Sunday, March 27, 2011

A New Type of Opening Day in 2011

Today started off bright an early in a high school gym surrounded by hundreds of uniform clad kids.
Their bright colors were accented with props and banners each being waved in the air as they circled the interior of our crowd.  
Though the rain kept us inside, our spirits were high as this was the start to our Baseball season!
And what a season it has turned out to be.  
Our first year being responsible for the organization of a team...which, with Jarrod being out of town almost every week, has proved to fall quite a bit in my court. 
Not that I mind.....I do Major in the Bossiness Business....but I know NOTHING about actually making better players out of these little guys!  Pay that no mind, we've been blessed with two other coaches that have MORE than pulled their weight.
But enough about us......all my joy lies in our little players.
Which Natalia and I decided to support with our fashion sense.
As I was saying.....This year has provided so many milestones already:
1) Ian moving up a division and being on a separate team from his brother
2) Jarrod managing a team as I already stated
3) Jarrod voted onto the Board for this League
4) Merrick walking
Oh yeah, that's no minor detail.
During today's parade, I remembered how last year we cajoled Merrick into participating.  He was barely 3 months post-op, and mostly hobbling with the help of a walker.
He couldn't support his weight alone.
In fact, here is a blurb I wrote a month prior to Opening Day 2010:
Merrick shuffle/walked for most of today.  I dared myself not to get over excited.  But with each halting step he proved his bravery.  Tomorrow we go back to Physical Therapy to check out his 'form.'  It's no longer an IF he will walk again....it has progressed to a WHEN will  he walk smoothly again, and how can I help him?  From here improvements may be slow and laborious...Six more weeks the Dr. said, and of those two weeks need to be low stress...so no running.   


So last year, as we approached that huge high school track he acted like we were going to torture him,
Check out his sad face:
Go ahead, be sad with him.  I know I was.  But we had to keep setting up goals for him to achieve!
For challenging him I will never apologize.  I'll cry with him when it hurts.  But I won't back down
  (God balances us out though, Jarrod eventually pushed him part of the way around that track
 since the walker had wheels on it ;)
As for this year,
It's a night and day difference.
He is ready to go. In fact, he is far more excited about playing than Ian is this year. 
Which might be hard to believe:
Speaking of Ian, he missed out on today's festivities due to a sore throat.
He really tried to push through it this morning, even waking up and dressing in his uniform.
But then the thought of walking around in the parade exhausted him.
So I promised to take pictures of his team while he rested with Marmar.
Go River Bandits!
(Talia and I have black and white bandanas to match their theme.  Eeeee, how I love themes!
More on those at his first game :)

As a whole, Opening Day provided a celebration of strength and joy.
How could we not praise the Creator of such magnificent bodies? 
Bodies which are able to mend and grow and change virtually overnight? 
I'll give him three cheers....and add a few more for good measure!
Wanna join me?
Now let's do the WAVE~~~~~~~
It's going to be a great year in baseball folks.
YAY God!

No comments: