Graduation Party & Airsoft

   August 31, 2013-This afternoon we went to the graduation party for fellow graduate, Josiah.  It was great to see so many familiar faces!

    After we arrived everyone loaded up in the trucks to go play some volleyball in one of the fields:

Andrew

+Michael (blog)

+Peter

Zach, +Samuel, +Peter

After a couple games of volleyball and ultimate Frisbee we headed back to the house to play some airsoft.

Fixing everybody’s guns before we head out to play

+Michael, Asher, Jamieson, Benjamin

Noah dressed up in his Balaclava

Josiah loading Nick Burns’ gun

It was a lot of fun to play airsoft with so many other players (20+) and we had a great time.

It was a hot day so we tried to cool off and re-hydrate in between rounds.

After dinner and the sunset we enjoyed a time of fellowship back at the house:

This deck was absolutely fantastic and made a great space for entertaining.

Testing out how well my new camera could handle these night shots…

Cards Baseball in the ‘Club’

August 28, 2013

One of Kate’s coworkers gave her tickets to a Cardinals baseball game in the UMB Champions Club at Busch Stadium.  She invited me to come with her (seeing as how I’m almost as much of a baseball fan as herself.)

We arrived very early at the game to get dinner at the all-you-can-eat buffet before the game started.  We sat in the club near the windows that had a great view of the field:

The Reds do some batting practice and (as you’ll see later) it definitely worked.

(No, that’s not Dusty Baker throwing to the batters.)

Brandon Phillips signing autographs amongst the Cardinals fans – gasp!

For those who don’t know: We, the fans of “Cardinal Nation” have some bad blood with Phillips; partially from a brawl that broke out a couple of years ago in Cincinnati.

After eating an enormous dinner, we grabbed some snacks and headed to our seats outside the club.

The game was a complete bust, even though our ace, Wainwright, was pitching.  In one of the first couple innings he let the Reds get 6 runs and we made some crucial defensive mistakes.  Ultimately, we lost 10-0 because Yadi didn’t play in the game !  This game also started a 3 game losing streak for the Cards.

Moving on…

This year I’ve been blessed to have visited Busch 4 times and each time we’ve been in different areas of the stadium:

Even though  the game was a disappointment, it was fun to take advantage of what the UMB Champions Club had to offer-especially the buffet.  Here’s a list of my evening’s refreshments:

two heaping servings of ceaser salad, three servings of teriyaki chicken with rice, two hot dogs, two servings of potatoes, a couple slices of roast turkey, a brownie, two cookies, Italian sausage with pasta and a strawberry daiquiri.

Here you can watch the game from your couch like you would at home-at the ballpark!

I really liked getting to see the World Series trophies:

2006 World Series

1982 World Series

1967 World Series

They also had the 2011 World Series trophy displayed for a total of four.  It was cool to have four of the trophies in one room when some many other clubs have never won the World Series four times.  The Cards have won nearly a quarter of all the World Series won by the National League.

8.28.13

Blue Belts!

This afternoon we were able to take the test to receive our blue belts and we all passed.  It’s so exciting to continue to practice and see real improvement.  Things that seemed awkward when we first started almost two years ago is now perfectly natural and instinctive.

We’re looking forward to testing for our black belts after we get our green, brown and red belts.