Franklin Chronicle: A Walk through our summer so far...

The Little Bruiser's face in this picture says it all. Hot, but happy. We're on to day 19 of 100+ degree weather here in Lubbock, but our spirits (along with our electric bill) are up.

We've looked for shade in the strangest places, but we just can't get out of the heat.

Even at the amusement park, under the canopy of the carrousel, we could feel it.

It takes a lot for an outcome person like me to ride something like this, especially so many coasters! Honestly, I was surprised at how hard it was to just "sit" at an amusement park. Perhaps it would have been different if I'd not been totally preoccupied by an irrational fear that the little bruiser would freak out mid ride and be stuck 20 feet in the air with a disgruntled one-year-old. But the QB and Mr. Baseball definitely enjoyed it.

The boys and the QB went on this ride twice. It was fun this year with the Monkey because he wasn't afraid to ride some of the bigger rides.

We bought our first kiddie pool this year. And thanks to Sonic's happy hour, the boys got to cool down from the inside out.

On the last day of school we went to a big park on the east side of town and tried not to make many sudden movements in the heat.

The boys all through sticks in the water. Well, the little bruiser watched his older brothers throw sticks in the water.

This year Mr. Baseball played machine pitch little league. We thought t-ball was overly competative, but machine pitch takes the cake. He spent most of his time in left field because he was one of the younger players (the team is made of 7-8 year olds), but he got called in to the infield every once in a while to help out when some of the older boys were having trouble.

Left field was home for Mr. Baseball this year. At first he had a hard time with the fact that he didn't get to be in on every play, but he started making some great throws to keep runners from advancing and decided it wasn't so bad to play in the outfield.

I took him to the batting cages back in February so he could try out hitting off the machine and he did great. But once the season started he really struggled to hit the ball. But by the third or fourth game he was hitting regularly and feeling more confident. Still, when he struck out he was pretty hard on himself. Once he made it to first base but then running to second on the next play the ball was a pop fly out and he didn't go back to first to tag up and ended up getting thrown out. I think he felt a little embarrassed about his goof up, and he told me through the dug out fence: "I want to punch the player who got me out, punch him right in the face." We're working on anger management with him.

Like all the players, Mr. Baseball got to choose his number. Why 99? Why not?

That's him, ready to run at first base.

The Super Fans--Monkey and little Bruiser came to just about every game (except for the ones that started at 8pm--yuck).

Here are the boys way back in March on the day of Mr. Baseball's first practice. Notice the brown grass. It's still that brown, unfortunately ( I can't bear to water, for economic and environmental reasons).

The Little Bruiser wishes he were three feet taller. We have since rounded up a small hoop for him so he can play "ba ba" along with the brothers.

The Monkey and a mystery friend.

Need a haircut, maybe?

We visited Utah back in March and got some great family pics. We kept forgetting to bring the camera along though, so we actually didn't get as many as we wanted to.