My Favorite Season!

My favorite season is here! Softball season!!

Danielle had 2 school softball games this week. Today's game was rescheduled for later in April. Hopefully the field will be dry enough to play tomorrow's game.

They won both games. Danielle played really well. It was fun to watch her play again.

 

Running to 1st to cover the bunt

 

It looks like she'll be playing 2nd for school ball. This will be good because it will help her keep her infielding skills sharp.

I love to watch her run the bases.

This coach is letting her slap a lot, which is very good practice for her travel season.

She also had track time trials this week. The time trials determine who will get to compete at next week's track meet. She came in 2nd in the 100m and 4th in the 200m. She's convinced she can beat the girl who beat her in the 100m. Hopefully she will get the chance. I assume we'll find out on Monday if she gets to compete in Tuesday's meet.

Today's Pic

 

Spring Break Fun

On Friday we went to a ceramics studio and tried throwing our own pottery on a wheel. Ron used to do this in high school and loved it. He took a class before Tyler was born but hasn't done anything since. This was the first time for the rest of us.

The owner and her assistant gave us a demonstration and then helped us as needed. Turns out I needed a lot of help because I was terrible at it! I had one thing almost all done but the assistant told me it needed cleaned up a little. He attempted to clean it up and ended up destroying what I had done. That was a bit frustrating since it took me so long in the first place. Danielle had a similar problem with one of her items. She got the hang of it quicker than I did, though, and made several items. Tyler also did better than I did. Apparently it was just like riding a bike for Ron.



He made the top wavy like that on purpose. I like it.

All the items on the table are ours. The pink and green bowl is mine. The yellow vase is Danielle's. The other items are Tyler's and Ron's. We could only fire 2 items a piece, though, so we didn't keep everything.

We can't pick up our items for about 3 weeks. Hopefully I won't forget! We had a nice evening working on them. We also went out to dinner downtown before hand and went for a walk along the river when we were done. It was a fun evening.

Our Glass Projects

We picked up our witch's balls today. I love how they turned out! They are all a little different, which makes them even more special. The teacher left a note on the bag about my ball being the best she's ever had a student make. Tonight I saw she posted about it on Instagram and FB, too. I won't lie, that made me feel pretty good considering how badly I did with the pottery last night!! Ha ha! (Will post those pictures tomorrow.) Now to find the right place to put them.

Ron's

Tyler's

Danielle's

Mine

Spring Break Fun

On our third day of spring break the four of us took a glass blowing class. We each made a witch's ball, which is a glass orb with glass strands inside. It was just the four of us, which was very nice. The instructor was very patient and let us do as much of the work as possible. Each of our orbs turned out a little different, which I like. You can't see the correct hue of the color when the glass is still super heated, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they all turned out. We had to leave them there to cool slowly for several days.

Some of the color choices.

Rolling the glass in the color pellets. Ron picked transparent blue.

Trying to get some color on the bottom of the glass. Tyler picked red and gray.

Shaping the glass

She could tell he played an instrument. He was a natural at blowing the glass.

She knocked the orb off the pole and then added another glob of glass to make a hook.

Danielle picked orange & white.

We used these big tweezers to poke glass into 3 sides and the bottom to create the web in the orb.

I used transparent green. You could see the web really well in mine.

15.5

Our second day of spring break also happened to be Tyler's half birthday. I took him to apply for his learner's permit today, and he passed the written exam.

Getting a license today is different than when I got mine. We had drivers' ed in school, which also meant it was free. It's no longer a school course. I'm still trying to decide on a driving school. So far they've ranged in price from $270-$360 for the 24 hour classroom work and 8 hours of in-car driving instruction. (Before he can get his license, he also has to complete 50 hours of driving with us.) The plan is to start the classes toward the end of April so he can have a few weeks of learning the basics with us first. He'll probably work on his in-car driving once he gets back from his dive trip in July - it usually takes several weeks to be able to schedule time anyway. He should finish everything in August and, if everything goes as planned, can take his test in September if he feels ready. I've heard people complain about how expensive it is to insure teenage drivers. They weren't kidding. Even with the "good student discount", our insurance premiums will double. And my worries probably will, too. Shouldn't he still be this age?!!

In honor of his half birthday, we also had cake. I didn't have enough candles to do 15.5, but we did stick with half the birthday song. I caught him mid bite.