Softball Games 6, 7, 8

The second half of the season they take things a little more serious and kind of switch it from instructional to a little bit more like regular softball-so they have started calling three outs and stuff like that. Chloe's coach only has Chloe and one other girl pitch and they both rotate and pitch 1 or 2 innings per game. Chloe overall does a really good job with it. Sometimes she is a little off, but rarely will she throw four straight balls to a girl-she usually will at least get 1 or 2 strikes on them and a few times has gotten a strike out.

 Her best friend Brydee bats lead off every game and Chloe bats number 2. They both are great at hitting the ball. Chloe has gotten several nice hits that have brought Brydee home. They are a dynamic duo-last week Chloe was pitching and Brydee was playing first, the girl batting hit it to Chloe, Chloe scooped it up, and tossed it to Brydee for the out at first. After they got the out the both smiled at each other and gave each other the thumbs up sign. It is so fun to see them play together. Having a best friend on the team with you makes a big difference. The season is quickly winding down, but I think Chloe is glad she decided to play this year-it has been a fun year for her.

 Bryce is always happy as long as baseball is involved.

Here is a video of her striking a girl out...

Big Hit...

Priesthood Newsletter

Landon had to write an article for the Priesthood Newsletter in our Ward. I thought I would share it because he did a good job with it and it has a good message.

Strengthening our Testimonies

Two years ago my daughter Chloe decided she wanted to be on a summer swim team. She had her first swim meet on her eighth birthday. She was in the 7-8 year old age group and did very well for her first year usually taking first through third place in most of the events she competed in.

The next year she wanted to compete again on the same summer swim team. Since, she did so well the year before and had enjoyed it so much, she was excited to do it again. This year she turned 9 and competed in the 9-10 age group. Although, she did well she wasn’t getting as many first, second, or third place awards and became discouraged.

We compared her times in the same events from both years and were able to show her that although she wasn’t winning ribbons her times were actually better than they were the year before. When she looked at the progress she had made she became less discouraged and worked harder to be a better swimmer than she was before. She focused more on beating her own time than on taking a place. Although she is very competitive and likes to win, she realized that to better herself was a far better goal than trying to outdo everyone around her.

I’d like to compare this with our testimonies. I’ve caught myself at difficult times thinking to myself, “If I only knew the scriptures as good as him or if I only had as much faith as her, life would be so much easier”. It would be easy to be discouraged if we thought our eternal progression in the gospel was a competition and only a few could attain the top prize, but it’s not. The only competition is within us individually. We need to look at our testimony compared to yesterday, last week, or a year ago and ask ourselves if we’ve improved. Has our knowledge, faith, and understanding increased? Our Heavenly Father knows us all individually and gives us different opportunities to improve ourselves. Much like Chloe was surrounded with different skill levels of swimmers we will be surrounded by individuals with different strengths of testimony. As she swam with the faster swimmers it helped her improve her times. When we are surrounded with people with strong testimonies we can choose to be strengthened by them or be discouraged because we don’t know as much or don’t have as much faith. This life is a time to better ourselves not be better than everyone else. As you think about this I hope you will have a desire to do the things that will help you improve yourself and become closer to our Heavenly Father.

Landon Ellison

Easter Weekend

The kids were super excited to be going to Flowell for Easter. They could hardly wait to get on the road-they always love spending time with their cousins. Plus Chloe was excited because she was officially initiated as an Easter Bunny ;)

The Easter Bunny comes to Flowell per tradition on Saturday morning instead of Sunday-it is nice this way the kids get to enjoy all of their toys and candy Saturday and then on Sunday be able to focus more on the true meaning of Easter. 

The kids had fun searching for their Easter Baskets-the highlight in each of their baskets may have been the tennis ball-haha-they love tennis balls-to throw and hit all day long.

What kind of crazy bunny gives this boy water balloons?! look out cousins the battle is on.

 Chloe was pretty stoked about her bow and arrow and of course the hit movie of the year FROZEN!

 The only thing Bryce cared about was his ball and mitt-he did enjoy the Cheetos and peeps that he received as well.

Later that day we went to the sand hills for some fun and a cook out. Bryce loved throwing the sand. He was completely covered from head to toe by the time we left.

 Grandma and the kids...

 Later that afternoon we enjoyed some rousing games of soccer, football, and baseball.
Sunday Morning we all went to stake conference.
The kids in their Easter clothes-notice the boys matching ties.

 Cousins/Friends=cute girls

It was a fun filled weekend, the kids are always sad to leave their cousins and are already looking forward to the next visit.

Easter Eggs

All the cousins who lived in town met up at Great-Grandma Marshall's house to dye Easter Eggs.

Look at this wagon full of cousins.

 We tried a few ideas we had seen on Pinterest. Some worked okay and some not so well. These baseball eggs turned out pretty well I thought...

 Look how excited Bryce is ...

 Shaving cream tie dye eggs didn't work out so well but the kids had fun playing in the shaving cream...

Decorating Easter Eggs is one of our favorite traditions-always lots of fun.

Hershey Track Meet

Last week Chloe participated in the Hershey Track Meet. She was pretty excited. I was able to go and spend the morning with her and watch her events. She did the 100 M, 200 M, and softball throw.

They only announce the top 4 places, top 3 get ribbons, and the top 2 go onto regionals. They do not do finals on the races they just take the top by time or distance.

Chloe took 3rd overall in the softball throw. She threw 64 feet.

She also took 3rd overall in the 200 Meter Dash. She was third in her heat in this race too, so her heat was fast they took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

In the 100 M dash she didn't place in the top 4 so we don't know how she did overall, but she did win her heat.

I wish they would have posted the times because in track and swimming races are so close and sometimes you win or lose by a second or millisecond. It would have been fun to see, but alas they didn't share that info with us. 

Baseball and Softball Games #5

 Softball Highlights-Chloe pitched a great game and also hit really good hits out to the grass on both of her at bats. One time she hit it almost to the fence but it ended up being a foul ball. Plus isn't she just the cutest little girl!

Baseball Highlights-Well its been a long time coming, but it finally happened. Tanner got the hit of a life time. I was in the car with the baby and I knew he was up to bat, but I wasn't paying much attention. Then I heard the hard crack of the ball off the bat and looked out to see the ball going going going almost gone! If we would have been playing on the field we had the tournament on over the weekend it would have been an out of the park home run. At the field this game was on it was a long shot to left left field and he was able to get a double out of it. I got out of the car a few minutes later and walked over to Landon, he couldn't stop smiling-ha-ha. He was like where did that come from?! The sad news is that a few minutes later Tanner got out trying to steal home-oh well the hit was worth it and his team did end up winning after coming back from a long ways from behind.

Last Soccer Games of Spring Season

A couple of weekends ago Chloe had her last soccer games of the spring season. She played a double header on Saturday morning. One game at 9 and the next at 10. It required a lot of effort and energy to run for that long, but her team did great and they managed to pull of two wins. Chloe scored a goal in each game as well as pulling of a few headers (her new signature move). I really wanted to get an action shot of her doing this but I wasn't able to pull it off. It was a fun season and I'm sure it won't be long until she is asking when it is time to play soccer again. She loves it!!!