And Now for Some Baseball!

This past weekend, we had to forego our plans to attend the best tournament ever - Cedar Point. The Breakers Hotel on the shores of Lake Michigan with lots of games and a bar and fire pits is the most amazing place to have to go for a tournament. Even better than our soccer trips to Arizona and Florida (and maybe even Italy although that one is pretty hard to beat). The amusement and water parks are right across the parking lot or down the boardwalk and the rides are simply unlike any other place I've been. 

So we were all bummed when we had to make the call early last week to forego our baseball weekend in Cedar Point for a State Cup quarterfinal soccer game in Rockford, IL. Austen had to play Saturday morning at 8am which meant that we were leaving at 5:30am. If he won, they would play again Sunday in the semifinals at the same time so there was no way that we could travel to both places. So we had to make the very difficult decision to choose soccer over baseball. It was not an easy decision but soccer is his primary sport and the goal every year is to win the State Championship and then head to Regionals and then Nationals to earn another "Gold Star" for their club. So soccer it was. 

It seemed a pretty even game until 30 seconds before halftime when the other team launched a bullet past our goalkeeper for a  1-0 lead. Another goal halfway through the second half and our lack of shots on goal pretty much solidified the loss. Bummer that we gave up Cedar Point for one early Saturday game but we made lemonade out of lemons and headed to Michigan for the rest of the weekend where we enjoyed  our place and some time with family. 

Now we turn all of our attention to baseball. Austen has just a few games left in the season. While his team hasn't done so well, we tell him, it's all about his play - hitting and catching everything at shortstop with minimal errors that he really needs to focus on. In just a few short weeks, he'll be at the high school baseball camp so the time is now to up his game. Batter up!