably should have prefunked with a little ibuprofen…

After lunch, the kiddos grabbed a quick nap before shuffling out the door to their first t-ball game.  We had only one practice before this so we did not really know what to expect.  According to the YMCA rulebook, each kid at bat gets 3-4 coach pitch balls and then hits off the tee if they are not able to make contact with the coaches pitches.  We played three innings with each kid from each team getting one at-bat during the inning.  As the coach, I was definitely feeling the pressure to make sure each kid got a hit from my pitches instead of having to hit from the tee.  As it turned out all the kids did great.  Only one kiddo needed the tee each time.  Rylee and Caleb had a great time.  Caleb was totally into the game both on defense and up to bat.  Rylee was not as into it, but would tell you she really enjoyed it.  Karissa and I were unsure how Caleb was going to do in this organized team sport, since he did not make it past one practice with soccer.  He was amazing!  He had a smile on his face the whole time, got a couple really good hits, and even fielded some balls.  At one point in the game, Rylee had hit a ball and made her way to first (there are not outs in this league) and Caleb was up to bat.  He swung and hit a great shot past the short stop.  As he ran to first base, Rylee was not paying much attention and was there on first base still when Caleb arrived.  Rylee and Caleb gave each other a big hug before one of the parents encouraged her on to second base.  Priceless.

After the game, we loaded up the car and quickly went to Steph’s graduation open house.  We are all quite proud of her, you can read about it here.

We also set up the pool in the front yard for the first pool day of the year.  Sorry about the fuzzy pictures, but our sweet Kyler had grabbed the camera at some point during the day and took about 15 pictures.  He must have gotten his cute little fingers on the lens.

A great day full of hard work and fun.  Now that we have demo’d the back deck, we actually have to do something about it.  We are currently looking into a small landing with perimeter stairs going down to the yard landing on a patio made from pavers.  If you have any creative ideas let us know!