Xander's Spring

Xander absolutely loves school and always gets a little sad as the end of the school year approaches. He has really enjoyed 3rd grade and his wonderful teacher Mrs. Siegel. One beautiful afternoon in early June I joined Xander and the rest of the third grade class for a fun picnic lunch to celebrate all their hard work and have a little fun. Xander literally took two bites of food...

and then he was off to the baseball diamond for a game of kickball with a bunch of his friends. It was hilarious; one minute all the kids were eating, the next swarms of kids were running to join in the kickball fun.

Xander is such a quiet kid so it was great to see him taking charge of organizing all the kids into teams and getting things going.

Xander also enjoys getting his craft on and made this clay flower for Noah for his birthday.

He also was a big help in planting some real flowers out front for us.

One of Xander's biggest accomplishments this spring was he finally finished reading the Harry Potter series. He is an avid reader but got stalled for a month or two on Book 5. But her persevered and made it through the rest of the books and was finally able to watch the final two movies as his reward. He has now started reading one of my favorite series, The Ranger's Apprentice, and seems to be enjoying those as well.

Xander's favorite spring activity was definitely playing baseball. We have been blessed year after year with fabulous coaches in the sports our kids play and Xander's baseball coach was no exception. His team had a really great season and made it to the playoffs, easily winning the first game. We were extremely nervous about facing the A's in the second playoff game since they had beat us during the regular season but we made it through that game as well, winning 16-2.

Xander had a few nice hits and made it on base several times.

Waiting at third, ready to head on home.

And he scores!

Winning the second game put us in the championship game against the Pirates who had remained undefeated the whole season. And not only were they undefeated but they had soundly beat every other team by at least 12-15 runs each game. We had lost to them in the regular season game but we were optimistic! The big game was scheduled to be played at one of the big fields at the Cal Ripken stadium but the day of the game it was changed to one of the smaller fields. Xander was pretty bummed but it was still cool to play up there.

Let's go O's!

The weather was miserable, cold and drizzling rain, but we cheered on our boys who played a great game. Xander was able to get two nice hits.

Unfortunately it wasn't our night. Despite the great defensive game we played, the Pirates scored 6 runs to our 2. We were still proud of our team for making it to the championship and for holding the other team to such a low amount of runs. Xander received another trophy to add to his growing collection.

Our Orioles!

One last team cheer!