I’ve been slacking. The mistake in this whole blogging deal is to think that not a whole lot of interesting things have been happening when they have been. Sometimes it has been hard to see the small adventures as a family as being exciting enough to share. I’ll do my best to think up the last month’s fun memories, and at the very least, you’ll get some fresh pictures. Enjoy!
Baseball.
We get conflicting messages from Toph. If practice gets cancelled he cheers, but then after we have a game or practice he says just how much he loves playing baseball. So your guess is as good as mine. I truly do believe he loves playing.
At this stage of the game, we’re five games into the season with one of the five having been rained out. It was a real blessing that it happened to be the only away game we had all season. The coach doesn’t think they will have any make ups so double bonus. As of this writing Toph’s team is 3-1. I was roped into helping coach during practice. My baseball mechanics knowledge isn’t exactly top notch but helping split the work load of the other two coaches by keeping an eye on the batting cage is something I can handle. Not only did I get flagged to help during practice but I was also asked to keep up the hitting log. Rather than running the paper log I opted to look for a logging app which was way easier. One of the other dads runs the paper log while I keep track on my phone. The bonus to the app is that it runs a website so people can check the schedule and box scores. It’s pretty cool and I’ll end up ponying up the $20 to keep it up for the season. It’s worth it.
After the first game I noticed that the team we played against had team hats and we didn’t. I figured that someone donated them so I was going to do the same for our team. I made some pretty sweet hats and when we were able to deliver them the league ended up providing some hats to us anyways. Oh well. The kids loved my hats and that’s all that counts.
The real shocker during baseball came when we found out that two of the kids he is playing with come from a Filipino family. I was chatting with their dad during one of the games and it came up casually, and it just took off from there. The next game the grandmother, Lola Ines, came to meet Topher. As it turns out she had heard about Topher from Seth who happens to be my cousin and Lola Ines’ coworker. After speaking with her son about Toph being straight from the Philippines, she put two and two together and figured out this was the same boy. She was so excited to meet Topher. We encouraged her to speak Tagalog with him and she was very happy to. Toph was so shocked! He said it was the biggest surprise of his life. He had a hard time responding back but she got a little bit out of him. It was such a nice surprise for us, and Lola Ines expressed how she hoped we would be able to get together soon! We really hope it’s a relationship we can hang on to. The best part was that Topher finally expressed that it was ok to speak Tagalog again and he wouldn’t mind if mom and dad learned it too.
Fishing.
It’s been on the bucket list and we finally made it down to the pond to do some fishing. It was a lot of fun and the time flew. We got up there mid afternoon and we fished as long as we could.
Mom helping with casting. 
The first fish! A Sunny. 
See ya down there!
We dug up a bunch of worms ahead of time so we were well prepared for the sunny and bluegill onslaught. It wasn’t long before Topher finally got the first bass of the afternoon. He was so proud, and Lolo was there to see the moment.
It wasn’t long after the first one when he caught a second bass. The second one was even bigger than the first! He thought he was becoming quite the pro. He didn’t let it go unnoticed that he was the only one catching the big fish. These two were respectable enough to where we decided that they should be dinner.
First bass dinner of the year 
A quick and easy dinner
He was so proud of that dinner. He really liked the taste of bass and now I can’t wait to take him bullhead fishing. It’s totally different and I can’t wait to see what he thinks of that fish since I much prefer bullhead over bass.
Kite Flying.
There isn’t much here I can say other than he really seems to enjoy getting the kite out and flying it in the yard. I wish we didn’t have the distribution lines in our back yard. It would make flying in the field a no brainer but I just don’t trust the wind direction to keep him from getting zapped. Then there is the road, which isn’t a big deal if the wind is headed the right way, but it’s still something we have to consider when flying.
We took the kite up to Lola and Lolo’s house and if there is good wind that’s a great place to fly. We could also head up to the field by the fishing pond but who wants to drive to go fly a kite when you have lots of open spaces in your own yard (obstacles aside).
Once we’re up over the willow tree the kite will stay up there all day. It’s just getting enough wind to get us there that is the issue. Either way, he loves getting it up there as high as possible (didn’t we all!).
Mushrooms.
So, we had morels suddenly pop up out of no where, right in our back yard.
Beth made sure I was absolutely sure these were safe and I was 110% sure that’s what they were. We had them for dinner and then I had a 3 day panic attack worrying about poisoning my wife and child. Everyone was just fine. Well, as it turns out, I didn’t do so well with them. I’m not sure if it was the worry or the morels, but I have heard that people can have sensitivity to them and wouldn’t I be the lucky winner if that was the case.
I will say, they were delicious but they weren’t worth what people pay for them just to eat them. I’d be just as happy with a store shiitake.
So that’s the excitement over the last month! This is certainly a rushed post since I haven’t posted in so long.
