Play of the Day

Just a quick update on Blake's baseball team. The regular season is over. The Twins took the championship and so our coach is now the head coach of the Tournament Team. We play in the PONY league so there is a qualifier in Waianae next month and a State Tournament in Hilo a week or two after that. The winner of the State tournament will play in California. It's very similar to the Little League World Series...just not as publicized.

So anyway, we are doing everyday practices and 3-4 scrimmages per week for the past 3 weeks now. Blake has been playing pretty well in the field and has been hitting the ball better. He's hitting 0.444 with a 0.667 on base percentage. He only has 9 at bats over 7 games because of substitutions and what not, but still, pretty good. Here's a link to our team page for more stats and info if you are interested.

And now for the Play Of The Day. We were playing a really good team this past Sunday. There are a couple of guys from our Twins team on that team. One of them is at bat in the video. Blake is playing second base. Earlier in the game that player beaned Blake in the helmet during his only at bat. This, I guess, is payback. (FYI They were and still are really good friends)



It's a little hard to see what's going on in the video so here is a little recap. There was 1 out with a man on second and third. The ball was lined to Blake, who had to go the his right and back a little into center field to make a diving catch. He then tossed the ball to the short stop to complete the inning ending double play. Daa da da Daa da da.

Hula

Blake just had his Hula performance for his school. This is his third year taking hula and this year, he finally moved up from the back row, which probably means he's doing better.....finally. If you are wondering why he's taking hula, here is the background story. At his school, from 4th grade, the students have a study hall period, but if you want, you can elect to take dance, orchestra, or choir. We decided to strongly suggest (force) Blake to take hula. The reason being: (1) We thought it would be good for him to take hula to give him some sort of cultural/artistic talent, (2) We heard that a lot of athletes take hula to improve footwork and agility, (3) In 7th grade it is mandatory to take an extra-curricular activity, so this would give him a 3 year head start, (4) And the final and probably the most plausible reason was, we figured he would just fool around during study hall, so he might as well learn something.
So anyway the performance went well and it was the first performance where he actually smiled.




PS. I haven't found a way to allow private blogs to be available to RSS Readers. I think Blogger is working on that but for now, if you want, I can add you to the email notification list when there is a new post. Let me know if you want to be added.

Closing the Gate

I haven't been posting for a while now. The main reason is because I've been really busy with work and baseball. The other reason is that apparently some of Blakes friends have been Googling him and this blog comes up and I guess my posts embarrass him somehow. So, to preserve his privacy and maintain his macho cred, I'm going to only allow you all to view the blog.

I'm probably not going to have time to catch up so I'll give a brief rundown on what we did over the past few months.

• Michelle and I worked at the Iolani Family Fair again this year. We were the chair for the Produce booth again and so we worked both days from opening to closing. Really tiring but very fun. We've been doing this for several years now and have gotten to know a lot of the other people really well.
• The baseball regular season finally ended. The Twins took the league championship. They were undefeated in the league and had only 1 loss and 1 tie during the entire season.
• Blake was selected to the KAC Tournament Team and I'm going to be an assistant coach and Michelle is the team mom again this year. So everyday practices and 2-3 scrimmages over the weekends have started for us.
• Blake had his school hula performance...since this is now a private blog, I'll post pictures. He finally moved up from the back row so some of them are decent.
  

That's all I can think of for now.

PS
I've been told that now that the blog is private, some readers may have problems with accessing it. There may be a way to get around this. Someone is looking into a solution for me. I'll post it when it's ready.

Kauai Trip

Since Blake is on Spring Break this week, we decided to take a vacation to Kauai. It was a short three day trip, but we ended up doing a lot....We relaxed at the hotel, swam in the pool and at the beach, did some sight seeing, and ate some great food.
We stayed in Poipu, which is on the south shore of Kauai. On our first day there, we were lucky enough to see a Monk Seal on the beach. Apparently, seals come onto shore to bask in the sun, on a regular basis on the south beaches.



The next day, we drove out to the north side of the island to check out some scenic spots and to hike a bit of the Na Pali coast. The trail was nicely maintained and within the first mile, provided some really nice views of the coast. We didn't get a chance to go very far because Michelle wasn't very comfortable with the height that we were at. So we went back down and walked along the beach instead. The one thing that is really noticeable between the beaches on Oahu and the beaches on Kauai is that the Kauai beaches are all crystal clear and perfect for snorkeling. It was pretty windy while we were there so it was also good for some shoreline body surfing.



Kilauea Lighthouse



Wailua Falls. One of the larger waterfalls in Hawaii. At least that I have seen. If you look closely, you can see someone on the edge. A very short walk past some "Danger, Keep Out" signs, will take you from the lookout to the edge of the waterfall. You could very easily fall off the edge...and believe me, it's a long long way down.




Kauai was a perfect way to get some much needed rest and relaxation. Blake has been working really hard at school and we've all been busy with baseball, work, and life. So this was a great way to spend some quality time together and recharge ourselves.

Medieval Fair

The "Big Thing" for Iolani 6th graders is the Medieval Fair. They spend an entire quarter studying the Medieval period. All subjects material for all classes is centered around it and the culminating event is the
M  E  D  I  E  V  A  L    F  A  I  R

All 6th graders pick or are assigned a Medieval occupation. Everything from Kings and Queens to Knights, Merchants, or Peasants. There are also Artisans, Masons, Herbalist, and Jesters. Each group needed to create some sort of skit or demonstration of their occupation. They also had to make all of their costumes and any other items that they would need to best represent what they were.

Blake ended up with Archer. He really wanted to be a Jester and was already pretty good at juggling, but he settled for Archer. I, on the other hand was rooting for Archer. First of all, archery is cool. Secondly, I was looking forward to making a bow....how awesome would that be? And yes, this is a school project, so Blake needs to so most of the work...I just need to help him with the tools and what not. :D

Making the bow turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. Mainly because we got lucky and found a set of youtube videos showing how to make a bow out of stone age tools. Yeah, that's right, this guy used rocks. Here's the first video if you are interested (thx Tom Mills)
So I figured, all we needed to do was follow his instructions and just replace with modern tools...chisel, wood shaver, saw, hammer. And it all went exactly like the video. We made some mistakes with not choosing the right shape before we started and taking off a bit too much wood in certain areas, but for the most part, it came out pretty nicely.
We used a guava branch for our wood. (Thanks mom for getting us the branches) Guava wood turned out to be incredibly strong and flexible. I was really impressed with the bend that we got in the bow.


This is the shaving process. Took a long time, but lots of wood comes off with the shaver.


Here's Blake doing a floor tillering to test the bend.


We also had to create a costume for Blake the Archer. Blake did a lot of research on the clothing that they wore and designed a couple of outfits. My mom, then did a lot of great work helping Blake put all the pieces together.

The fair was pretty cool. All the students did a great job with their booths and costumes.



"Cruel Connor of Constantinople is charged for stealing 5 pigs, and the King's jewels. Reward: 1 pig and a fourth of the King's jewels"


The hilarious physicians booth. Loved that one.


Blake the Archer. He got a bunch of bulls eyes and some of his arrows actually went through the target. YEAH!!!

President's Day Tournament

We ended the 3 day tournament with at 3-0 record. I believe we played 2 of the tougher teams in the tournament. A team from Aiea and one from Ewa Beach. We outscored the three teams by a total of 32-5. Despite a couple of injuries and missing players, the team as a whole played very well.

Blake ended up going 2-6 with 5 Runs scored, an RBI, 2 Walks, and 3 Stolen Bases. For the most part, he hit the ball solidly, but just toward fielders. The good thing is that he's hitting a bit harder so he got on base a lot via fielding errors. Harder hit balls == harder to field.....yeah...I'm going with that.

I also have a web site up and running for our team. I've got some of the box scores and stats posted. Check it out if you want to see the details. KAC Twins

This week is the opening weekend for our league. Games on Saturday and Sunday. I'm going to try to get a bunch of pictures this weekend to post.

Taiwan Team

This weekend, we played against a team from Taiwan. They were here for the week to play a bunch of teams from Hawaii in an informal Goodwill type tournament. I think this team was the runner up to the one that went to the Little League World Series International tournament.



It was a really good game. The team from Taiwan was very disciplined, as you would expect, and the game was close and very competitive. We played by Little League rules, which meant that we were not able to steal bases. We were tied at 3 up to the 5th inning, but ended up losing 5-3 in 6 innings.

Blake played a pretty good game. He got on base twice and scored once. He hit two hard balls at the short stop. The first went under the SS glove and went into left field, so he reached on an Error. His second at bat was a bit stranger, the ball was hit toward second base on the short stop side. Since there was a man on first, the SS and 2B were pinched in to turn the double play. The ball rolled up the SS, out of his glove and up off his shoulder and landed right at the 2B who was on second base, forcing out the runner. Blake got on base...not sure if this is a Fielders Choice or an E6. In any case, he later scored on a bases loaded walk. We ended up only scoring that single run, leaving 3 men on base. His last at bat, he was way ahead of the pitch and hit the ball off the end of his bat to line out to the second baseman. He played well in the field, making all the plays that were hit to him at second base. He also just missed turning a double play. I may be a bit bias here, but the kid is smooth.



After the game, we had a potluck with the Taiwan team. All the boys mingled together and talked...even though there was a language barrier to overcome. The Taiwan team even did a little dance and a song for us. Our team went up and joined in during the dance portion and gave a good effort singing "Take me out to the Ballgame". The Taiwan boys also taught them a little game. I still don't understand it but it seems to be a mutated form of Jun-Ken-Po.



Anyway, it was a great game and an awesome experience for the kids to interact with people from another culture.