SPRING TRAINING!!!

One of the most anticipated weekends of the year is our journey to Spring Training in Arizona. You can see the excitement in their eyes.

Nick helped calm their pre-flight nerves with some ice cream.

All the excitement just tuckered Ryker right out.

Ryker wasn't quite sure what to expect for his first trip, but Rock was a good teacher. He led him straight to the giant baseballs.

They quickly found some stray balls and played catch for hours.

It was a little later in the year this time so Arizona was its typical hot self.

So tired, so worn out.

Eventually Ryker woke up and tried his hand at the speed gun.

Rock almost won his age group for the day, missing by two mph.

"Dad, can we have cotton candy?'

"No, you've had enough junk for the day"

"Grandpa, can I have money...for stuff?"

The second day Ryker woke me up with his jersey on and excitedly said "Look daddy, I'm dressed like a Mariner!"

If we ever had downtime they wanted to play catch.

They discovered how delicious Chick-fil-A breakfast was and pounded it every morning.

One of the mornings practice was cancelled and the game was in the evening so we drove to Montezuma's Castle for some culture.

The boys were not happy about being pulled away from baseball, since ball is life.

The Mariners were shutout with one hit the second night, but the kids still had a blast.

We showed up to practice on Saturday and were surprised by Javy and Rissa. The boys weren't sure what was going on, but they had suckers so that was nice.

They loved high-fiving the minor leaguers as they passed by.

They also got to high-five some major leaguers, too.

The little field was packed with other kids, but finally Rock got his turn to rip the ball.

Meanwhile, Ryker enjoyed the nachos and attention.

We were finally able to meet up with DeA, Jens and her family at Culver's. The kids had fun showing off their baseball skills.

Jens got to show off her new clothes and Arizona tan to the boys.

She realized that she missed out on ball and that wasn't cool, because ball is life.

All too quickly it was time to venture to the airport for the trip home. Ryker had a DIFFICULT time waking up.

He made Papa Dale carry him because he claimed to be "exhausted".

It took literally a minute being on the plane before one of the kids dumped the entire box of Cheez-Its onto the floor. We hadn't even sat down yet and someone grabbed the box from the backpack and spilled the whole thing. Jens had a hard time with the loss and held the box for long time mourning.

The baseball kick has been strong since the trip, with Rock wearing his full uniform whenever he can.

We even took them to the park for some BP. It was a lot of fun, except Jens refused to let DeA or me help her swing.