Family – Page 3 – Terry Family Shenanigans

November…it was…then it wasn’t.

The title for this post is referring to our house. Once things got underway with building it, November 1st was the finish date we were hoping for. Well, it was six months before that but our ‘realistic’ finish date was November 1st. Or I would have settled for any day in November. Our year lease on our rental ended and it would have been a smooth transition to get into our house before the holidays and get settled. However, do due weather, deliveries, availability and everyone not making building my house their top priority 😜 November 1st came and went…along with every other day in November and we did not move into our new house. There was a lot more leg work for me to arrange staying in our rental month to month and getting renter insurance renewed and other never ending menial tasks but we didn’t really have a better option so I did it. Grumpily.

Emilee finished off the family birthdays for the 2023 year in November. She turned 11 years old. This will be her last year in elementary school, she starts Young Women in church in January, and she is still growing like a weed.

She wanted to have a family dinner at a place that throws rolls at you. It is called Lambert’s and it is 4 hours away at Table Rock Lake. We convinced her to go with Texas Road House because they have delicious rolls, and we tossed them to her when she wanted one. ALL the Olathe family was able to make it (except Grandma Terry but we ate cake with her later). Texas Road House doesn’t take reservations and we had a party of 11. They thought splitting our group in half and putting us at opposite sides of the restaurant was the best idea. Even when we pointed out the giant open table next to the one they sat us at that we would have all fit at. So we had an adult and kids table which I think everyone was pretty happy with. Sunday we had cake and ice cream at grandma and grandpa’s house. She wanted dolls and legos for her birthday. It was a successful birthday weekend!

The house wasn’t done in November but it was close enough that the girls could start seeing how they wanted to do their rooms. Emilee wanted to have a wall with triangles all over it with her favorite colors so we did that. I had to reach the tall areas but she did as much of it herself as she could. It turned out very cute! Allison was going to do a blue accent wall in her room but after trying a few samples she decided to go all white.

Emilee was one of the student of the months for November. The school changed it to something a little different this year. They call it “Showing Strength of Character” and they have a few different qualities they are focusing on for the year. It is basically student of the month though. We were very proud of her for being a good student and a good person. She also performed in her last Veteran’s Day Performance for her school as well. Emilee loves to sing and sings a lot at home or church but she does not like school performances-especially if they involve singing. We always give her a hard time because she looks like she wants to disappear when she is up there singing.

https://youtu.be/-fVVLxGqtdU (Veteran’s Day Performance)

Ryan was promoted this year to VP of Sales in his company. He has worked very hard and we are very proud of him. He is awesome. Shortly after his promotion, he moved to a new office. He asked me to come help him organize it so we went and did that one Saturday afternoon. Here are the before and after pictures. He still needs a plant and another picture or two but it looks good!

This year was a Terry Thanksgiving. We ate at Grandma and Grandpa Terry’s house and Becky and Jake and their family came from Idaho. My parents were going to be in Oklahoma with my brother for Christmas because he was having a new baby so they decided to join us for Thanksgiving. We were hoping to be in the new house by then but it didn’t happen so they squished in with us at our rental for the week. We played games and watched movies together. Grandma and Allison made lots of yummy treats. It was pretty cold so we didn’t do to much outside. We were able to fins a few of our holiday puzzles and put them together. We love doing puzzles in November and December. Right before we ate Thanksgiving dinner the cousins that were there decided to put on a Thanksgiving performance for us. Allison and Leah helped organize them and they all did a great job sharing their parts. Here is a link for the video.

https://youtu.be/p6NRBpi_0-E (Terry and Bourne Cousins Thanksgiving Program 2021)

September and October Activities

School got started and we all got back into the routines of our Fall schedules.

Matt took the girls to the bus stop at Grandpa Terry’s on his way to school and picked them up on his way home. During the school year I work three days a week instead of two so it is very helpful that he can take them because their schools are the opposite direction of my work. Fall is Ryan’s travel time for work and he was gone most week for 2-5 days at different trade shows or to help train new sales people.

We did celebrate Matthew’s 17th birthday this month…I apparently didn’t take any pictures! Matthew’s love language and favorite thing to do is eat good food. For his birthday he wanted to have a weekend of yummy meals. We went to a few restaurants- Chick-fil-a, K-machos, and Sake. We made pancakes and sausage and bacon for breakfast without eggs. Well, some of us had eggs but Matthew hates eggs so we didn’t make him eat any. His birthday was on a Sunday so after church we watched lots of football and Matthew didn’t have to do any chores and hung out with his friends as much as he wanted all weekend. It wasn’t his most exciting birthday but hopefully it was still a good birthday. I can’t believe he will be 18 next year!!

Matthew worked at Twisted Sugar as a cookie froster and cashier a few times a week. For the first time in 8 years he didn’t play Fall Ball because he was recovering from his elbow surgery. They thought it would take 4-6 months and it took every bit of that time and a little more. He did physical therapy at least three times a week. He took Campbell to the Homecoming dance.

Allison did wrestling and gymnastics. She was a teachers aid for her art teacher for one of her classes and really likes it. Spanish was not her favorite but she stuck it out. She continued with Girl Scouts as well and her troop went on a camping trip to Oklahoma and did glass blowing and other fun activities.

I have many more of Allison’s wrestling videos on my you tube channel but I will put a few here. She improved a lot this season. She was a lot more aggressive and won most of her matches. Grandma and Grandpa Jones came to visit and were able to see her in person.

We are squishing Allison between our fingers.

https://youtu.be/pB_ImzoA4s0 (Allison wrestling video)

Emilee continued with her horse riding lessons once a week and practicing her piano. She participated in a recital and did a great job.

https://youtu.be/t7fFaeNcF0w (Emilee’s Piano recital link)

We didn’t have baseball every weekend so we did a few family activities on the weekends. Sometimes it was raking leaves or cleaning the house- kids loved it. Sometimes it was lunch together. One of the weekends we finally made it to the WWI museum in downtown KC. It is the only one in the country and we have been meaning to go for years. We finally made it happen. It was pretty good. After we toured the museum and went up the tower to see the city, we went to lunch and stopped at Matthew’s teams baseball game to cheer them on. We highly recommend the museum.

Allison and Leah went to the Taylor Swift Movie of her Eras Tour. They got all dressed up and danced and sang along with the rest of the theater for a few hours. They had a good time. I loved seeing Allison in a cute dress she picked out too. They looked very cute together.

Ryan took the girls to a Royals game for a daddy daughter date. They got to use his company tickets so it was good seats and some yummy food.

To get ready for Halloween we ate chili and carved pumpkins with our cousins at their house. All of our kids can carve their own pumpkins now and they like to get a lot more detailed than I ever did so it is fun to see what they do with their creativity. It’s also awesome that they can clean up their mess now so I don’t have to touch any pumpkin guts.

Dad and I went to a masquerade party with some friends for Halloween. I’m not going to brag but it seemed kind of dead when we got there. People were shy about dancing and wearing their masks. We definitely kicked up the fun vibe and had a good time! Once we started dancing more people were willing to come out of their shells and have fun with us! RJ and I had masks too but they weren’t on for this picture obviously.

For Halloween day Grandpa Terry hosted us our cousins and the McDonalds. We brought the pizza and the witches brew. Then as a new level, Ethan and his girlfriend took the littler kids trick or treating and the rest grouped up and went on their own. The adults got to stay home and eat hot chocolate, hand out candy and play games. It was a little chillier than some years so everyone picked a warm costume or had to add some layers.

Another Fall tradition that we made sure happened was dad made us some of his cinnamon rolls from his grandma Groom’s recipe. They were delicious as always!

We were hoping our house would be done by the beginning of November but it wasn’t quite done yet so we bottled our excitement and tried to handle our impatience for a little longer.

The Race

For the past many years every year on Matthew’s birthday, he has raced his dad. Dead sprint, about 100 yards, winner gets bragging rights for the next year on being the fastest. Of course when this started Ryan smoked Matthew. In recent years Matthew is more and more convinced it will be the year he will win. Once or twice we have had a false start or some shenanigans that has resulted in a race being disqualified and having to run again. Ryan has been the clear winner each year though. This past year when Matthew turned 16 Ryan had a tweaked neck and wasn’t able to race. Then Matthew was sick, then it was winter, then something else and it was many many months after Matthew’s actual 16th birthday and they still hadn’t raced. Both trashed talked each other and said they other was scared to race because they new they would loose. Blah blah blah. They are both talkers. Finally one nice sunny day this Summer I told them both to get outside and race. I can’t remember when exactly they raced Matthew was closer to 17 than 16 (luckily it was before he broke his arm) but we are calling it the 16 year race. After being a late bloomer waiting semi-patiently for growth and puberty to catch up Matthew finally had some man muscle mixed in with his youth. Combined with his dad having old age mixed in with his man muscles and the perfect storm occurred and Matthew had his day. It was a proud moment for him.

Last Days of Summer

After celebrating Grandma and Grandpa’s 50th Anniversary we had a few days of Summer left before school started. We did school shopping and back to school nights. Aaron’s birthday this year was a pretty rainy day. We decided to go see him anyways. Our original plan was to go to the temple and do baptisms that day but Matthew had some doctor appointments and was still pretty limited to being up and about a lot so we bumped that and did it with Grandpa and a friend of Allison’s later. Ryan’s brother David and his wife Jen came up to KC one night and took us to dinner.

Our house was moving along but not ready to move into yet so we stayed at our rental and started another year of school. Matthew had surgery at the end of August on his elbow. They had to reattach some tendons and bone and he was pretty out of it for a few days. Now he is working on getting back into shape for baseball in the Spring.

My sister Sherri got a big promotion at work so DeAnna and I decided to send her a congratulation gift. We settled on a Potato Parcel. It is literally a potato that we had a picture and message printed on. Can’t get more unique than that. We think she liked it.

Then school started!!! Matthew is a Junior. Allison is in 8th grade. Emilee is in 5th grade. This is the last year with one in each school. Next year will be down to only two schools for a while. It was a bit of a rough start, the girls bus driver was new and it took a bit for her to get the girls picked up and to the right school then dropped off at the right spot after school. Matthew missed some school with surgery and Dr appointments. A few weeks in we started to get into our school grove.

Celebrating 50 Years!!

Roger and Rhonda were married for 50 years this past August! They decided they wanted to have a family reunion to celebrate. The plan was originally for a place in Colorado but as it got closer Roger wanted to make a few changes to make it a closer travel location for Rhonda. We moved our plans to Branson Missouri at Table Rock Lake. It is the same place we met last year for a Terry get together and everyone had a great time so we voted to do it again.

We all headed up to the cabin we rented on Sunday afternoon and got settled. It was a nice place. Plenty of bedrooms, a little shy on bathrooms, but we made it work. Everyone was able to come which meant we had 26 people. The first task Roger and Rhonda wanted was a family picture. Lauren did a great job at organizing us and we managed to get some pretty nice pictures. Lauren also makes a collage of pictures of each of the grandkids every few years so she took individual pictures of them to update that for Roger and Rhonda.

Lauren trying to ‘herd cats’. She did great as you will see in the following pictures.

Here are the individual pictures of grandkids. For some reason I don’t have Kiara, Alex or Dalion’s individuals. They are in the family ones though. I believe I have them in youngest to oldest order but there could be a few mistakes in the middle. We start with Kaden, Chloe, (Kiara missing), Sadie, Tristan, Jovee, Alex(missing), Tyler, Emilee, Jesse, Allison, Leah, Dalion(missing), Ethan, Matthew, and Nadia.

Once pictures were done we ate dinner and played games the rest of the evening. Monday we headed to the marina and rented a few boats. We did a speed boat for the older kids to get pulled and bounced around more in the tube and a pontoon for a calmer experience on the tube. It also has a slide so it is fun to anchor and just swim and play in the water around the pontoon. There was lots of fun and everyone had a great time. The weather was perfect.

After lunch things got a little crazy. Ross decided to try skiing. He popped right up and did great. When he was done he let go and his ski flipped up and hit him in the forehead. We pulled him in the boat and could tell he was going to need a few stitches. We drove back to the dock and Roger met him at the boat ramp with the car to take him to urgent care. It took him a few hours but a few shots, some antibiotics, a gnarly headache and 12 stitches later he was back at the cabin. While he was gone the rest of us took a break from the boats for a bit and swam around the docks. Then people were ready to go back out. I went with the little kids and Kris on the pontoon. Ryan and the older kids went on the speed boat with Jake and Becky. About 20 minutes later Matthew fell off the tube and dislocated/broke his elbow. Jake had to jump in and help him back into the boat. Then Rachelle met them at the boat dock with her car and took Matthew and Ryan to the emergency room. Jake came and found me on the boat with Kris and told me what happened. That took the rest of the wind out of the boating sails for the day. We dropped everyone off. Ross had just gotten back from urgent care so we got the boats ready and took them back. Several of our cars were at the marina so I went with them to return the boats and then got my car and went to the hospital. They were pretty backed up and it took about four hours by the time Ryan got there initially and they got us back to a room and medicated, x-rayed and decided they could reset it and he could have surgery later up in Kansas City. It was a rough couple hours. By the time we got home it was pretty late and Matthew was ready for bed.

Tuesday everyone was planning on going to Silver Dollar City. Most people still went to Silver Dollar City (it is a fun amusement park). We tweaked the plans a bit. Emilee doesn’t love roller coasters so Ryan found a horse ride he was planning on doing with her. Roger and Rhonda wanted to stay home. I talked with the Doctors in KC about Matthew’s arm and they said to let him rest a day or two and bring him in on Thursday. So he found a comfy spot on the couch and grandpa kept him supplied with pain meds when he needed and he slept the day away. Ross decided to go on the horse ride instead of the roller coasters to give his head less jerking around and I joined them since it was just an hour or two. It was a pretty good day all things considered.

After everyone’s various activities we all ate dinner together and then had a family gathering to chat and celebrate Roger and Rhonda. Ross and Lauren had made a slide show with lots of pictures from their 50 years of marriage. Roger shared some home videos and everyone shared experiences or asked questions about them, like their first date, places they lived, things like that. It was a fun evening. Becky made a cake and Ross made a plaque for them. I think they had a great evening and enjoyed the family time.

Wednesday we headed back to KC, except for the Lee’s they headed back to Texas. The Bourne’s stayed another day or two and then they went back to Idaho. There was lots of cousin time. Along with grandma and grandpa’s anniversary we celebrated Chole and Allison’s birthday too.

Gulf Shores-July 2023

A few days after getting back from New York we got ready for our family Summer vacation. Matthew had a baseball tournament in Gulf Shores Alabama over the fourth of July so we invited Ross and Lauren to come with us and we found a VRBO to stay at by the beach and added a few extra days to make it our Summer trip.

On our way to drop the Guinea Pigs off and start our vacation!

It was hot! We are used to humidity in Kansas but it took a step up in Alabama. Good thing we were by the beach!

We stopped at Bass Pro in Memphis on the way home for Matthew. He loves exploring a new Bass Pro Shop.

We had several beach days and did some mini golf. We found some Outlet Stores that the girls (and everyone) really liked and spent several hours shopping there. In the evenings we played lots of board games. Ryan and Ross brought at least 30 options of games to play like they usually do and we play 2 of them over and over. Matthew played 7 baseball games. The team has been playing pretty good lately but Matthew personally has been having an amazing season. They took 2nd overall in the tournament for their age group 16U.

On the actual fourth of July we had a cookout on the beach and played in the water a little bit with the whole team. Then watched fireworks from the beach. It was a cool experience. None of us had ever seen fireworks from the beach. It is just a great place to relax and hang out. I think everyone had a nice week.

Last time we were there a few years ago we took pictures at an ice cream shop that we went to. They are some of my favorite pictures. We went back to the same place and took the pictures again in the same poses we did a few years ago. We got some souvenirs at the store and made it out without any new crabs or other living animals.

By the time we drove home I had driven through 14 states within 2 1/2 weeks. It was a busy few weeks for everyone. We squeezed a lot of fun and new memories in this Summer and there are still more to come.

June 2023

Three kids and building a house can keep a person pretty busy in the Summer. As I mentioned in the last post, the girls started their Summer off with a Girl Scout Camp. Matthew started his off with High Adventure in Colorado with the other boys in our church ward his age. They went to the sand dunes and hiked those, and the mountains. They were camped right in the middle of the two. They went white water rafting one day as well. This is his third year of going. He has had a great time each year.

One of Allison’s favorite things to do is shop. She has been doing a little more babysitting lately. She is a really fun babysitter. Way better than I ever was. She always comes up with fun games and scavenger hunts and the kids she watch always have a great time. She watched Emilee and her friend Ethan a lot this Summer. This is a giant gumball machine she found on one of her shopping adventures spending her hard earned money.

Ryan and I had a few adventures in June too. We went to Las Vegas with our friends Dani and RJ. We had a pool day, exploring day and ate at some fun restaurants while we visited and enjoyed our quick weekend getaway together.

Emilee’s one wish for her Summer was to go to a horse camp. She did that at the end of June. She has been doing her regular riding lesson each week still but she wanted to have a full week of riding everyday. The last day they did a horse show for the parents to show what they learned. She had a great time. She still loves horses and hopes to get her own someday.

Another activity Emilee loves and looks forward to each and every Summer is sleeping in. She loves to sleep and would sleep until noon everyday if we let her. Dad had to wake her up one morning “early” which means before 9AM and he thought it was hilarious getting her to wake up. She wanted nothing to do with it.

Matthew kept busy with work and baseball and weight lifting after he got back from High Adventure. He went to FSY towards the end of June. It was in Warrensburg MO at the college there. He was able to room with his cousin Ethan and several of his other good friends were there. He said it was a fun time and one of his favorite parts was the testimony meeting the last night they were there. That makes me happy that he went and had a good experience.

Matthew and Carter making cooking to entertain themselves one afternoon.

Allison went to another girls camp at the end of June with two of her friends from school that are also in her troop. It was in Tulsa Oklahoma. I picked them up and they told me all about it on the way home. They had a mean counselor, it was ridiculously hot and the food was awful but they still had a great time together. Allison wore a swim suit that had the American flag on it and got the nick name Ms America for it. She came home with an American flag cowgirl had covered in sequence do go along with her nick name. She loved it.

Here are some random other pictures I have from this month that I’ll add to the end of this post.

Birthday party for Ethan Huntsman at Main Event

May 2023

If you have kids in school May is a crazy month. All the end of the year activities, awards, tests, field days, performances, and wrapping up Spring sports gets crammed into three weeks or less.

Mother’s Day was on a bit of a hectic weekend, we had baseball and softball games. This is the last year I will have one of my own kids singing to me in the Primary at church too. That is a little sad. I told Emilee to sing really loud and make my last Mother’s Day song a good one. She did. She likes to sing. Later that month when school ended and we were cleaning out back packs I found this that Emilee had made for me and forgot to give me. I am a great taxi driver. I get A LOT of practice.

Emilee tired her hand at softball again this Spring. With her glasses she did really well! Imagine that. It was a fun team of girls. They grew a lot through the season and ended up winning their tournament at the end and claiming their spot as The Blue Valley Rec 4th Grade Girls Softball Champions. After the season was over the girls challenged the parents to a game and beat us. Emilee got the, Most Improved Player award. She had a really important hit in the last season game that let them score and get into the playoffs. I think she has found a sport that she really likes and wants to continue with.

Matthew wrapped up school baseball and jumped right into Club Baseball. He has had a good season so far and is really enjoying himself. He has been hitting and fielding well. He earned his way back to leadoff hitter and is the starting short stop. He was thinking of doing football in the Fall but decided to keep focused on just baseball for now. He has grown a lot but isn’t quite big enough that he wants to go up against other people and get tackled by people who have 40+ pounds on him.

Allison made honor roll and I was able to go see her get her award. She is looking forward to 8th grade and being the leaders in the school. She is excited that she went to the same elementary school and then middle school from start to finish without switching schools. Her and her friends decided to add a Hawaiian theme to their last day of school and they all dressed up.

Her gymnastic team made it to regionals and they traveled down to Wichita to compete. Allison did really well and had a fun time. Her coach was leaving McCracken’s where Allison has been for the last 7 years. Allison decided she wanted to follow her so after Regionals we changed to Element Gymnastics. I think it will be a good fit for her. She will get a lot more one on one training.

School always gets out the Thursday before Memorial Day Weekend. For our first Summer activity we went to Arkansas and spent the weekend at Dave and Jen’s house. Matthew wasn’t able to come because he had work and baseball but the four of us had a good time. The kids love swimming with their cousins in their pool whenever they feel like it. We did an outdoor movie, games, roasted smores, did a little shopping and had a fun time visiting with everyone.

After we got back from Arkansas the girls got ready for their Girl Scout Day camp that they have gone to for the last several years. Allison is one of the youth leaders now. She likes having a little more freedom to pick what she does and spends a lot of her time with the little kids area of all the younger kids of the volunteers running the camp. She likes to do the sleepover the first night with the older girls too. She usually found Emilee once or twice throughout the day to say hello too. Dad went on Saturday and was a leader for Emilee’s group. She loved having him there. Allison didn’t go the last day of camp because she had something else going on. They handed out awards on the last day and Allison ended up winning “Best Swap” that year (it is a trinket each girl makes to trade with other girls and they pin them on their hats) Emilee went up and accepted the award for her since she was gone.

I thought I already mentioned this but its pretty big so I will again. After 3+ years, and countless false promises of “one more month” Allison finally got her braces off! She was and still is pretty excited. Now we have the constant battle of getting her to wear her retainers. 🤣🤣

Last But Of Course Not Least

April wouldn’t be April if it wasn’t Easter…unless Easter was in March that year. We had a nice Easter weekend and home in Olathe. We went to church and then had dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Terry and Ross and Lauren and their family. We opened Easter baskets at our house but the kids wanted to do an Easter Egg Hunt together so the parents hid the eggs for them outside. It was a beautiful Sabbath day to celebrate the resurrection of out Savior.

Even the boys wanted in on the Easter Egg Hunt

Moving Right Along to April

We thought this year might creep by slowly while we wait for our house to be built. Sometimes it does seem like it is taking forever but overall it does seem to be flying by. Once Spring Break was over and it is the 8 week stretch until school is out for the Summer it really seems to fly.

It was a cold Spring but there were a few nights in April we were able to light up the fire pit and make some smore’s in the back yard. Mmmmm we all love a good smore.

Emilee was selected as the Student of the Month which they now call Leader of the Month. Luckily they awarded it on a Friday so I was able to watch her get it. They do a little intro about the person before they say who it is. They said a lot of nice things about her- she helps others, gets her work done, is kind, loves to read, is a good listener. As soon as they said this person loves horses and knows all kinds of facts about horses everyone knew the teacher was talking about Emilee.

I was a good girl and did my workout before her award ceremony even though that meant I had to show up stinky and gross. Good thing you can’t smell pictures.

Our church had a Prom Night. Matthew’s high school only lets upper classmen go to the prom. Or you can be invited to the prom by an upper classmen. Matthew didn’t go to the school prom. When the church said they were having a stake prom I asked him no less than 12 times if he and his friends were going to get a group together and go to the dance several months, and weeks in advance. You don’t have to dress formal but a lot of people do. He told me each of those 12 times that he was not planning on doing that. The day of the prom he texted me from school to tell me that he and a group of kids were going to go to prom and he was taking Campbell.🤦‍♀️ At least he had given her a few more days notice than he did me so she was able to find a dress and Matthew just wore his church clothes, no tux. They both had baseball/softball practice until 6:30 so they missed dinner and ended up just going to the dance. After the dance they had an after party were they are supposed to dress up as something together. They changed back into their baseball/softball uniforms and went together like that. I got no group pictures. They had a fun night. That is is the difference between a boy and girl. Boys are zero planning time, you have to drag details out of them and beg other moms for pictures. Girls want 12 outfit options, tell you all the tea and have pictures of every second of the night. Is it not adorable that they both were the number 14?!

Allison was busy doing track everyday after school in March and April. She decided to do the pole vault, discus and shot put. She did a lot of running and got in good shape. The coaches didn’t do much coaching for her events so it was more of a figure it out on your own thing. We were proud of her for trying something new and putting all the effort she put into her practices and meets. I tried to go running with her a few times. I am a tread mill runner IF I run- I like the AC on a fan in my face and stopping exactly where I started as soon as I am done. She kicked my but when we would run together. She loved the social part of it and overall had a good time. She ended the season not sure if she wanted to do it again. If she does she wants to drop shot put and discus and do the high jump instead. If she decides to do it again we will have to see about finding her a private coach to teach her the pole vault and high jump.

Emilee is trying her hand at softball again this Spring. So far it is going 100% better just for the fact that she has glasses now and can see the ball. She joined her bestie Reese’s team and it is a good fit for her. She has improved a lot in catching, throwing and hitting. We all try and help her practice batting and playing catch at home. Hopefully she sticks with it for a few more years.

Matthew made the JV baseball team. They had a really good season. A little more than half way through the season he was moved to practicing with the varsity team and going to all their games. He still played JV games but then he would go to all the varsity games and warm up with them and pinch run for them a few times. The Varsity team went to State he got to go with them and had a great experience. They lost their first game and were out but still had fun. He is hoping to get to go again his Junior and/or Senior year when he is a full time varsity player. He has grown a bit and has a little more strength behind his swing and throw so he is really enjoying himself when he plays now. It is fun to watch him.