Snakes

I once had an accounting professor tell us that everyone knows bad writing when they read it but not everyone is a good writer.  I was reading some of my older entries on my blog and my writing is pretty poor at times.  I'm glad I don't worry about that or I would never get anything down.




Bear River Classic- Tremonton


Lisa- Last week Lisa played in double headers on Saturday and then again on Monday in  Clinton.  It was fun to be outside in the nice weather to watch her play.  Her team is not very good.  They are playing against older girls and that extra year does make a huge difference at this age.  The coaches said they want Lisa to pitch because their pitching has not been so hot.  So we have been working on that a little, and we will see how it goes.  Even though the team is struggling to win games, the girls are the nicest and most fun girls you could have as teammates.  Lisa could try out for a different team, one that is better, one that is out of town every weekend, and has better coaching.  But, her coaches are nice, she gets to pick where she plays, and she has fun.  Last week the coach took a mini van full of the girls and they went to Logan to see Kylie play Utah State.  When the coach dropped Lisa off the whole van could not stop laughing, they apparently were like that all the way from Logan.  They all just have so much fun.

Eric- Try outs of little league were last week and the comp coaches were all in attendance trying to round off their rosters.  Eric was invited to play on two teams.  I hate telling the coaches he can't play.  I tell them all that Eric really wants to play and that I won't let him.  The truth is that he looks really good for about two months and then he gets tired of it and stops working, which is fine by me.  I would rather he plays all the sports.  He was invited to play on a team and he told the person "My Dad won't let me play."  He never even told me about it, I found out through Lisa. To me, that is a huge compliment of his baseball skills.  To Eric, I really  don't think he cares.  Eric gets really excited to play the sport that is in season.  And he works hard at that sport.  I don't think there is anything wrong with that and I'm glad he has fun.  It appears all the football kids that play baseball got on the same team and Eric is excited to be with his friends.  The coach was one of the assistant football coaches and Eric likes his kid.  He was the quarterback last year.   He will have fun with these guys.
     Eric finished his coding book at his after-school class so now him and two other kids are learning HTML. What's next, C++ by the sixth grade?

David- is into snakes right now.  He walks around the house with his snake book showing me these gross pictures of snakes.  David has the same baseball coach as last year.  I like those guys.  I have not seen them this year because dealing with Lisa is a full time job.  But Wendy tells me all about the team and the shenanigans.  My favorite line from David's coach is " Kids, listen to me, you can screw around all you want in school, but this is baseball, PAY ATTENTION!"  You have to know these guys to know they are not kidding.  There is always something to talk about with all these personalities.  I find it all very entertaining.

Bear River Classic

Rambling

So, I took down my last post because after reading it again I'm not sure it made sense when I was trying to explain my Dad's circle of trust thing.  Things have been fun but busy around here.  I went to the temple with Wendy on our Anniversary Friday night.  That was nice.  It seems like I'm at the stage of life where I always have more questions than answers after attending the temple.  I guess this is a good thing because it has me thinking.  It always humbles me  observing all the patrons engaged in serving others.  A lot of money, time, and resources are dedicated to temple work.  I  know I don't make it a high enough priority right now. Katie gave me a stack of people to work on in our family, and I'm on my second or third year working on it.  I hope she does not give up on me because it seems I have a more spiritual experience as I do work for my own family.
    Lisa is playing softball.  She likes it and I think it is fun too.  Their coach has always kissed-ass up until now.  There was friction this last weekend and it is going to get worse.  I enrolled Lisa in Rec softball because  1) we think it will be fun. and 2) I would like Lisa to play with kids in her own neighborhood.  Her current softball team has one kid from Roy, two from Syracuse, three from Kaysville, three from Farmington, two from Centerville, and two from Bountiful.   I'm wondering how important this is in the big scheme of things.  Also, Lisa (and Eric and David) are talented in academics and music.  I'm wondering if they should be involved in sports that are less competitive so they can focus their efforts in other avenues.  Track and field, swimming, and all the other olympic sports don't require the same commitment as baseball/softball which are insanely competitive.  We went to a UU baseball game yesterday and those athletes are not college athletes.  It's pro-ball under the guise of college athletics.  It was amazing the stuff those athletes can do.  The other team was a division I school  but did not even belong on the same field. Wendy went over and was chatting with some of the Pro scouts that were in attendance and it was fun to listen to a MLB perspective to the game.
     At Sunday school we have a really talented teacher.  She brought up some really interesting thoughts about Joseph Smith.  But, I was also thinking about the youth.  I was watching one of the bishopric members interact with the youth and I was thinking to myself how much fun the guy is and how lucky those kids are to have these leaders that make sacrifices of their time.  The young women leaders are good too and I'm excited for Lisa to attend camp this year.  Lisa has a tournament in Idaho the same time as camp, but both Wendy and I have been discussing not going to the tournament to attend camp.  I think she will have a lot of fun, and when I look back, it was between the age of 12-18 that my testimony of the gospel grew the most in my lifetime.  Lisa played around 130 ball games last year and I don't think we will regret it if it is 124 or what ever because we make her attend camp.
   
   

11 11 2016 11 12 2016

Time is going super fast and I'm not able to post everything. Oh well.  I will post a couple of things and keep moving forward.

Lisa getting ready to catch.

Lisa is the starting catcher, but the back up catcher was injured on the first day.  Lisa was exhausted by day two.

Lisa getting ready to score on third.

Lisa, Emily, and Sophie hanging out between games.  All of her teammates are the nicest girls. The girls have been doing some things together off the field and it's funny to hear Lisa say things like " I have never seen Molly in Jeans", or "Hannah looks nice wearing a dress"  She also was commenting the other day that a couple of her teammates are high energy-out of control-hooligans when off the field.  One of them surprised me because on the field she is so shy.

One funny thing- Heather and Peter were telling us this funny story of how they attended a wedding in Southern California and they stayed at a Motel-6.  All of their Dr. friends stayed at $600 a night hotels.  Well at this tournement we were the only ones that stayed at the Super 8.  I guess I'm frugal.  It's a Rasmussen thing.  The coach said next time he wants us all to stay in the same condo complex to promote team unity.  So much for our cheap (but spacious) $100 a night hotel room.

Lisa was a team captain, Kylie came over from UNLV, and Monte in red.

Lisa after hitting a single

Lisa after stealing second base.

Eric (thought I was asleep) getting caught throwing something over the balcony into the pool.

Ice Cream

 Sunday night Lisa's Sunday school teachers took their kids to one of their ice cream facilities in Ogden.  It was a big deal and Lisa said everyone had a lot of fun. She said they all tried six different flavors.  I don't know, I just think it is cool of the Farr's to do that.  When I was growing up I had few teachers that were so fun and did that kind of stuff.

Lisa on third base at Brigham City.

Lisa catching.  She did average the first inning and then did fantastic the 2nd inning.

I don't have any pictures but she also played third base and made some amazing plays.  She tagged a girl out, and fielded a really hard hit ball and threw it to first.  She made the play look easy.

Before

After

                                                                           Football

This football game did not go over so well.  It turned out the team we played was good, but not that good.  However, the league brought in a hot-shot high school reffing crew; two of them were jerks, the other two were fine.   We lost the game because of this crew and as you can imagine  a lot of people were pissed.  Everything that is wrong with sports- it happened during this game.  And it all happened on the Farmington side.  They did not call the other team on any penalties, just us.  Multiple people were ejected throughout the game.  Even the umpire got in it with a parent towards the end.  I like the way our head coach handled the situation.  He is such a good coach and a good example to the kids.  He also commands great respect.  A couple of times parents started swearing so the flags started to fly.  After the refs made the call John just turned around and said "who said that!" and the parents immediately took responsibility and left the facilities.  I think everyone respects John so much they will do what ever he says.  That is a huge compliment to our coach considering how high emotions tend to run at these things.  I think it is a good example to have a coach that gets fired up in the right way.  He is kind of like Kyle Whittingham- gets fired up and yells a lot but cares about the kids and puts a lot of thought into the kids.  It's a wonder we only lost by 6 points with this crew.

Eric made all his plays at center.  He only had one bad hike out of the shotgun but it was good enough that the quarter back got it and made a play.

One thing that I really like about football is the camaraderie between the players is the highest of any sport.  The families too. We often would go out out eat and hang out with the other families which is common from everyone I talk to who has a child that played football.  It is pretty cool that Eric has his football family and that they all look out for each other.  It was a great year!

Playoffs

Eric played well in his first playoff game.   His team is good.  But they are undersized.  We only have one X-man;  the other team had the whole line of X-men and they had a full back that was huge.  They kept handing off to the big full back and he would gain 3-4 yards every play.  They could never break a play because our guys were too fast.  It was a fun game.  Jett hits so hard.  This next game we are supposed to get creamed, but you never know because we have a lot of good athletes.

Eric in shotgun formation.

Eric hiking the ball.

Travis scoring one of his many touchdowns.  I know his family pretty well and they are the nicest people.  

Lisa catching in the Kaysville super league.

So today Lisa was catching for Reagan again.  It makes me nervous.  But they all think it's fun.  They are all fun to hang out with in all, but Reagan throws hard.  They were all asking how old Lisa is and they think it is fun that she can catch.

Two or three weeks ago against Kaysville.  I found it interesting that we absolutely blew them out considering Davis High is the dominant player around here.  One thing is for certain, Davis High will not be dominant without the Farmington kids.  Will be interesting to see how the new high school shakes things up.  It was nice of Mom to put her arm around Eric after the game- he was a ball of sweat.

Smithfield

The kids wanted to barbecue really bad on labor day and it was a busy weekend, so we ended up roasting hot dogs in the back yard.

                                          Daisey was laser focused on David's hot dog. 

                                           Kids playing trac ball after eating

Today was a fun day.  I was up at 6:30 AM to take Lisa to Softball.  After practice we drove up to Smithfield for Eric's football game.  He had a good game.  He has some real chemistry going with his teammates.  They all like him and he likes them.

                          Eric getting ready to hike the ball.  Eric likes to talk about football.  He will talk for hours about the different schemes and where he is supposed to be based on the play.

Eric hiking ball against Smithfield Bobcats.  The game was never close.  We blew them out.

                                                      Eric at Defensive tackle

This is the game all the parents became restless and started yelling at the refs.  It started to become obvious the were on the side of the home town team.  

                                          Leaving after the game.

                                       Coach John talking to the team

                                        David taking a picture of Eric and I after the game

We were not sure if David took a good picture so we had someone take a picture of the three of us.  Notice how I'm wearing my ASU shirt shirt is more than 20 years old.  Yes I like my wardrobe.  At the family reunion my sisters and Wendy were giving me a really hard time when Katie dug out these old pictures and Wendy says "Those are the same clothes you wear today"

Logan

Eric had a great game today.  2 hurries on the quarterback, 3 tackles, and 1 QB sack.  He was pretty excited.  He was all over the field.  He did a great job blocking on offense.

I asked Eric who he eats lunch with.  I guess five of his football buddies save a table for each other and he eats lunch with them.  Then he has the neighborhood friends that just loves and he plays with them during the afternoon recess.

                               Eric was team captian along with three others

                                                      Eric lining up at defensive tackle

                                                        Lisa playing catcher on Utah Sting