Day of Firsts

Today Darren ran his first marathon ever, Alyssa had her first softball game ever, and Jackson had his first t-ball game of the season. And they all overlapped, but it mostly worked out.  Darren left for his 26.2 miles at 4:45am with a group from the neighborhood for his 6:47am start time.  Later in the morning, I dropped Alyssa and Matthew's nanny (Ms. Paula) off for Alyssa's softball game on my way to drop off Jackson with my folks so that they could take him to his t-ball game so that Matthew and I could go cheer on Darren at the finish line.  

At mile 26

Darren finished his first marathon!  As he puts it, he didn't hit a wall, but the wall crashed around him at about mile 23.  Thankfully, Darren's brother, Bryan, had driven in from Dallas just to run and push him the last 4 miles.  It was just what Darren needed. Thank you, Bryan!  Even with that wall falling on him, Darren still finished and in a very respectable 4 hours and 23 minutes! He looked a little worse for the wear for a few hours post race, but by this evening you couldn't tell that he had a finished a marathon just this morning.  Great job, my love!

Alyssa played her first official softball game.  Ms. Paula reported that Alyssa mostly seemed to enjoy herself and they played two innings.  But Alyssa reported that her favorite part of the day was playing hangman with Ms. Paula. Not a good sign for softball.  We've yet to ask Alyssa if she is really enjoying softball.  We are intending to make her play for the entire season, so I don't even want to open the can of worms in case she doesn't really like it.  Alyssa has another couple of games this next week, so we'll be able see it for ourselves very soon.  As we've commented before, this league seems a bit hard core for 6 year olds-- a game Saturday, Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.  Whew!

Jackson played his first tball game of this season.  The first time I saw him in the St. Louis hat my heart hurt a little.  As an Astros die hard, it is just not right.  But today's report was that Jackson did a good amount of playing in the dirt as well as tball playing.  Sounds pretty similar to last season. I think the highlight of the day for Jackson was getting popcorn with Granny and Granddad.  Thanks to my folks for taking him to his game! 

To celebrate the day of firsts, tonight we went out for dinner.  And in the first time in a long time, it was a delightful meal out, where all 3 kids were pretty happy.  A nice ending to a great day!