It's That Time of Year!

I am SO behind! Look for alot of posts this week while I catch up!!

Hard to believe, but it is that time of year again! I have to say...it's my favorite time of year! It probably beats Christmas for me, if you really want to know the truth.

This year, Braden and Cade are playing on the same team. We have a wonderful team of boys that have been together for 3 years now (they're 11). Not only are the boys great, so are their parents! We truly consider them to be our Rays family, and enjoy spending the season with them. We decided about a week after we got home from China that something was going to have to give. Cade was on a new 10 year old team (he'll be 9 in a couple of weeks), Braden has the Rays, and Bryce will be starting in the next month or two. It became clear pretty quickly that we just couldn't do it all with a 2 year old too. (who hates the carseat...by the way). We decided to consolidate by putting Cade on Braden's team. We were worried about a few things. Cade is physically as big as the other boys on the team (including Braden), and athletically is a strong addition to the team, but he's still 8. We didn't want to put too much pressure on him. Well, this weekend, he proved we made the right decision. He was awesome! Both my boys were!! It was such a great experience to see the brothers work as teammates. At one point, Cade was pitching as Braden was catching. So sweet! I had many people coming up to me commenting on Cade's pitching. Some I knew, some I didn't but they all wanted to hear me say how old he was for themselves. I was one proud mama!

Braden was awesome. He hit the ball great and was great at catcher and shortstop. It was so sweet to hear him cheering on his brother. He is such an encourager of everyone on the team.

Cade pitching. He closed a couple of games, and was so excited. This is his first outing as a Rays player and he shut them down. He was so excited he couldn't help but smiling on his way back to the mound each time. So sweet!

It's hard to see but this picture shows Cade pitching and Braden catching. They seem to have gotten alot closer since Cade joined the team. It is really fun to watch.


I love this of Cade and Richard. Richard might not appreciate his butt making the blog, but it was too cute not to post!

I think we can call this cutie our mascot because she's a little Ray of sunshine. Check out her outfit and bow! One of the Rays moms got her the outfit with the Rays logo on the shirt and we just had to have a big bow to go with it. The boys ate it up! She gave each of them knuckles before the game and they kept coming back for more. I will get pics of that next time. It's adorable!

She was so good. We were at the park for two days straight and it never bothered her. Here she is downing a strawberry shake someone brought her.

Since the boys played so well, we made it to the championship game. They didn't win the game, but placed 2nd in the tournament. The downfall to that is a late Sunday night. They didn't get to bed until 10:00 and had quite the baseball hangover this morning. This is what they both looked like before school today. They begged me to stay home, but you party at night...you pay the band in the morning. Evidently, this is the price!! lol...