Ezzie's birthday and Baseball

Well, I certainly am an inconsistent blogger, aren't I? I could blame it on lots of things if I wanted: the craziness of getting ready to move next week, this long, drawn-out pregnancy (I guess it isn't really drawn-out. My guess is that the baby will probably make his entrance after the standard nine months), working my bum off as relief society president, baseball usurping our lives for the last two and half months...but honestly, the real reason is just plain laziness. The two hour naps I've been prone to taking every afternoon for the last 2 months have also probably contributed to my lack of motivation. Speaking of stolen afternoon naps...I have a clever strategy I use when I answer the phone to hide the fact that I've been snoring away only seconds before; I sing a few scales (La,la,la,la,la,la,la) before I say "hello", thereby banishing the groggy, tongue-slurred speech that is dead give-away.

Back to the topic at hand: I will always be able to find a million excuses for not blogging, but I've decided instead to look for reasons to blog.

One great reason is my Ezzie June's 6th birthday. I love this child. I have felt an especially tender connection with him since the day of his birth. He is sweet, sensitive, artistic, and just plain beautiful. He has an old, wise soul in that little six year-old body of his.








We have a tradition in our family that the birthday child is king for the whole day. He wears a crown and gets to order all of his loyal subjects around. We respond by bowing and saying, "As you wish, Oh royal King." Ezra gave all of us titles in his royal kingdom. Of course I was the royal Queen. Todd was the royal knight, Jonah was the royal Jack...and Reuben was the Royal Slave!







For the next part of this post I am going to gripe and complain for a bit. I can never say the word "baseball" without saying "grrrrrr" under my breath at the same time. When I say that baseball (grrr) has usurped all of our time for the last two and half months, I am not exaggerating. We found ourselves marking time at the baseball fields at least four days each week (I guess that is what happens when you have two players and they both have two practices and two games every SINGLE week). Gone are the days when kids organized their own practices and gmaes in the empty lots behind their houses. We live in a time where soccer moms and baseball moms, day in and day out, have to load up their kids, drive some distance to scheduled practices, wait on the field for practice to wrap up, and then drive their kids home or on to another lesson. And what's up with playing a sport 4 days a week for heaven's sake! Why does the sport have to take over the lives of entire families. What happened to the well-rounded child and what happened, for that matter, to unstructured free time? HUH?

Now that I've got that off my chest, here are some cute pictures of my little sluggers:).











And of course, let's not forget their little fans: