Baseball Night

It was Dakota's baseball night again. He has games every Tuesday & Thursday. On Tuesday night it was almost 100-degrees so they only had the kids play one inning and then called it a game. Tonight it was much milder- only about 90-degrees. So much more comfortable.

Here he goes... getting warmed up for his first at-bat.

Taking a practice swing. Hmmmm... do I notice that somebody forgot to wear his glasses?!

Here he is. Ready for a good solid hit.

They use a mechanical pitching machine and give each of the kids 5 pitches. If they don't get a hit in 5 pitches they get to T-up and hit the ball off the "T".

There's two...

And he had to hit off the "T". Usually he doesn't have to use the "T". But usually he wears his glasses. Actually tonight on his second at-bat he got a nice solid hit. He is a pretty good little baseball player! I am pretty proud of that little guy.

A Hot Day of Geocaching

It was really hot and muggy today. The sign at the bank said 86-degrees. But we ventured out to do a little local geocaching around town. We loaded up the GPS, the Geo-Monkey, our box of geocache swag and headed out.

First we ventured up to Sunset Park in Lakeland Hills. Dakota's baseball team has played here a few times so he likes this park. And he was the one to find the first cache- underneath the light pole.

Here's what the cache looked like. An Altoids tin painted black. Cache, Geo-Monkey and Brother-Monkey.
Here was the second cache at the park. This one was down a trail through the woods. It was so HOT in the sunshine! This one was a pretty cool container made out of a big PVC pipe.

Sydney spent the night with Marina last night so she went along with us. And Corrina Dirks joined us for the day too.
Trekking through the woods back to the van.

Two caches and Marina & Sydney were done. Too hot. So they were ready to head over to Sydney's house where they were planning to go swimming. Along the way though we made one more stop at Roegner Park for another cache. Turned out this one was a bit more of a hike than we were thinking. Only a 1/4 mile walk but the heat was just a bit miserable.

Corrina found this one in the big tree.

Here are the wilted hot girls.

Feeling better on this part of the trail... in the shade. Dakota suggested walking behind dad because "dad makes a LOT of shade!" Thanks a lot you little weasel!

After dropping the girls off at Sydney's house we continued on our geocaching adventure. Corrina found the next one too. This was a fairly easy one- just a black painted tin hidden in the bushes at Fulmer Park. We took a geobug from this one and left our little monkey treats.

Corrina and Dakota found another one in the branches of this tree next to where the old YMCA was. It is sad to go by there now and see just a scrubby field where our old YMCA building and fantastic summer camp used to be. I think back to all the amazing activities and fun we had on those grounds and it is weird just seeing an overgrown field. The only sign that the YMCA and summer camp were ever there is the berm that used to create an amphitheatre seating area in the campfire area where we used to have the big stage where I painted the giant Indian Thunderbird so many years ago. Sad that it is all gone now.

Next stop- Game Farm Park. This was our first "DNF" (did not find) of the day. The GPS took us right here to the corner of the tennis courts and the clues led us to believe the cache should be fairly simple to find but there was nothing to be found. Either we were going cuckoo from the heat or this one has been muggled.

Our last stop was a simple magnetic cache. We zeroed in on it quickly, found it under the picnic table, signed the log and left behind our tiny monkey trinket for the next to find it.

We were happy to be headed home to the air conditioned house for a nice big glass of cold water and some cold watermelon. Very refreshing after a HOT day of adventure.

Happy Birthday, Dakota!

Dakota turned 8 years old! He had a huge birthday. On Friday, his actual birthday, he started the day with a couple of presents at home.

He got a new batting helmet for baseball!
Pretending to be surprised, Dakota opened up the car drawing book that he picked out himself. "Oh, look, it's just what I wanted!"

He also got a cool twirling kite and then got dizzy spinning around in circles to make it spin.

And inside this lovely bag? A rubber stretchy frog.

Then it was off to Dennis & Diane's to go swimming with Raeden & Reece in the pool. It was a nice 80-degree day... perfect for a swim!

Reece has her very own pool. A little shallower, a little safer, still lots of fun!

Uh oh... taking after her big cousin Marina already at only 1 year of age. Here is Reece trying on Marina's shoes. I see a closet full of shoes in this girl's future!

Swimming together is fun!

Here goes Raeden... right off the diving board!

These are three cousins that love to swim and play together!

After swimming time it was off to Aaron & Dani's house. Dani made special birthday cupcakes and everyone iced and decorated their own. She even made lime green frosting just for Kota!

Then, when I got home, it was off to Chuck E Cheese! Grandma joined us too.

Dakota's first and most frequent stop... Skee-Ball.

Racking up the tickets!

Raeden & Marina played air-hockey. They were both really good at that!

Reece was having fun too!

Pizza time! Uncle Aaron is ready for his dinner...

More presents! What is in this bag? Well, sorry, but you'll have to wait and see after everyone's done eating!

Yummy!

Cool! Dakota's very first model airplane.

Oh boy... clothes.

Back to playing games. Reece played "Funky Monkey". She didn't get it of course but it was still fun to push the buttons and see the monkeys going around in there.

Dakota loves the simulated roller coaster.

And Rae loves Chuck E Cheese!

Whac-A-Mole!

Bob the Builder... can we fix it?

Bob the Builder... yes we can!

Grandma got her picture taken with Marina.

Time to get ready to go... look at all of Dakota's tickets!

Back at Aaron & Dani's house for ice cream and cupcakes.

And more presents!

These presents were all from Grandma & Grandpa. He got a cool lime green water bottle! And UNO Spin... one more version of UNO which is Dakota's favorite game.

A new swim suit. And it's lime green and blue!

And a brand new green baseball bat. Awesome!

Aaron just told Rae she had permission to spend the night at Grandma's house along with Dakota & Marina. "Oh, daddy, I get to spend the night at Nanna's house with Reena and Kota! You're the BEST!" she said.

(Small interlude. Saturday morning the kids were at Grandma & Grandpa's house. So I don't have any pictures. Carol & I went out for lunch for our anniversary and then stopped to get the bike we wanted to get for Dakota's birthday before picking the kids up in the afternoon. We spent the rest of the day just picking up the house and messing around. In the evening Marina went back to Aaron & Dani's to babysit the girls and then she stayed there overnight. So the pictures now pick up at Sunday morning when Dakota got up and found, in the kitchen, the new bike he has wanted for so long!)

That boy is a sleepyhead! You can hardly tell how excited he was. Unfortunately, the bike he's been wanting for months and months (because it looks like a motorbike) ended up being too small for him. Turns out that kids grow. Who knew? So there was a bit of disappointment when we decided it would be for the best to return the bike for one that will last longer.

After meeting Sunday afternoon we returned the bike and he picked out a new one that is more his size. Look at the awesome spokes on that thing! And it has two hand brakes. What an awesome bike. He loves it.

Errm... the helmet didn't fit either. And we didn't make it back to Fred Meyer to trade it in...

And then comes Monday... Dakota's grand party at the Glo-Golf in the Supermall with his friends. It's hard to take pictures in there... with the blacklights everything glows and looks so cool but you can't capture that very well in pictures.

But I tried.

So I gave up on that and just turned the flash back on. You can't tell how things are glowing but at least you can see Dakota's guests having fun. Here is his friend Kalei from his second grade class.

Tianna was good at that game!

Here's Dakota's friend Josh from school.

And there's little Mircea in her cowboy boots.

Auntie Dani brought Raeden and Reece.

Raeden LOVED golfing!

There's Josh... still having fun.

Here's Katelyn and Madyson from school.

There's Tyler and Tianna.

Marina loves that little Rae.

Look at these two cutie-pies!

The birthday boy.

When they were finished with golfing the kids each decorated their gift bag and filled it with take-home goodies.

"Happy Birthday to You,

Happy Birthday to You.

Happy Birthday Dear 'Kota,

Happy Birthday to You!"

Cake time!

Make a wish, Dakota. Not that there is much left to wish for after 4 days of birthday!

Time for presents. Kalei wrapped his present in bubble-wrap... so the wrapping was almost as fun and exciting as the gift itself!

He gave Dakota the coolest remote controlled stunt kite you've ever seen!

Madyson gave Dakota a "Splash-Out" ball with lots of extra water balloons to go with it. It will be so fun when the weather gets back up in the 80's this weekend! He also got an awesome water bottle from Madyson. And the coolest idea... Madyson gives books in place of birthday cards! So he got a nice "A to Z Mysteries" book. What a great idea.

Kate knows about Dakota's affinity for lime green. Out of her large lime green gift bag came a lime green golfing hat, a lime green Lego Bionicle and an awesome green car Lego set!

Tyler and Tianna know Dakota pretty well too. They wrapped his gift in the Sunday comics!

CAREFULLY removing the comics for reading later revealed an awesome Nerf gun Dart Tag set. I bet Tyler can't wait to come over to our place to play it with Dakota too!

Mircea and Casper got Dakota his very own awesome camping chair. I guess they were feeling sorry for him after seeing the state of so many of our camping chairs when we were camping on the Fourth of July... several are held together with wire and twine and a couple, well, a couple just aren't held together any more at all. Mircea gave Dakota a bag full of fabric paints so he can personalize his new chair. Then he'll be all ready for camping again!

And Kota's bestest cousin Raeden gave him an appropriately lime green wrapped gift with a little green squirt gun on top. Inside it was all filled with cool summer clothes. New shorts & shirts... that kid is all set for the summer now!

Here's a good shot of Dakota with his friend Josh... two very polite, nice boys.

And back at home... one last gift from daddy. Wrapped up to look like a snake.

Cool! An air-rocket! "I wonder if we can shoot it over the house?!"

So now my little tiny baby guy is 8 years old. What a big guy!

Happy Birthday, Dakota. I love you to the moon and back. And all the way over the house.