WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!

Tom’s youth baseball coaching career is off to a great start—the Phillies are the Gurnee Youth Baseball Mustang Champions! It took two days and 9 innings but they did it!

What made the win even more exciting is that they beat the undefeated Cubs to win! (And the Cubs had actually slaughtered us in a previous game—something like 17-2.)

It was a nail biter for sure—they caught up and we were tied 12-12 which then pushed us into an extra inning! And after no scoring, another inning! And then in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, we scored—which meant the game was immediately over!

A special sidenote: Anna and family showed up again to cheer the team on!

Still waving hats from the baseline!

The first nice day in forever…

It was nice today (57°!) so we took a walk to do a photo scavenger hunt and leave chalk notes on people’s driveways!

Marking found and photographed scavenger hunt items by punching a hole with a stick—making do because we forgot a pencil.
There was quite a bit of chalk art around the neighborhood.
It was so nice seeing friends on our walk today and being able to chat, even if it was from a distance. ❤️❤️

The kids went across the street to decorate the driveway of a single older lady. Owen also told me her brought her trash up to the house. ❤️

As far as for social distancing? Every single person that we saw and had to pass kept the right distance. Sometimes we moved out of the way, sometimes they moved out of the way. Thankfully we didn’t see any kids at the park but I would’ve lost my mind.

I was really happy about all this because I keep hearing stories about how parks are FULL of kids with and without parents around?!?! GRRR. I just think a lot of people are in the “it’s not going to happen to me” camp. And, of course, in the best case scenario, we won’t see anything happen at all and we will think all of this was for nothing. But that just means that it worked.

Anyway, they really had a lot more fun than I thought they would. Now we just need lots more nice days…

I treated myself when we got back… uncovered my egg chair and had a drink!

Red Hots win! Congrats to the GYB fall champs!

Owen’s team won the fall championship in a 19-17 nail biter today! They were up a few and then down by 10 (and we thought the game might get called by the slaughter rule), then we caught up, then they caught up, and then we were ahead by two and held them off!! Owen did his thing on 1st and caught the ball for the final out of the game! We are so proud of all the boys!!

Here’s a few pics from the game. Owen on second.

A typical sight: tying shoelaces.

Attempting to steal home. I can’t remember if he did or not.

Katie was being punished for earlier transgressions at home and had to sit by me the entire game, so I got these.

The game was stressful to watch because the score was so back-and-forth. But once we came back from being 10 runs down, the entire mood changed and it was a real game!! We were ahead by two going into the top of the seventh inning so we expected they’d score and we’d have to rally in the bottom of the seventh (and last) inning but the boys held them off!

I was taking pics of the last plays and got these. They aren’t great because the fence was in the way, but I love the progression of the excitement, then the boys coming in from the field, then throwing hats in the air! I wished I had gotten a shot of Owen actually catching the ball but it is what it is.

Award ceremony!

TEAM PHOTO!

Funny team photo!

Running the bases (Owen led the way)!

Friends. 💕

Coaches Tom, Ken, Jamie (Head Coach), Mark

Happy boy!

Happy daddy!

Fun with Coach Jamie!

And then it was off to Culver’s to celebrate!

Baseball Wrap Party

The whole team was invited to Richardson’s Adventure Farm to celebrate a great fall season of baseball. Not too many showed up, but we all had a great time! We rented a site with a fire pit and the kids enjoyed the Jumping Pillow, a 100′ slide, and the World’s Largest and Most Intricate Corn Maze (lots of cool details here). Lest you think I’m kidding about the maze, here it is:

Richardson Farm 2019 Corn Maze

We brought plain hot chocolate but Jess brought this… You can see why we’re friends.

Mom fun!

Yes I went down this!

It was actually really fun and not scary at all!

This place was huge!

I might have eaten something delicious.

Then once the moms were back at the fire, the dads took a group of kids through the corn maze.

And within five minutes of being in the car on the way home…