HE'S HERE!

Preston Alan Hancock joined our family on October 29th, weighing in at 8lbs. 3oz. and 21" long. Mom and Baby are doing fine. I will try to update post with picks soon.

FALL BREAK

The kids had fall break the first 2 weeks of October. Here is a play by play of how we spent their time off. Since the baby will be here soon I decided to take each kid out for a special mommy and me day while they could still have some of my time.
Monday was Lexie's day we went and got a pedicure, a pretzel at the mall and then window shopped for shoes and jewelry. She did find a necklace that she wanted at a specialty boutique for a mere $115, thankfully she settled for a trip to the candy store instead.
Tuesday I took Avery to see the movie Kit Kitteridge. Then we got a pretzel at the mall and rode the carousel. Then shopped until she spent her bday $$ on a new webkins.
Wednesday Parker and I went to see Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and then you guessed it- got a pretzel at the mall, then we went to Target so he could pick out his bday presents.
Allie's turn was on Thursday. We went to lunch at Wendy's (at least it wasn't a pretzel). Then we went and spent her bday money on a new webkins, shopped for some much needed school clothes, and ended the day with a trip to dairy queen.
Friday we went to Payson. Allie had a ball tournament Saturday up there so we went up Friday night, met her team for dinner at pizza hut and then watched spongebob back at the hotel. They played 3 games Saturday, won the first 2 but lost the third. After the game we went on up to Taylor, getting there just in time for Garrett to go to the priesthood session with his dad. Garrett and I headed home Sunday night and left the kids there for the week to spend some time with Grandma and Granddad.
WEEK 2: without the kids I was either crazy busy or wandering around not knowing what to do with my time. I had a Dr. appointment, a birthday lunch for my good friend Terri, a haircut, took the dog to the groomer , shopped for baby essentials, did bookkeeping for Garrett, washed all my baseboards and moulding - yes that means crawling around on my hands and knees 9 months pregnant, watched a few chick flicks in the middle of the day, took naps, went out to eat and to the temple with Garrett and the kids were only gone 3 days!

LEXIE'S BAPTISM

Saturday, Sept 20, 2008 Lexie was baptized by her dad and became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We are so proud of her and her decision to be baptized. I know this will be a great blessing to her throughout her life and for generations to come. We had a nice service at the church and then a birthday brunch at our house afterwards. We were lucky enough to have many friends and family there to celebrate this special day with our family.

More Nationals

While Garrett took the rest of the kids camping up in Taylor, Allie and I spent the week up in Utah. When we weren't playing softball we had time to do some other fun stuff. We flew into Salt Lake and spent the day at Temple Square. We took a tour of the conference center and walked around the temple grounds, then we headed to Park City.

The week started off with a skills challenge. Allie was in the pitching dual, they throw 1 fast ball to be clocked for speed and then have 30 seconds to see how many strikes they can throw. Her infield was also in the around-the-horn challenge where they are timed on how fast they can catch and throw from catcher, short, 1st, 3rd, 2nd and back to catcher. Other girls from her team also participated in base running, hitting and accuracy throw competitions. That night there was a parade down Main Street with each team dressed and carrying banners. Afterwards all the girls exchanged trading pins for their team. This was really fun and the girls spent all week trading pins in between games, we came home with quite a collection.

We spent most of our free time at the condo having water balloon fights. We did get to go up to Olympic Park one day and ride the zip lines and bobsleds. It was a lot of fun and I'm so glad we had the opportunity to go, hopefully we will be there next year.


Allie at the Salt Lake Temple.

Allie and Madi heading out to the skills challenge.
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Allie and her team carrying their banner in the opening parade.

Her collection of trading pins from other teams.

Allie, Lexi Kalfas, Madi Merrel, and Ryland Estrada spending the day at Olympic Park.

Allie and her coach, Stephanie.

Allie and Lexi after a winning game.

The infield huddle.

NATIONALS

This summer the Queen Creek Lady Cats went up to Park City, Utah to play in the Triple-Crown World Series National Softball Tournament. This is a month-long tournament for teams 10u-18u both A and B leagues, it averages around 400 teams each year. The Lady Cats were in the 12u B league along with 45 other teams from California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona.

After 4 games of pool play we were ranked 22, we made it through 3 games of tournament play and ended up placing 13th out of 45 teams and were the 2nd highest placing team from Arizona! Here's our record:

vs No Fear (CA) 0-3
vs Hollister Heat (CA) 10-9
vs Psyclones (CO) 7-0
vs OC Crush (CA) 3-4
vs Stix (OK) 5-15
vs Bomb Squad (CA) 6-5
vs Inferno (CA) 1-4

Allie did great. She actually got to pitch 2 innings, her coach put her in with no outs and bases loaded in an elimination game! That's a lot of pressure but she has nerves of steel, I on the other hand was pacing like a caged animal. We are so proud of her. She set a goal at the first of the year to pitch at Nationals, which is a big deal and a pretty high goal and she did it. Other than those innings, she played 1st base the entire tournament and had a great double play. Her batting was right on, thanks to private hitting lessons and every day in the batting cage she moved up 2 places in batting order and batted 4th in the line-up for the tournament.

Allie throwing her awesome change up.

Here's her wind up for her fast ball. She's throwing 48 mph.

Here she is up to bat.

She had some great hits.

All smiles. She loves this game!

Allie out on the mound.

Allie

ALLIE

I wanted to give an update on each kid and what they've been up to. Allie can be summed up in one word: SOFTBALL. She plays for the Queen Creek Ladycats. She is starting 1st baseman, relief pitcher, and sometimes back-up catcher. They practice twice a week and have tournaments about every other Saturday.

As if club ball wasn't enough, Allie played little league this year. Here she is with the All-Star Team.

Her club team went to Nationals in Park City this summer. (I'll post more about that when I get all my picture in). She sold doughnuts, more than 75 dozen, in order to raise money for the trip. A big thanks to everyone who bought some!

Besides softball and selling doughnuts to play softball, she has spent a lot of time helping me this summer. I taught her to can meat and chicken. As we are preparing the raw meat she kept saying how good it looked and asking if she could eat it. She is such a carnivore, who else would want to eat raw meat?!