Random January Photos

An evening at Villa celebrating Juliana's birthday. 

Rio turned 8 with some soccer at Shoreline. 

Blonde ballers. 

Samantha's face painting skills aren't too shabby. 

Hive-fiving the Gaucho players after the UCSB basketball game. 

Homework in the stands with friends while little brothers practice basketball. 

Rain collection experiment. 

Low tide after the storm. 

So much sand was washed away with the rain that some of these large boulders at the Shoreline steps are normally covered in sand!

Awesome shells were exposed after the rain too!

Thatch representing Detar Music. 

Samantha always has awesome hair from our babysitters when we return home from a night out. 

Unofficial dinner club with the Matheson and Paskin families. The Fallon fam is very behind in hosting! 

Biking to dinner. 

Endless summer pool and drinks. 

Checking out the Sandbar breaking. 

We weren't the only ones watching the surf. 

Getting his hair "do"

Homework at Coffee Bean when there isn't enough time to make it home from school before basketball practice. 

Looking pretty cute despite throwing up all day. Hair clip was needed to keep his "do" out of the way. 

Scooter ride to Brophy's with our neighbors. 

Mary even brought Play Doh to keep the kids occupied. 

Brophy's turned into Endless Summer where we did this. 

This photo booth machine bought us some time and allowed us to keep the party going. 

So much so that Andrew fell asleep and we had to all Uber home. ;)

Picking up pizzas for happy hour at Dominos and the nicest people work there.

They even let the kids make their own pizzas while we waited for our order!

Weekend pedicures. 

A long overdue hair trim. 

Dinner date with Sam at Opal before seeing World Cup soccer champ, Carli Lloyd, speak at the Arlington. 

Wild dinner at the Pirozzi's 

Building robots at Lululemon. 

Softball and Baseball - Pink Jaguars and Tin Caps

I caved. I let Samantha play three sports that all coincided with each other. Last year, I did a big N-O to softball. This year, with Samantha dropping flamenco dancing and really loving playing sports we decided to give it a go. With the end of basketball season, she is now just playing soccer and softball which is kind-of, sort-of more manageable. I think. 

First practice!

Second practice (did I mention that there are two practices a week AND two games a week?!) 

Thankfully we have Coach Jules again and a super fun team of friends and families. 

First one to the base wins! 

Yes, there was a serious collision here. No one was hurt, thankfully! 

Thatcher is getting some extra pitching and catching in. He is the official ball boy (or Ball Shagger?) for the Pink Jaguars. 

The girls practice as the sun goes down.

 Most of the girls on the team are first-time softball players. 

It's baseball season for Thatcher too!

He's on a team with mostly his classmates from Peabody. 

We lucked out with a late add to the Tin Caps. It's nice to have a Pirozzi on our team!

Cutest softball team there is! 

Pink Jaguar field trip to the UCSB softball game. 

Thatcher's first game!

Todd is assistant coach for the Tin Caps. 

The girls do not get a machine pitch like Thatcher's league. 

Samantha isn't quite there yet to be a pitcher. 

Thatcher is doing a great job at keeping the snack shack in business. 

Ready position!

Samantha's been rotating from short stop, second and catcher. 

Thatcher's league doesn't allow kids in the Snack Shack during volunteer hours but Sam's league does which is awesome because these kids LOVE working it. 

I'm not sure about correct change given but I love that the league sees this as a teaching moment and is very relaxed about letting the kids participate. 

Todd had to fill in to take score at one of the games. It was a lot more involved than he had expected! 

Dropped the girls off at Coach Jule's house to go to another Gaucho game and clinic!

Here are some video highlights from the season so far. 

And here is Samantha getting her best hit so far, a double!

The Pink Jaguars are so far undefeated with 5 wins! A highlight for the girls (and me) is that they do cheers the ENTIRE game. 

Not so much a highlight is the few times it has rained it is ALWAYS on a game day. Just today was another canceled game. 

Making the best out of a rained out game, Sam is getting pitching lessons from Vienna who is the superstar on our team. There are only 3 girls on the team who know how to pitch and should one of those girls not be able to make a game, we'd be in a bit of a predicament because you have to rotate pitchers every two innings.

The Shetland level does not keep score and they let EVERYONE hit on the roster each inning which can be quite long (and boring). I'm looking forward to next year when Thatcher will be old enough to play for real. So far Thatcher has not missed a hit off the machine and has had two doubles!

Samantha Piano - "Snowfall"

Samantha is playing this WAY too fast. Her piano teacher calls her "fast fingers." The piece is supposed to be played slowly, reminiscent of delicate snowfall but hers sounds more like a blizzard. I kind of like that she plays it her way. 

She has worked hard to memorize this piece (well almost all of it). The plan was to do this in the school talent show BUT she is going off in another direction and has decided just this past weekend that she and a few friends are going to dance. I have not seen this dance. The try-outs are in two days. This should be interesting. ;)