The New All Star in the Family

Summer is officially here and that means it's time for All Stars Softball. It's a good and a bad thing... good for softball training and making new friends, but bad because it's a huge time/money commitment and if the coach isn't good, well... it can be a L-O-N-G summer. This year, Marika made the 8U red (first) team so she was excited to play. We think she is the only "younger" (there are two years per division, so most of her teammates will go up to 10U next spring whereas she'll remain at the 8U level). We only acquiesced to her playing because we thought it might build her character - she would finally realize the benefits of working hard every day and stop complaining about everything. Let me just say - it's not looking good so far! Ah, well... she's only 8 years old... :) Coach really surprised me by letting ALL the girls play at least half the game - that was awfully nice of him! We're used to coaches benching their weaker players for the entire game.

 

 

There she is, with her proud big sister!

 

Here she is at bat - you can barely see her, she's so little! 

On a different note, we were in Scottsdale all last week, where it was very relaxing but very hot (110 degrees every day). The girls had lots of fun playing in the pool... (yes, my hubby is a ham!)

...and shopping! They really liked this shopping area (Scottsdale Quarter), probably because there were misters everywhere. Their new favorite clothing store seems to be H&M now, too.

 

Colored cardstock (DCWV), white cardstock (Crafter's Companion), ink (Memories, Inc.), stamps (Unity Stamp Co), markers (Spectrum Noir)

 

But, now it's time for catch-up back at home. I am really far behind on my scrapping, especially since - after our return - we had to frantically clean the house and yard for a big work function DaddyDude hosted here at the house last night.Unfortunately, this took precedence over any crafting. All these Unity stamps and not enough time to play with them! But, I did have to make a few graduation cards for DaddyDude's peeps. I love this big huge flower! It also gave me a chance to experiment a bit with my Spectrum Noir markers (I have their DVD but I still haven't had time to watch it - ack!).

 

Hopefully I'll have more projects to show next week. If, that is, I don't melt away in Indio this weekend... :) Hope you all have a great weekend - thank you for visiting! In the meantime, don't forget to shop at Unity Stamp's latest sale - there are many great new releases! :)