One more birthday!

We have a driver!!!  The last one in her class, she finally was able to take her driving test and she scored 100%  Nice work Gracie!  We celebrated over the course of 2 days.  Presents on Thursday night, then cake and first home SBC football game on her actual birthday.  Chase came to join us.

16!!

I provided all the celebratory necessities.

Chase came over to join the fun.

Gracie needed balloons, too.

It was an early morning with practices starting by 6am.

Presents for the bday girl

Driving by herself (or with Chase) for the first time

We barely made it, but the Lexus was fixed the day of her birthday.

Nick managed to get the seat covers put in that afternoon, as well.

It's like a brand new car.  🤣

Gracie got to drive Chase to the football game.

USA night at the first home football game

Owen before the first home game.

First 3 days of school must have been exhausting.

He is getting pretty bored.

We resorted to playing a little picklball in the house.

First Mizzou Football game!

We are so lucky that Nick has a golf cart to use.

Kate and Gracie on the back

Pre-game

Nick got us field access so Owen didn't have to do all the stairs to our seats.

Kate at Gracie at the game

Pretty neat drone show at halftime

Fun lights

Owen crutching

Gracie has started calling him the "crip."

Our front row seats.  Pretty nice.

Owen was casted the day before the game.

Nick took him to Pancheros.

The positives...Owen is pretty close to 5'10''

I think he had shoes on, though.

And...SBC softball has officially started.

We are actually 15 games into the season already, but here is the first tournament at Hallsville.

Brooke and Gracie both hit dingers in the first game.

They shared the HR necklace

Gracie got to play SS for one of the games.

Oops.  Popped it up.

You can see both the catcher and Gracie looking at the sky high ball.

3rd place at Hallsville

Game at Fatima

We were so close and took them into 8 innings.

Lost 3-2

Fun times at the tournament in Chesterfield.

They got to play a little Top golf

Here's the whole team

Gracie catching on day 1

More catching

I can only imagine the thoughts and conversation...

"Dad, are they going to walk me again?"

At least 4 intentional walks so far...In high school ball they don't have to pitch to you.

In this case, they did pitch to her, 4 straight balls.

Finally a home game!

I don't think we have many this year.

Coach Bo has taken over for KP.

He seems to be so great with the girls.

After the Hallsville tournament came September 1.  This has been the day circled on a calendar in our heads for awhile now.  What would happen on this day; the official day that Gracie can start recruitment and actually talk to D1 college coaches, text with coaches, hear back from coaches.  It has been such a build up over that past year or so.  That day came and she did received several text messages from a number of institutions, some including; Mizzou, MO State, S Illinois, Penn State, Western Illinois, Clemson, NC State, Rutgers, Wichita State, among others.  The mail has also increased to our house with other schools seemingly interested.  She created a very nice "rejection" statement to send to those she is not at all interested in, and scheduled some phone calls with some that she is interested in.  She has talked with several on the phone and has so far, gone on one visit to Missouri State.  It's stressful, but hopefully all this will be for a good result.

Missouri State 9/11/24

First unofficial visit.  We were scheduled to be on campus and at athletics facilities from 9am-3:30pm.  It was a really long day, but we learned a lot about the program and the school.  There were so many positives that came out of the day.  I didn't really know what to expect, so it was just very odd, as well, and a little surreal.  We went to the field first and they did photos of her in a uniform and we saw the locker rooms and talked about the facilities.

Bears

On campus

Next we drove to campus and walked around on a tour for almost 2 hours.  Gracie got to see dorms, the academic part of campus and the athletics offices.  We were joined by 2 current players, one who she knows through the Aces organization.  We had lunch off campus and then returned to meet in the coach's office before heading back to the field to watch their practice for a little while.  After that we made the 2.5 hour drive back home.  It was a great day!  Gracie said she likes the coaches and campus.  They seemed to like her, as well.

Pictures at the field

It's all pretty exciting.

We'll see where this all goes.

Next up is Mizzou visit on 9/23

Birthday for Rowan!

Owen had a fun time at Rowan's a week ago for his 15th birthday.  Kind of weird that a lot of Owen's friends are a year older than him, but they all seem to have fun together.

They loved the Harry Potter board game!

We are starting another week...  Gracie and I had time to go homecoming dress shopping yesterday.  We are starting to get senior gifts put together for the softball seniors.  The team spent the weekend at the lake tournament; Owen and I drove down on Saturday to watch.  My parents came both days and fun was had by all.  We ended the week with more wins than losses, so I'll call it a good outing.

A boy and his dog

We were finally at home for an evening.

The sky does not disappoint

 So, we have more games this week, school, and about a million other things to get done.  Owen is still in a cast and growing more and more anxious to get it off.  Just over a week now until they hopefully take it off for good.  We are supposed to have 2 away softball games this week, 4 games at home Friday and Saturday, and football is away.