What Was THAT Sound???

Oh yeah, that would be the sound of July WHIZZING by!

A whole month without a blog post *eeek*

No joke, one day we have an entire month ahead of us....the next, it's flipping AUGUST and school begins in less than 2 weeks! WTF!?!?!?

Been Wicked busy around here! Wanna know what we've been up to???

Short version:
We've been to FL for Softball World Series, been to visit my mother and step father in FL, drove back home in 2 vehicles, one of which was a uhaul truck, met with high school, got Teen Queen into school of choice, teen queen tried out and made Field Hockey team, laundered clothes to pack up again and be back on the road in 2 days to IA for family golf and visiting. *whew*

L-O-N-G Version (may take a couple postings, one for each stretch of the trip)

Saturday July 12th - July 19th

Saturday July 12th Boy Wonder's baseball team has their Championship Game 10 am. They WIN and not only take their league, but also their division..Double WIN. They ended their season with 20 wins and 1 loss. Pretty damn impressive for 10 and 11 yr olds! Boy Wonder led the league in Homeruns. By season's end he had thumped TEN of em over the fence; 2 of em were GrandSlams!

Game was done, trophies handed out and we were on our way back to the house. Boy Wonder needed to shower, Rambo and I had to finish packing and load up the car, and Teen Queen...well she had to pace herself. Before we knew it we were all set and on the road. Panama City Beach, here we come! Along with thousands of other softball teens and their families! Panama City Beach, FL is where we were headed for the FastPitch World Series (B). There were about 102 teams in the 14U division including Teen Queen's ~ Louisville Magic.

This would be my beloved new Camry Hybrid! Well, new since March...does that still count as new? Having downsized from the Trailblazer LT 4x4, and having to lug Teen Queen's batting and catching gear around, extra space was required for this 11 hour road trip. This is where RoofBag comes into play! I will have to do a post entirely on RoofBag. I cannot recommend this product enough!


Brown Park, Panama City, FL... a very different landscape than home. No palm trees in KY!


It was just go, go, go in Panama City. There was never a whole day off, always something somewhere. We did get in a lil beach time as well as pool time, so that was good. The girls lost the first pool play, which is ok. The pool play games are really just warm up games and do not count towards the bracket games or standings. They then won their next 2 pool play games.

This is an evening view from our 13th floor condo.

Next came the bracket play. 2 games, if you keep winning, you keep playing til you win the whole thing or lose 2. We had to be at a park about 20-30 min away, an hour before the game. Which means we woke up at 5 and were at the park and girls were warming up by 6 am. *ugh* That’s ugly early!

We played a team from TN who promptly kicked our butts. After which we had a gift exchange.

Later, we find out that their pitcher was all-state and they have 6 high school girls on the team. Our girls held their own for a bit against this team for a few innings. While at another park; we found out that this team comes to a B class tournament to warm up for the class A tournament. That’s just wrong.

There was a 5pm game, so much better than 7am! The girls won with ease. We had met our first goal of playing further than last yr.

Sunset at Callaway Fields

Our next game would be against a local team that we play every week. We all laughed that we had to drive all the way to FL to play a team that lives about 20 min away! Since each of us had lost 1 bracket game, this meant whomever lost this game was going home and the other would live to play another game. We wanted to send them home BAD. Beating them would provide us with local bragging rights, our second goal!

Both teams wanted to win to send the other KY team packing. After no score in allotted time it goes to extra innings in an international tie breaker; in which each team gets one more at bat, with a runner already on second base. We managed to score a couple runs. I was already feeling pretty nauseous due to the heat and the game situation. Then to add to my ack, Teen Queen was up! Our girl smacked an out of the park grand slam homerun!!!!!! Talk about screaming fans! From both sides. Rambo was so excited he started banging the fence and managed to crack the crystal in his watch! That's DAMN funny! The next girl up hit a homerun too! By the time we got our 3 outs, it was 9-0 and the OC was up to bat. They managed to get 4 runs.

No still shots taken, I was taking video of the whole game! Yeah, on the Teen Queen's grandslam clip all you can hear is me, screaming and cheering like the ass, er umm... I mean proud momma that I am. Clearly, I will have to edit that clip!

We had won! Not only playing farther than we did last yr, but also beating a local team. We lived to play another game. Little did we know that it was at the next field over and it was NOW! The girls had about enough time to pee and that was it. Time to take the field. Our girls had put everything they had into that previous game. It was super hot and humid, they were exhausted and the opposing team had been resting the whole time our team was playing. The Magic played their hearts out and were beat by this team. It did not matter one bit. We could not have been more proud of our girls.

Everyone: parents, players and coaches were so thrilled that we had met our goals that losing this one just did not matter.

It was now early evening on Friday, we went back to the condo swam a bit in the pool with some of the team. The beach was very mucky, lots of algae and seaweed. We packed up our stuff and got ready to check out Saturday morning.

Post 2 of next stretch coming soon....
but first; my gushing about roofbag