Knotts! (week 272)

Every morning we begin the day at 6:15 am, in the hamster cage that we call our room, with the playing of the best rock and roll from the 1970s. As the older brother, I get up first--like clockwork--and fire-up the CD player with Boston's "More than a Feeling" and Journey's "Don't Stop Believing". I am a big believer of routine and a big believer in excellent music. I am also a big believer in waking-up one's little brother. We even devised a way to get Christopher out of his crib by putting the desk chair inside his crib and helping him to launch over the edge and onto the foot of my bed. Mommy wasn't happy, but Daddy was a little proud of our collaboration and ingenuity.

Mommy has been in New York over the past few days so we have been living in a household without a responsible mother around. We have been listening to loud music, playing lots of Nintendo Wii, building stuff in the backyard, watching sports, and going to Knott's Berry Farm. Right now, if you ask Chubbs what he wants to there is only one answer: "Knotts!" It actually sounds a little bit more like "Nuts", but we all know what he means. Last year, we were an Aquarium of the Pacific family and spent a lot of summer days down at the water. This year, we are a Knott's family. Now that we are a little bigger, we got season passes and parking to Knott's (which is not much farther away), and kill our time on the Space Cabin, Gold Mine, and GR8 SK8 among other rides. The park is a lot smaller and more manageable than Disneyland, so Daddy finally took a day off from work to take us on Friday. We packed a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and juice boxes and had an awesome time racing in the cars and riding the trains. If we eat all our lunches, we have a tradition of splitting some french fries in the car on the way home. We had so much fun that we couldn't even finish our french fries and fell asleep with them in our laps on the way home.

Friday was also the first baseball game of the season for the Rays. It was my first opportunity to play on the big field at Heartwell and was super awesome! They had a full dirt infield that was rakes, chalked, and prepped with real "stick-em-up-bases" like the Angels use. Since I am number 30 on the team and the highest number (one of the greatest Angels of all-time Nolan Ryan also wore number 30), I had to hit last out of the 13 dudes on my team. This year, I am still one of the youngest on the team along with Nathan but the coach pitches to us and we play outs. The Shetland Pony League doesn't keep score but we do...and I am sure of it that we won!

Even though I am not the biggest or the best player on our team, I am definitely trying to keep-up with the other players by being the most focused. The hardest part for me is that there is so much baseball going-on at the four fields around us. At practice, we are in the outfield and the big kids are playing under the lights on the big fields. There is cheering, pitching, hitting, and catching going on all around me so I am often biting the nails on my throwing hand and dreaming about pitching and hitting with the big guys. Daddy has to yell across the field to remind me to pay attention. Luckily we have a coach that I like and that keeps us busy learning the fundamentals. It is going to be a good season because we have two games a week...many at night (after 5:00 pm) which end under the lights!