Baseball Tournaments

The last weekend in July both Kade and Mason had a baseball tournament.  Since Erik was coaching Mason's team, he took Mase and I took Kade.  

Kade's team took 2nd in their tournament and Mason's team took 3rd in their bracket.  Both boys had a ton of fun playing with their buddies!

Brooks made it to both boys' tournaments but unfortunately we only got a picture of him with Kade.  Erik was too busy heading cats to remember to take too many pictures.

Just a couple of athletes, hunting gophers.

They were missing a handful of their teammates but they did the best they could!

Way back in April, Kade played a couple tournaments in Des Moines, in one of the games he was nominated as an MVP (the game he hit his first over the fence homer).  Because of that nomination he qualified to play in an MVP tournament in August. We decided this could be a once in a lifetime opportunity, and we didn't have anything going on, so we figured "why not"?  It was AWESOME!  I'm so glad took advantage of the opportunity.  It was such a memorable weekend for all of us.  My parents joined us for the trip as well.

We got 3 free tickets to the Cubs minor league game for Friday night, the Iowa Cubs against the Toledo Mud Hens.  The Cubs won and there was fireworks afterwards!  I will say though, it was extremely HOT.  The heat indexes were in the 100's all weekend.  Uffda!

This crowd pleaser was made for Mason.  They were shooting hot dogs out of that gun!  Unfortunately Mase never caught one.

He did get himself some cotton candy though!

Killing time in Bass Pro Shop before Kade's games.

Kade was so nervous for this tournament.  He didn't know one kid and he was afraid he'd be all alone.  Turns out none of the kids knew each other except maybe 1 or 2.  Erik said it took about 5 minutes during warm ups and they were all talking and laughing like they'd known each other their whole lives.

Kade was one of the youngest on the team as he was only 11 at the time (he turned 12 the week after).  He didn't play his best baseball when it came to hitting but he played great defense.  There were a lot of great athletes on his team and it was definitely eye opening to see just how good the competition is when you get out of your home area!

Captain of this game.

The only other Minnesota kid (Jackson) on the team!  

Otherwise they were from Iowa, Missouri, South Dakota

The park Kade played at had a fishing pond.  Unfortunately it was so hot the fish weren't biting all that much.  Also, it was so far away from the fields, we didn't feel comfortable letting Mason go there by himself.  Thankfully there was a pond behind the hotel and it might've been the best fishing Mase had ever experienced!  Literally every cast brought in a fish!  Mason STILL talks about that pond and how he wants so badly to go back to it!

Day 2 of the tournament and guess who came home with the championship?  

Yep!  Kado's team!  

It was seriously SO much fun to watch these complete strangers come together and win against a whole bunch of other kids that were also MVP's.  

The best part was after the games they all whipped out their phones and exchanged numbers and Snapchat profiles.  And even now, to this day, they're all still chatting on Snapchat.

Check out those medals!  The ugliest things I've ever seen😆