Baseball Uniform

Yet another baseball post.... This time of proud Tobias in his baseball uniform. It was so cool... I think this picture was taken just after we had gotten the uniform. For the kids you can "lease" a uniform, meaning you pay a small fee and you can use it for one season. If there is a growth spurt during the season you can just exchange it for a new one. If you see how much these uniforms cost and how fast he grows, that's a good deal... Anyway, Tobias was so excited that he wanted to show Lisa right away! The next week, the day of his very first game, before he came down to our bedroom, he had put it on :-)! It does look quite nice, doesn't it?

(For the MLB fans: The Braves logo (cap) is from the Atlanta Braves during their 1967-1989 seasons)

Taekwondo

Tobias has been taking a couple of Taekwondo classes. There is this thing here in Gouda called "brede school" where you can try stuff. He has been trying a couple of things including soccer and music. This time it was Taekwondo and he liked it. It was only three classes of which he missed one (due to me being in London for work... shame on me :-)). But, he did attend the last one, and so did I. They did all sorts of moves and other exercises culminating in a grand finale of breaking a board.

This is Tobias' board breaking... I thought it was great! He was so proud of himself... I think that, after he gets his B-diploma in swimming, we might have him join Taekwondo class for real.

Oh, guess what, Tobias made it to the (local) paper with his Taekwondo endeavors :-):

Gouda Braves BBall Majors

Tobias has started baseball this year. I wrote about that earlier, but that was when they were still playing inside. Now they have moved on to outside and there are actual games involved :-). This team picture was taken on the second (practice) game of the season. The first one was lost to a team of somewhat bigger and more experienced kids... On the second game, the opponent did not show up (kind of rude...), but they made two teams and played each other. Afterwards there was this photo-opportunity (and I took it with my phone... hence the not so full zoomed view of the team, because I would have been in the way of the people with te real camera's :-). Last saturday was the third practice game. The opponent showed up and was, yet again, obviously more experienced, so we lost again. There is one more practice game before the actual season starts...

It is lots of fun to watch the team learn and grow. It goes pretty fast actually. What they do is, they pitch an under-handed ball. If the batter can't hit they switch to a toss-ball (tossed from the side of the batter). If that doesn't work either the have a tee. Well, the first game the tee was needed a couple of times, but on the third game they did not need it anymore. In fact, pretty much half the team didn't even need a toss ball! Also, the plays are being learned pretty quickly. Of course they are not able to throw the ball all the way across the field yet, but the intention is there :-).

I will keep you posted on developments and try to take some better pictures in the near future.