Pass, Shoot, Score!!

Grace and the Fighting Shamrocks are having a great end to 2010. They finished first in the select division 8-0-2 and they have started their indoor season 4-0. Grace has really learned how to play positions and has scored goals in almost every game.

In this video Grace is number 10 with medium length hair. She gathers the ball and passes it off the wall twice to evade a defender. Then she comes out of the pack and with one quick pass to the front of the goal, her team scores. She later scored by coming across the goal area and using her left foot puts the ball in the back of the net. A thing of beauty, just like her!

Shannon ATTACK

Shannon seems to get more confidence every time she steps on the field. In her last two games she has been up to bat 6 times. With 2 doubles, 2 singles and 2 walks. Not bad! Her team the Attack lost their first game of the regular season. But they still had fun and the other pitcher was bringing the heat last night. Though Shannon told me after the game that the other pitcher wasn't so bad, "She was hittable"! Go Shannon, that's the attitude.

Gracie...Fighting Shamrocks and The Rockettes!

It's been a month, I struggle getting new pictures so last night I brought the flip camera to either record video or just take a digital picture and........the batteries were dead!!!

So here is a recap from the past three days.....

Fighting Shamrocks......keep on winning!

Our team entered a 3 vs. 3 tournament with two teams entered. We had one group of girls in the competitive combined 1st and 2nd grade and another team in the rec division. Grace played in the competitive division and they took 1st place. They were awesome. Grace scored a couple of goals and we ended up with the gold medal. Our other team took 2nd place and lost out to a team that should have been playing in the competitive division. What a long but great day. From 8am until 4pm our girls played in 8 games. Now we take a well deserved summer break and will start up in August.

Softball...
We had only our second game last night. The rain has caused havoc with our schedule. So we took the field in 90 degree heat and the girls played great. For a bunch of 1st graders they got it going. All the girls had hits in every at bat. That's crazy man! On defense Grace scooped up both balls hit at her when she played 2nd base. She caught it and threw a nice toss over to 1st base. The first baseman caught the ball and they looked like then knew what they were doing. Wait, the baserunner was safe. What happened, oh yeah, the 1st basebman forgot she needed to be stepping on the base and not 6 feet away from it. But you get the idea, they had fun and did most of the fundamentals.

Daniel, Daniel, Daniel

Let's get this straight. I have not mentioned Daniel yet because we haven't had the opportunity to get him on video or even in front of a camera without him being all goofy. So I give up, here he is with one of his two best friends...both of whom are named Kevin...he likes to keep things simple and goofy.


All I have to say is boys will be boys.

Retreat for Dad

The picture above is of Holy Infant, my parish! One of the true blessings in coming to Missouri has been the faith community here at Holy Infant. I just spent last weekend as the spiritual director for a team of 10 and we had eight participants on the weekend. It was awesome, I watched as the Holy Spirit slowly worked his way into each and every man. My team of brothers would rise and speak from their hearts, they shared intimate moments of how God works in their lives. How through pain, sorrow, as well as joy and jubliation our Lord and Savior is there all the time. Then Jesus turned to me and gave me a gift. He allowed me to grow in Him, He let me see myself they way He sees me. I was awestruck with His power and I trembled as He revealed to me how I was not living up to his promise for me. He has created me to do so much more and I was not letting that happen. I knew I had the gift of music which I share but now I see I have many more gifts to open and more gifts to give to others. There is a song by the band Third Day that struck me as being right on the mark for me.

I'm a son of a good man. I'm the child of an angel. I 'm the brother of a wild one. And I'm looking for direction. I'm the lover of a beauty. I'm the father of blessings. I'm a singer of a love song. But is that all I'm good for..This is who I am This is who I am. So take me and make me something so much more. This is who I am This is who I am. So change me and make me someone better than before. I'm a saint and a sinner. I'm a lover and a fighter. I'm a true believer, with great desire. I'm a preacher of grace, prophet of love, teacher of truth. I've fallen down so many times. But here I stand in front of you. Take me as I am. But please don't leave me that way. 'Cause I know that you can make me better than I am today.

I am Here Lord, Do with me as you wish!!!

God Bless,

Jim

Shannon and softball

My big girl! She is a bright and talented young lady. She can also hit the winning RBI! The game is at the end and Shannon is up to bat. With her hit she knocks in the winning run! Earlier in the game she scored the first run. Coming in from third she slid into the catcher and popped the ball out of the catchers mitt. My bruiser! Knowing Shannon she probably got up and said sorry to the catcher. Becuase she is sooooo sweet. Unless it's the morning and she is getting ready for school. But we won't talk about that.

Fighting Shamrocks

So some of you may not realize that in addition to my three wonderful kids I seemed to have gained an additional 10 first grade girls!!!!! These girls are adorable, wonderful and a blessing from God to me. They make me laugh, they make me feel special, but most of all I can see Jesus loving me through them. We started back in November as a team. We lost most of our first games because we signed them up to play up a year. So the girls we played are a year older and bigger than we are. Then at Christmas we came together as a team. We haven't lost since and we are still playing the bigger and older teams. This video is a brief peek into one of our games. We finished this outdoor league in first place and we finished our indoor league in second because we tied one of the other teams. I am very proud of how the girls listened to me and the other coaches. They have started to pass and play like a team. You will see my own Grace pop into the video every now and then. She is playing defense but for this video which is about 2 minutes long all the play is in our offensive end. So Grace will come up and pass it back into the offensive end for us. Which is exactly what we want her to do. Keep the ball in the other teams end so we can score.

Shannon

What can I say, I admit I like to brag about my children. Because you know they are AWESOME! Shannon loves to take tests. And this past weekend she competed with 140+ other 7th grade girls in a math contest. With a score of 39 correct out of 45 she came in 3rd. How great is that!

Father-Daughter Dinner-Dance

Back in the summer of 2009 my good friend Jim and I started talking about an event for middle school girls. There was a small group of Dads that wanted to start a new tradition in our church. So began a 8 month odyssey of meetings and planning. It all culminated 10 days ago! What a fantastic night. We focused the event on building a strong relationship between Dads and their daughters. We emphasized that Dads need to be involved in the daughters lives still. And daughters need to remain connected to their Dad. But we went further still by instilling hope that our girls will remain modest and wholesome through these upcoming turbulent years. And in those stormy days that will surely come we as Dads promise to be standing by our daughters side to help them in any way we can. Because we love our girls!!! And I most certainly love Shannon with all my heart. She is a very special girl, smart, athletic, caring and compassionate.
Of course I still get a little frustrated with her at times.














Now during the dinner we watched a couple of inspiring videos but we also had some fun. Here I am trying to hula hoop. I was awful, I admit it. Shannon and the rest of the girls (about 33 others) had a great time laughing at us. I think only two or three Dads could keep the hoop going for about 5 or 6 SECONDS!




Finally the girls took over the dance floor and put us Dads to shame. One of the neat things that happened was Shannon and a friend went over to request a song that they could Irish Dance to. All the girls jumped in and had a great time. It didn't seem to matter if they were line dancing or just getting us Dads out onto the floor with them. We ended the night with a nice song that the Dads could dance to with our special girls. What an awesome night. I am thankful to have such good friends here in Ballwin. Friends that understand the importance of being close to our children and will get up off the couch to do something about it. I can't express how much I care for these guys that will put their faith into action. May God Bless them all! Amen!

Easter Videos

On this Easter morning we played a little outside and inside.

Let's get started

We have now lived in Missouri for 2 years. In those two short years we have experienced so much. At first it was a strange experience to realize that we were no where near any water!! We lived in the middle of the country with our closest family member 4 hours away. Quite the change for us. With both of our loving parents 1000 miles away this was a big transition for us. Now we feel at home and while it still is odd not to have an ocean close by we can't imagine living anywhere else.

Now where did I store all those photos I want to post? See you soon.