Baseball 24/7

Well, today is a spring-like day in West Tennessee despite it being Lecturship week at FHU in which we usually have the worst winter weather of the year. Despite it being warm weather, we have rainy weather which makes it hard for the kids. They really want to be outside, but we can't. I wasn't going to blog today, but Carter (wanting to go outside) is playing baseball in the house in the den and I felt the need to save this part of time for us. This is a usual for us really. He is a 4 year old who would eat, sleep and breathe baseball. Before his 4 year old birthday, we didn't really have much baseball equipment, but that did not stop Carter from using his imagination. He would use a construction hard hat as his baseball helmet. He would use his winter mittens as his baseball gloves. He would use his sister's (much to his dad's displeasure) pink and purple softball glove because his was too small. Everyday (despite the warm summer heat) Carter would wear his baseball pants (thank you, yard sales and hand-me-downs), a Braves shirt or jersey of some kind and be ready to go. We thought we had really arrived when a young man from church passed down his REAL baseball belt to Carter (because we had been wearing our Sunday belt) and then when another young man from church gave Carter his old batting helmet (which we keep outside). Another young family that lives behind us, passed down 3-4 pairs of baseball pants and cleats!!! You have never seen a young child so excited!!! He usually is someone from the Braves team - mainly Brian McCann. Since we do not have any catcher equipment to be like Brian, we continue to use our imagination. Our Christian Armor shield is our chest protector; construction knee pads, shin guards and our Darth Vador mask, our catchers mask. Nothing stops us!!!! The Chipper Jones jersey you see in the pictures below was retired multiple times this past season on the account of being too small. However, it always seemed to find its way out of retirement and into the drawer. It has been permentantly retired in the Welch Hall of Fame as of the end of the baseball season. Carter learned a lot about baseball this year - why teams trade (he was very sad when Salty left the Braves for the Rangers, but he loves Mark Texiarra now), what the DH is (we get to watch Salty play for the Rangers since Daddy loves the Rangers), that our favorite teams don't always make the playoffs (he was bummed about this for weeks) and even more about trading (we broke the news about Andruw Jones not coming back about month after it happened because he was so bummed about Atlanta being done). However, he did learn to like other teams. He considers himself a Braves, Rangers and Red Sox (go Big Papi!!) fan and proudly supports jerseys from all these teams now. It has been fun to see the game through the eyes of a child again. It really helped bring the game back to life in this house.