The Thunder rolls to the beach

Clara’s softball season is over.  We played in the final regular season tournament at Liberty Park.  We lost our first game to Pell City which we weren’t expecting to lose.  We played another game Friday night and won. Then Saturday we started a long day of games.  We were in the middle of a rematch with the Wild Things and the weather went crazy.  It rained so much that they decided to postpone until the next day.   We honestly had an advantage that day because the Wild Thangs pitcher was tired because they had to be at the park the night before until 12:00 and at Liberty Park for an eight o’clock game.  So when we came back on Sunday, we lost.  The pitcher was very rested.  We fell into the losers bracket and lost to Hueytown.  We walked a bunch of folks and we realized this team was instructed to not swing unless there were 2 strikes.  In fact a parent bragged about it to us later.  They knew it was the only way they could win.  Kind of sad way to go,  so because of this we did not qualify for the state tournament.  We were planning to go to the Best of the Rest at the beach and then they cancelled it.  Some of us decided to go anyway.  We are driving back as I type.

Clara was so sad about her season ending so this trip was a fun distraction.  We stayed at the Phoenix which wasn’t as nice as some of the places we have stayed at but it had all we needed.  The first night we went to the Hangout and the girls were in heaven.  The boys had a blast too.  They had this huge sand pile that was about 12 feet high with spotlights on it.  We looked up and all the girls were leading the other kids at the place in the cha slide etc.   When we were driving home Lewis told me his throat hurt, gave him some motrin and hoped he was just thirsty from all the dancing.

The next morn it was a "widdle"sore and when we got out to the car I got our flashlight out for crabbing and looked in there.  It was red and white.  I knew we would need to make a visit to American Family Care.  They were very nice there and after a throat swab and having blood drawn we found out he had strep.  They had to test him for that junk I had a few weeks ago.  We got two balloons which are going back to Birmingham with us.   Went to Tacky Jacks that night and Rob was walking around without me and a table of ladies stopped him and asked if his Momma was Meg.   They were some folks from Canton, one had seen Rob when he was 4 or so but the others just knew he looked just like me.   All our friends couldn’t believe that happened but y’all know it is just a Mississippi thing.

We went back and sat by the pool visiting until late.  Our friend Alan had done an awesome video of the season and we loved seeing that.  Somehow we got out of going to Waterville the next day and enjoyed the whole day at the pool.  Clara and some girls went to the beach, but the beach was kind of sad to me. It didn’t look bad at all or smell but from above you could see the oil and all the people who were trying to keep it as bay.  Also our condo walkway was about 150 yards from the water in thick sand.  The people who worked at Phoenix were so glad we were there and every restaurant we went to made a point of saying thanks for coming down.

We had an intense volleyball game (intense for our most competitive girls) and then went to Adventure Island.  They all rode go carts, which was so funny because  of their competitive streaks.  Then you add in the Dads who most of them get their competitiveness from and you have a lot of spin outs.  One Dad purposely spun out our pitcher.   Lewis and Brian got stuck with a pink car, but he and the head coach (in a purple one)  ran a tight race.

Then we did laser tag and there was some poor bully boy in there with our crew.  He kept hitting them and grabbing their guns.  So they all ganged up on him and got him in a corner and kept shooting him.  He probably learned a valuable lesson that night…… My kids loved finding the Deal or No Deal game (our new obsession on GSN).  Lewis came away with a rubber shark and a rubber cockroach.  He keeps the roach in the shark’s mouth, he was a happy boy.   We ran into a team from Gardendale and starting thinking they looked familiar.  Then we saw mohawk boy and knew they were 10U ball players but we knew Gardendale didn’t make the state.  Mohawk  boy is this kid who hit our players in the stomach during the “good game” thing  after our first game.  Brian spoke to the coach about mohawk boy and mohawk boy was infamous after that.  He would try to  poke our banner with a stick at later tourney and Brian would yell “get outta here” to him.  So we asked the Gardendale folks what they were doing there.  They said they did have a best of the rest but only for 2 teams.  We didn’t know anything about it.  Our coach was told it was canceled due to lack of participation.  We probably wouldn’t have wanted to do it with 2 teams anyway but still.

I am enjoying this summer so much.  Looking forward to making many more fun memories.