Who Do You Play For?

Check out Cooper, featured as a child who has fought cancer on this wonderful non-profit foundation's website!!

http://www.whodoyouplayfor.org/purpose

Sister/Cousin Visit

The last couple of years my sister, Heather, has come with my nephew, Paxton to visit us on her birthday! The boys always have so much fun and we thoroughly enjoy just hanging out together for a few days.

Lots of Game Playing!

Colby, Carson, Cooper, and Paxton

 This year my sweet husband even watched the boys all day long for us to get away for a day of shopping and lunch in Murfreesboro. We also went to Cookeville to visit Hannah (my niece, her daughter) and see her college campus and where she lives. Then, my sister-in-law, Beth came and brought Emma and Alea (my 2 sweet Georgia nieces) to ride back to Arkansas with Heather to visit family there.

Beth, Emma, and Alea

Heather and Me

LOVE having this time together.....it truly fills my cup!

Carson's 8th Birthday

Our oldest, Carson turned 8 years old on May 20th! He typically has a big backyard party with lots of friends, neighbors, and baseball teammates over to play baseball games, etc. This year we gave him the option to have just a few friends and a very small party...in exchange for a nicer gift from mom and dad. After all, the money we saved from having a smaller party would be worth getting him a little more for his birthday. That's what he chose! So, just a few friends came over and had a "build your own ice cream sundae" party and then had a home run derby in the back yard. It turned out perfect!

Spring and Summer Baseball

Since I am so behind at blogging, I am going to do a little summary of Carson and Colby's baseball from the Spring season and also from Carson's All-Star team this summer. Both of the boys LOVED playing baseball again. The main difference this year, was that their dad was not able to take the head-coaching role, as he was the Commissioner for Baseball for EWA (Our athletics association) and also ended up taking a new job with a lot of travel in the midst of the season. Rod was able to be assistant coach and was there as often as he could be. Both teams had great coaches and it worked out just fine.

Carson moved into the machine pitch age division and was on the Dodger team with a lot of his buddies from past seasons. He truly enjoys playing and we really enjoy watching him. He is such a little competitor and gives it 100%. Carson also enjoys pulling for his teammates and I love watching him encourage others. He played short-stop most of the time and really did an amazing job! He then went on to play on the All-Star team, the Knights! It was a lot of fun. He played pitcher on this team. We are so super proud of him.

Colby played on the 6U team as a Dodger, and was most excited that his buddy Zach was on his team. Colby played 2nd base and right field most of the time. He was nicknamed, Colby "Cheetah" Cook as he was encouraged to run like a "Cheetah"......bless his heart, those little legs just don't have the speed yet as a lot of the bigger players. He never gave up and continued to try his hardest, improving so much over the season, and always had a positive attitude. His team ended up going all the way to the championship playoffs and came in 3rd out of 16 teams in their age division. They were truly a team with so much heart, that were so fun to watch! They improved from the beginning of the season to the end by leaps and bounds!