It was a much warmer night tonight and while we were waiting to open the stand, Aaron and Stephen went into a field and sat and talked. I took this while sitting in my van. It turned out very cool, I think.
And now for the game. The children thought this would be great to post on the blog. So guess who's bruises are who's. Child #1:?
Child #2: ?
Child #3: ?
Here are the answers: Child #1: Nathan, Child #2: Deborah, and Child #3: Stephen
Then he pitched the last two innings. He faced 14 batters and struck out 4.
And he got the only hit of the game, a single to leftfield. He stole second but was stranded. Before the game, we talked about what he should define a successful game as. He decided that he would have a successful game if he had fun playing, he struck out some batters, and he got a hit. He achieved all three things so despite the loss, he was happy with his performance.
It was still cold. Deborah ventured outside to sit with a friend, but the rest of us stayed in the van and watched from the warm inside.
And now for something completely different. My dh picked these from my flower garden (with my permission) for me. I was so pleased that they have stayed nice for a couple of days. Like our chicken salt and pepper shakers?
As I was saying, it was a cold day. It was about 50 degrees but there was a very brisk gale blowing and it made it pretty miserable for the parents and siblings not running around the ball field. Here is Deborah under our ballgame quilt. After the other people who were there taking their pictures left, I was able to pull the van closer to the field and watched part of the game from inside the van.
Aaron pitched two of the three innings and did pretty well despite the cold weather. Notice he is pitching with his sweatshirt on! Love these Michigan balmy spring days. He struck out five or six batters.
Aaron got a single and scored once for the team.
He was walked his second time at bat and was stranded (I think that is the right baseball term). 
We have more boys than positions so today Stephen had to sit out two innings. He played right field when he did get in.
Stephen had one time at bat and was walked. He later stole bases and made it home.
As you can see, it did get sunnier as the morning progressed but it still was pretty cold. Deborah and I had on our winter coats (after I had already put them away for the season. Silly me!) and we were still cold.
But it paid off and our team won 13 - 11 after 3 innings. Those three innings took 2 1/2 hours! There were a lot of time outs to tie shoes, give coaching tips like the batter needing to get out of the way of a boy running home, console pitchers who were replaced by other pitchers, check on the hands of the pitcher to see if they were getting too cold (have I mentioned that it was COLD yet?), and to yell to the outfield to stand up and stop playing with their hats/pants/grass/rocks.......
We did plant potatoes this afternoon. So now we have the makings for peas and potatoes. In about 7-8 weeks. After lots of weeding and watering. But it is worth it.
We try not to do gardening work on Sundays but up north, you have to take advantage of every warm day of the growing season. You don't get the chance to make up a week of warm weather up here in the tundra.
The warm weather made my daffodils come out in all their glory today.
The chickens enjoyed the day as well. Here two of them are taking a dust bath.
They use their claws to scratch and I finally caught one on film scratching. This is Bearded Lady again. Inside the fence today.
This is a picture of Blackie, Nathan's favorite.
Aaron and Deborah enjoyed Sunday afternoon inside playing with Playdough and making each other laugh.
The chickens are now confined to their chicken yard. Except of course the four Aracaunas that can fly over the fence. This is a picture of the Bearded Lady who will soon be confined. We've discovered that she is our egg eater and can't be trusted around any Dominique's eggs. Interestingly, she never seems to eat one of her own.
We spent Friday afternoon and Saturday working outside. Deb and Aaron are cleaning out my window wells. I washed windows and put in screens. I found the baseball cleats and got them out ready for practice on Saturday morning.
My dh prepared the garden. He took off on Friday afternoon and got two loads of cow manure. The two older boys unloaded it from the truck and helped spread it around.
There were two loads like this. They unloaded one on Friday afternoon and one on Saturday morning.
A job that they weren't too sure was worth the money they were getting paid for it. But a job that had to be done before ball practice on Saturday morning.
My dh tilling the garden. That tiller has been worth its weight in gold. It does such a great job in breaking up the clods into a wonderfully fine soil.
Then Saturday afternoon, we began planting. We planted peas (both shell and snap), carrots, lettuce, spinach, onions, and beets. Tomorow we plant the rest of the onions and the potatoes.
This one is for Mike. I call it "Waiting".
And this one is called "Vegetable Potential".
And for snack we had a wonderful Globe cake complete with boat docks and boats on the Thames.
Standard gym equipment should be light sabers, right? Nathan is dressed in his ball uniform because we were going to practice right after gym time. Needless to say, by the end of the day, he was one tired boy.
Some of the girls didn't do anything remotely athletic. Gym time is more like "find the children a very large place to run and play in" time.
A close up of the ladies and their pets.
By the way, the type of cuisine is kept a secret. This year the my dh upped the suspense by "accidentally" leaving out a Swedish cookbook under some papers so that I could see it. So I thought that we were eating Swedish. Which is understandable since I'm from Swedish stock and so are our friends. But as soon as I walked into our friends' house, I knew that we weren't eating Swedish. Swedes don't use frying oil and cilantro and hot peppers. Turns out that we were going to eat Cuban. 
Our next course was a salad with avocado and fresh pineapple. Very fresh and delicious.
Next we had corn pudding with crabmeat. There were lots of other things in there beside crabmeat and it was very different but delicious. Notice the coconut shell centerpieces on the right.
The main course was grilled red snapper on a bed of relish (more like a salsa with mangoes and papayas) and covered with a shrimp sauce with shrimp. I could have just eaten the shrimp sauce by itself - it was so good.
With the snapper, we had black beans and rice. The recipe called for cinnamon to be added which gave it a different taste from the New Orleans type black beans and rice that I've tasted before.
Another course was stuffed mashed potatoes. Inside these tasty deep fried mashed potato balls, the guys had put a meat stuffing that included golden raisins and capers. The children loved these leftovers.
And the crowning course (and my personal favorite) was the banana flan with coconut rum sauce. Here is the flan after it has been flipped out of its pan. A work of art, isn't it?
And here it is slathered with the rum sauce. 
About the only thing missing was Cuban cigars and a picture of Castro!
