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.

Skating 2012 Pictures

I put all this year’s skating pictures and videos in an online album. Enjoy!

Tobias Gretzky

Skating has been great fun for Tobias this year. He has gotten very confident on his skates. In fact, he has gotten so confident that this one time when we went skating I found him playing hockey! It was Wednesday after school, my daddy day last week. The three of us went to the ice. I put Tobias’ skates on first, because he can go by himself. I then put Lorelei’s skates on and went out on the ice with her, but when I turned around I did not find Tobias where I expected him, on the rink they made skating around. Instead I found him on a square they made playing hockey! And he was quite impressive too! Most other players were running around on the ice on their shoes, but Tobias and another kid from his class were on skates and managed themselves quite well. Tobias even scored a goal!

It was so nice to see, especially because this is not something I would have expected Tobias to do so easily, him being kind of shy and all. I guess the ice-skating must have really boosted his confidence or something.

REAL Ice Skating!

I guess most people skate on artificial ice most of the time… I do not consider that REAL skating :-). REAL skating is when you can go out on canals, lakes and other open bodies of water. We call it “natuurijs” (literally: natural ice) and there is nothing like it! It is cold in The Netherlands right now so, we have natuurijs. It has been three years since we had any natuurijs to speak of… But now we have a lot of it as well. As I wrote before, Tobias can skate on his own now. On the rink it was still slow and shaky, but he has progressed rapidly in the past few days! He is making the right moves, picking up speed, learning how to stop and loving it all the way!

This past weekend we went skating on the Breevaart, which is a waterway close to our house that goes all the way out to Reeuwijk. We went there twice, and then on Saturday we went to Annalief’s birthday party in Voorschoten. They live right by a small body of water and we skated there. Then on Sunday we went out to visit friends in Oudewater and we skated there too on the “Grote Gracht”. Monday I went on the Breevaart for a few hours myself. Yesterday I took Tobias back out to the Breevaart after school. Today Tobias is going skating with school.

The weather prediction says that the cold weather will last until Sunday, so this weekend there will be some skating too! I just LOVE it!

Oh, yeah, another thing: there is “Elfstedenkoorts” (Eleven City Fever) in The Netherlands. That means that the “Rayonhoofden” (Regional Heads) are debating whether “It Giet Oan!”. Now, that probably sounds like a bunch of jibberish to you, but it means that we might have an “Elfstedentocht”, a skate tour of 200km in the north of the Netherlands. That rarely happens because for 200km of waterway to freeze over with a sufficient amount of ice (6”) to hold 16.000 skaters it has to really freeze for quite a while. The last time we had one was on January 4th 1997 and before that in 1986… So, it is rather rare. Right now there is talk of declaring the Elfstedentocht as a national holiday and everything so, it is a big thing here! I would argue that it is even bigger than the Dutch team in a Worldchampionship Soccer Final, but I bet people would disagree. It does come close though, in terms of impact and audience. Can you imagine a whole country glued to the TV foor 7 to 8 hours starting at 4am? Well, that’s what happens when there is an Elfstedentocht… Right now it looks like it might happen Sunday or Monday… I will keep you posted… :-).

Tobias does not quite get the whole Elfstedenkoorts yet…

Eye on the Ball

Tobias has been playing lots of sports, with me, with Opa and at school, but other than swimming lessons he has not been part of any organized form of sports… yet! As I wrote just last month Santa prepared Tobias for baseball. The season starts in March but practice continues throughout the winter, indoors! I did not know that, but found out by contacting the team :-). Anyway, Tobias is welcome to try it our so, that’s what we did last week. This picture was taken during practice. They are practicing “fielding”.

Tobias did quite well. The hardest part, for all kids it seemed, it catching the ball. Throwing seems to be easier, although aiming is quite the challenge. Tobias did quite well. They also practiced hitting from a tee and a toss (not a real picth, just tossing up the ball from the side). Tobias did well both ways and has quite a swing on him with the real bat as well. Santa gave him a wooden bat, but here they used aluminum bats which are lighter and from my estimate a little shorter too. Also the balls are slightly different: lighter and with a cushiony cover. I guess we’ll have to get him one of those balls as well.

The most important thing: Tobias had a great time! Today is his second practice session…