USS Alabama Battleship "Overnight Adventure" in Mobile

You can get an idea of how BIG the guns are on this ship.

This past weekend the boys had the opportunity to camp out on the USS Alabama battleship at its museum location in Mobile Bay.  This is something the organization does for Scout groups (and other groups) most weekends.  

The USS Alabama trip is truly one of the highlights of the scout year for my boys' pack.  I was the coordinator for the trip this year, even though females aren't allowed to remain on the ship if it's a male-booking.  Everything went surprisingly well; the kids and male chaperones seemed to have a great time!

There were scout groups from Petal, MS, Phenix City, AL, Marietta, GA and Jacksonville, FL also camping.  Over 300 people total!  I think we were the envy of the other groups -- we only had a 90 minute drive to the ship :-)

Enjoy some pictures I took of the gang before I left the ship at 8pm.  I stayed at the hotel that's adjacent to the property.

Most of the people you see here are from our Cub Scout Pack.  Dave and the boys are in the line somewhere.  There were over 80 from the pack on board!

Not a great picture, but you can get an idea of the berthing setup.  It's remarkable that they gave us 95 beds in two rooms...and how little space that took.

Here's a clearer view of the berthing -- I took this picture the following morning after everyone had disembarked and we cleaned up.  We had everyone in this room and the room through the door behind it.

Dave took the boys through the museum area.

A view of the downtown Mobile skyline from the ship.

The ship's snack bar can prepare meals for the group (for an additional fee) -- they prepared a pizza dinner for us.

Sunset over Mobile.

Jacob and I took a walk down to the tanks on display nearby.

Jacob liked that this was called "Amtrac".

It's Baseball Season!!!

It's baseball season here -- the boys are both in Navarre Youth baseball this year, and they got their uniforms and had their first games this past weekend.

Enjoy some pictures!!!!

At practice, Timmy is got some time as a catcher.

At practice.  The look on his face is priceless!  I can't remember if he hit this one or not....

Here's Timmy practicing as a 2nd baseman.

Game day!  He was so excited to be on the BRAVES!

Dave snuck in a couple of pictures while they were taking team photos.  These pics were taken SO early in the morning!  I wonder how the shadows will be resolved...

Timmy's team had the kids' names embroidered on the hats.  This will help them when these hats are strewn all over the dugout when the boys are batting.

Dave watched Timmy's first game while I watched Jacob's.  Dave got this picture of Timmy's first at-bat: it was a base hit!  He ended up running it in for a score, too!

Later in the game, he was catcher.

On Jacob's team, it was uniform issue day last Thursday.

I need to call that Jacob's "baseball smile" because it's one of the nicest ones he has.

Can you see the ball?  It's above the 3rd baseman's head.

iPhone Photo Phun: The Boys at Baseball Practice

Just a quickie this evening.

Thursdays this month (and much of last month) have been very busy, between the boys each having baseball practice one after another. First Timmy has practice from 5:30-7:30pm, then Jacob's is one field over from 7:30-8:30pm.

It's become a tradition -- about 8-10 "little siblings" get together to play catch, tag, hide and seek, or some other classic game while the older brothers are practicing.  It's really cute.

After about a half hour of hide and seek, I looked over and saw a scene that seemed fitting for my Hipstamatic iPhone app...

The Hipstamatic app is like Instagram -- it filters your digital pictures to look old-school :-)  It seemed to work out in this scene, so long as you don't know what the kids are doing.

So...what are they doing????

The boys are watching the 2nd kid from the left play an iPhone app.  Three of the four of them (including Timmy) are on the same baseball team and they were all hanging out while their big brothers had baseball practice.  I believe Timmy told me he was playing a game called Where's My Water.

I tried to cram my iPhone lens through a fence link to get pictures of Jacob at bat, but it didn't work so well.

My New Running Partner

This is from last May.  The boys did a 1 mile fun run, even though those running numbers say "5K".  Jacob saw a classmate at this race who was registered to run the 5K itself and he asked, "Mom, why can't I do that?"  Well, no one ever said you couldn't!

Meet my new running partner, Jacob.

I invited him on a recent run, since I was just coming off a pretty nasty cold I wasn't running for speed or anything.  Just to burn some calories and use up some pent up energy.  So Jacob joined me and ran about 1.25 miles on Saturday without stopping!

He asked if he could run a 5K race soon, so on Saturday, right after we came back from the 1.25 miler, we registered for a 5K on December 3rd right here in Navarre.  It's a Jingle Bell 5K and registered runners will not only receive a t-shirt, but also a set of jingle bells to ring while running!  We can't wait!

Know what else is cool?  This race course will be designed with "Shortcuts to Grandma's House" so the younger ones can go back early.

Today I took him out for 1.5 miles.  I keep alongside of him and he can watch my Nike+ distance ticking on my iPhone strapped to my arm.  HE LOVES THIS!  For those who know Jacob, you know he's a numbers/data kind of guy!

I am so incredibly proud to have this goal with Jacob -- to run a race together!

Our Beyblades Adventure

Those happy kids are creeping me out.

It all started with a neighbor's birthday party...not long after we moved here.  One of Jacob's new Cub Scout den-mates invited both Jacob and Timmy to his birthday party.  It was a Beyblades tournament.

Our sons weren't familiar with Beyblades at the time, I had sent a starter kit as a gift to my college roommate Megan's son for his birthday late last year, but that was direct through Amazon, and none of us were familiar otherwise.

After the birthday party, our boys were hooked.  Similar to Cars, Bakugon, Pokemon, etc., each individual toy was inexpensive, but once your kids start learning about all the toys that could be acquired, they began to ask for more and more Beyblades.

Six months later, I was watching our boys play Beyblades in one of their stadiums, and they were discussing "balance", "stability" and "agility".  It got me thinking about physics.  In July on a trip to the planetarium, they boys realized how many of their Beyblades are named after characters in mythology (Pegasus) and astrology (Libra).

This led to a blog post for GeekMom.  You can read it here.

About 6 weeks later, I received an e-mail from a representative at Hasbro, asking if we'd like to "sample" their Fall 2011 Beyblades product line.  From what I saw in the e-mail, they were offering us $65 worth of products, free of charge, if we would check it out and I'd write up a follow up for GeekMom.

The box arrived in late September, the boys played with it for about 10 days and they (by "they" I mean "Timmy") gave me some very detailed feedback.  Here is the follow up blog post reviewing the products.

Jacob showing off the interchangeable plates for the "Triple Battle Stadium".

Timmy took his newest Beyblades to his after-school child care today (I'm in the midst of hiring a bookkeeper for the base Thrift Shop and we had interviews this afternoon) and the lead provider asked me at pick up time where Timmy got the Tornado Beyblade he had.  She said the other little boys who were playing with Timmy were admiring it and planning to ask their parents for one.  I had to explain that it came from Hasbro for our review and should be in stores really soon.

These Beyblade XTS Tornado battlers should be in stores by now.  You CANNOT take these ones apart, which makes them less-authentic, apparently.

Back to School!

Today was the first day of school in our boys' public school system.  Unlike our experience in Nebraska, where the boys walked to school and the parents were requested to spend the first hour of the first day of school with the kids...here the parents met with the teachers last week and the kids were encouraged to take the buses and get dropped off.

Dave and I didn't have much to document this morning, since it was just them getting on the bus, but here are the pictures we did receive.  Enjoy!