The end of summer - school is back in session!

Summer was filled with classes I was taking + baseball.  Lots and lots of baseballl. 
Mercer's All-Star team went to the state playoffs in Savannah.  We were representing "District 2" and were playing against other 8 other districts in the state of Georgia.  

There was a banquet on a Friday night.  The first of the tournament games started on Saturday morning.   There was a local (Savannah) college baseball coach that was the keynote speaker at the banquet.  After the speech, we were welcomed by the Chatham County Little League association who was the host for the Georgia tournament.  Finally, players and parents had dinner.  There was supposed to be a movie night in the park after dinner for the players, but it got rained out.  

Just as well - we had to check into our apartment for the week and get settled before the game in the morning.  We booked a place downtown above a storefront on Broughton Street - a few blocks from where we used to live.   

It had a lot of character (15' ceilings, single pane windows so you could hear everything outside - ha!).  It was cool to be back downtown.  The beauty, too, about being in an apartment is that we had a kitchen (we could save some $ by eating breakfasts or dinners in -- with an occassional restaurant outing).  We also had a washer/dryer - which was key to washing the uniform between games!  (We had to wash a team-mate's uniform b/c they didn't have laundry in their hotel.)

The first game went well.  "B"East Marietta played a team from Athens, GA and won 11-1 after 4 innings.  Mercer played a great game - went 3-3 with 2 doubles, a triple, 3 runs, scored 2 RBI's and pitched almost 2 innings of the 4.  He gave up 1 run and struck out 4. 

After grabbing a late lunch and re-grouping, we had some free time.   The first free night, we rode a ferry across the river to visit another team-member and family who were staying in the resort on Hutchinson Island.  They had a pool at that hotel and the family rented a cabana for us and a couple of other families they invited over to swim. 

The boys (and us adults) had a nice time hanging out (away from a baseball field) in the pool and hot tub!  The kids made s'mores at the resort and Isabella played with a fuzzy caterpillar for several hours while there.  (And we brought it back to the hotel with us / she played with it for several more days!)

Early the next morning, I took a rental car up to North Carolina to go to my Grandpa's service (as posted in the previous blog).  On the baseball front, Mercer's team played their 2nd game on Sunday.  They did not win this one.  They took a tough loss 15-3.  Mercer played a good game, however, going 2-3 with an RBI.  The "B"East Marietta team went to the Crab Shack for some seafood on their next free afternoon. 

The boys played again on Monday.  This time, they went up against Cartersville.  Unfortunately, they lost that game as well (11 to 1) - so their season came to an end.  (It was a double-elimination tournament).  I made it back on Monday for the end of the game.  The kids were a bit despondent that they didn't keep going, but honestly they had never gone this far and we were ALL proud of them!! 

They accomplished a lot!

Who knows?!  Now that we know what it's like / what our competition is like... maybe we'll get back to the state championship for the 12U playoffs and edge up on our state-wide rivals?!  (Of note - if they had gone on... they would have missed their first days of school (August 1st / 2nd) for the tournament was out-of-state on the 2nd!  And... the Little League World Series tournament went on all the way 'til August 22nd!  Works for kids who are in school up north who don't start 'til after Labor Day in September, but for those kids in the south who start in early August... they're missing school.  Todd found out that there are tutors, but still!)  

Since we did not know how long the boys would play in Savannah, we booked the entire week there ahead of time / decided that if the tournament was cut a little short, we would make a vacation out of the rest of the week -- which we did!

(Unfortunately, this is the week that we had planned to visit family along the east coast (NC and NJ)... so we were not able to visit them this summer.  :(     

One thing to note:  it is HOT in Savannah in July.  We would partake in a morning activity, then be wiped out much of the afternoon!  

We visited the cool SCAD bookstore across the street from Eichberg Hall (our architecture building.)  Our home-away-from-home is pictured behind Isabella here.    We also walked around the city for a bit -- back down to the river.  The giant freighter container ships were popular.  Every time one would pass, you would have to stop and look.  They're like mini cities when they are stacked high with the containers!

(In the background on this day, you can see the resort hotel across the river we went to earlier in the week.)

The kids (and we) had fun in the Savannah Sweets shop.  We spent a lot of time watching the candy maker begin the process of making salt-water taffy in this crazy machine, rolling it... coloring and flavoring it... then it would spin and eventually be wrapped.  It went through a ceiling-mounted conveyor system to another room in the candy store where it dropped into the taffy bin!  (it didn't hurt that every now and then the guy would toss some wrapped taffy out to the spectators... and also every now and then a piece of taffy would fall off of the conveyor belt/ a kid would snatch it up!)  :) 









We had the kids sample the pralines that we served at our wedding... which they did not like (pecan and brown sugar goodness).  We also bought a small pack of key lime cookies from a market so they could try this other treat served at our wedding.  (They liked the cookies more than the pralines.)




The kids also thought it was kind of cool "living" downtown.  We could go grab breakfast at the bakery the next block over to bring back up to our apartment.  (Here, Isabella is decorating their wall while we wait on our order.)  Loved her drawing!

And - below - another of her drawing creations... in "3D."












Isabella had a meltdown at one of Mercer's games... she insisted that we were only in Savannah to celebrate Mercer... that he was so good and she was not.  :(   We intentionally tried to include things that we thought she would like to do, but - I don't know if it mattered.  Even after the trip she kept saying our whole trip to Savannah was just for Mercer.  














But - while we were there (for Isabella), we went to a nearby nature preserve.  There were snakes in cages that she watched.  A naturalist even pulled a turtle out of a tank so she could look at and touch it.

There were rescue owls, eagles and a rescue bobcat.










My favorite thing (which I am reminded by this picture on the boardwalk) was when we all took a moment to be still.  


Stop walking.  

Listen.

Below the boardwalk were tiny crabs... thousands and thousands of them. They were walking around and making clicking noises while the tide was low.  It was a little creepy to know all of this was milling about underneath you, but cool at the same time.

Another thing that was creepy / cool....these turtles in the algae at the pond!  Sometimes all you would see would be their heads above water... they almost looked like water snakes swimming with their heads above water.  

This pond was FULL of wildlife.  There were (loud) nesting trees and lots of these birds milling around.

Aaah... air conditioning. We spent a little time in this room just soaking in some cold air and visiting the lone wolf... who clearly needed a pack to roam with~

Here's a cool (abandoned) fire tower on the property of the nature preserve.... it would be idyllic to set watch from that perch and overlook the marsh (as seen behind Mercer in the picture above!)  

We hit the beach out at Tybee Island a couple of times.   We saw dolphins in the water as well as those giant tanker ships. (As seen in the background of one of the pictures.)  We played in the water.  We dug in the sand.  Isabella met a friend too.   Isabella and Todd played cards while Mercer and I went to explore the boardwalk at Tybee + the tacky shops in the little downtown area.  In addition to the beach, we had a couple of nature outings as well.

Our other nature trip was to go on a Dolphin boat tour.  Isabella chose this for our family -  Captain Derek's Dolphin Adventure - instead of a (smelly) horse and carriage ride through downtown.

GREAT CHOICE!  They guarantee that we would see dolphins... and we did!  We saw several "pods."

In fact, one of these photos that Todd took caught a dolphin jumping clear out of the water!!  (Look hard!)

It was fascinating... and well worth the money!  We had a great time and would recommend it to others.  There was also some other beautiful scenery seen on the tour including this abandoned lighthouse.

I went to Tybee early on our last day to see one sunset from the beach.

We were in no hurry to leave Savannah the next day.  We took the kids to Bonaventure cemetery.  Strange, yes, but... it's such a pretty place.  We looked up the "famous" sites to see in Bonaventure.  Bird Girl has been removed.  We found Gracie.  And - we weren't even thinking about this, but Johnny Mercer was buried there.   So, we found his plot / and multiple family plots surrounding it. 

While in Savannah, we had dinner with some friends who we went to college with.  They were telling us about an exhibit that SCAD had put on that was sort of Disney-ish.  While we waited on our turn to go in, we were looking through their year-by-year photos on a touch-screen monitor.  We found a photo of Todd on the baseball team! SCAD was celebrating 40 years and seriously went all-out on this exhibit.  


There were walls that moved (in this front room the fireplace moved back which led to another room), animated videos that streamed on multiple walls, drawers that pulled out that had TVs in them and different things streaming on them.  After watching the story of the history of the school and the vision on the founder... Isabella was saying that she didn't want to go to her school anymore.  She wanted to go to this school.  

(Sure it looked fun... there were cartoons streaming on the walls!)  She almost pitched a fit / didn't understand why she couldn't go.  Their marketing worked on Isabella!  (These photos are from various websites that featured the exhibit / the renovation.)  In looking up the cost - it was ridiculously expensive to construct.  It was well-done!  






https://www.bizbash.com/experiential/media-gallery/21068581/savannah-college-of-art-and-design-40th-anniversary-scadstory

https://www.architectmagazine.com/project-gallery/savannah-college-of-art-and-designs-scadstory






We also went to a creative cafe (that specializes in kids crafts).  Isabella worked on a project while the rest of us had lunch, then we headed out of town.  Mercer was pretty bored!








We had promised Mercer a chance to get together with friends over the summer.  So, when we got back, we had a few boys come over to our house.  The idea was that they would play with beyblades for awhile (this was the toys they played with at Mercer's birthday) and we would head over to the pool that we were members of.  We ordered pizza at the pool, played catch for awhile, and then had a night swim.   (M had been wanting to order pizza at the pool / thought it was so cool& so novel!)

A couple of the boys came back to our house to spend the night.  The previous month, Mercer won a gift card to a candy shop on the square at our neighborhood putt-putt golf tournament.  He couldn't decide what to spend his bounty of $10 on... so he bought a mystery bag of treats.  The candy shop sells weird sodas too / there was a soda in the bag.  

M bought more soda.  When the boys came back to our house after the pool party, we had a "weird" soda tasting.  (I wouldn't let him buy puke-flavored.  The worst one was dirt-flavored.)  ha!    I was a little sad that NOW Mercer knows about this candy shop.  We have been avoiding taking the kids to it.  Oh well... cat's out of the bag!





We had breakfast the next morning and a silly string battle.  It was memorable and we're glad he had a little end-of-summer bash with some friends he had been wanting to get together with all summer.  :) 















There was something else on our list to tackle over the summer... another last hoo-rah:  going to Six Flags.  The kids earn a free pass for reading a certain number of books.  (Of course - the adults have to bring the kids and it's not cheap to take them on this "free" trip to the amusement park.  But, we sucked it up and went.  Honestly - the most enjoyable part was the water part of the park.... the water slides and tunnels as well as the big inner-tube rides in the water.   (It is pictured behind Isabella... and a professional photo off of the web is below.)   If you're not paying attention -- or even if you are paying attention, but you get caught while you're walking up all of the steps -- you may get completely dumped on by a giant bucket of water coming from the top!

We rode several roller coasters, of course, including the historic scream machine.  But, it was too rough for all of us.  The mindbender was probably the fastest / loopy one we rode.  Mercer didn't love it, but Isabella did.  They went on the ride again!  Yikes... we have a speed demon!  






We also rode the historic carousel.  I believe it is over 100 years old!

 Too cool for the carousel.

Mercer liked this Bat Man car.  











And then.... school started.  Like it or not - summer was OVER. :(


Here are our First Day of School shots!

Mercer is in 6th Grade -- in middle school.  (But in Marietta, there is a school JUST for 6th graders.  whew!)

Isabella is in 1st Grade -- she has also started going to a one-day-a-week "Mile" program.  She's in her regular 1st Grade class 4 days a week and spends 1 full day in a different classroom with other gifted children.  Should be interesting!























And...since school has started, we have been to at least 5 end-of-summer parties / end-of-summer pool parties.

1. One pool party was for baseball end-of-all-stars celebration + the cookout at the field + kick-ball game + presentations of player achievement afterwards.  

2. One pool party was at the house of one of the baseball players. A bunch of people from his school was there / a bunch of guys from the all-star team were there and... gulp... his 12 year old female cousin was there and she was MAJORLY flirting with Mercer.  Todd, the dad of the birthday boy and I took notice... it was so obvious and so shocking to see first-hand!





(There was a photo-booth at this player's house... here's a shot of the baseball moms.  Here's another photo of our family.  sort of! Mercer is hiding behind a catcher's mask.  ha!  Again - too cool for pictures.)

3.  One was at our pool where there was a cookout. They announced the end of the season is near / our pool will be closing mid-September.

4.  One was at the house of the youth leader at church for the youth group (including boys and girls (yikes!) from 6th - 12th grade that Mercer has just moved into. 

5.  One was with some friends from church.

It's Labor Day today.
I guess summer is OFFICIALLY over.........  Pools are closing for the season.  A new season has officially begun of life-as-normal in school, after school activities and back to the grind~