Swimming

Of course swimming is an essential part to any vacation if you are travelling with a 3 year old.  I do enjoy swimming, especially with Aria and when the pools are so warm, but what I really love is the leaps in her confidence and ability when you swim every day for a week.  She still doesn't want to go completely under water and she can't swim completely on her own, but she is only 3.  She does fabulous swimming around on her own in her tube and doesn't mind getting splashed in the face.  We had a fabulous, clean, large, fun pool in Niagara Falls and a small, dirty pool to make do with in Pennsylvania.  Aria enjoyed them both without judgment.  Justin started most swimming sessions with his cannonball...

And Aria got pretty good at her own version...

Here are a couple videos of her doing it all by herself by the end of the week:

And, I think, that concludes my plethora of posts about vacation.  What a great week we had!

Vacation --The Little League World Series

Okay.  This place is so. incredibly. cool.  I mean, we walked through the gate and it took both of our breath away.  There was a story in the official program about how you can watch the event on tv and think it is wonderful, but then you come and experience it and you are blown away.  So very true.  My pictures won't do it justice, but look at the fields:

Volunteer Stadium

Lamade Stadium

They were pristine, major league level cared for, just absolutely beautiful.  And it is done by volunteers!  It doesn't cost anything to get in and most of the people there are friendly and lovers of pure baseball.  The whole complex is just amazing and it is all for 10 days of World Series for 11-13 year old boys from around the world.  Around the world.  Baseball loving boys all over this planet dream and work for their chance to come to this place.  Take a look at how many miles these teams traveled:

I mean Perth, Australia, 11,490 miles and a whole hemisphere away.  It is currently winter there.  They had their regular season back in December.  Can you imagine the travel arrangements and the jet lag and culture change for these kids?  But they come because they love baseball.  And do you know what?  So do the kids from Newark, Delaware who only traveled 146 miles to get there.  Isn't it incredible that all parts of the world and many different languages can be brought together for the love of baseball?  It just doesn't get any better than that!

Thursday was the first day of action and we arrived early, in time for Opening Ceremonies.  We parked in a lot across the street from the complex for $5, which was 100% donated to the American Cancer Society.  There was a sign that said they raised $152,000 for the American Cancer Society at last year's World Series.  So very cool.  Anyway, for the Opening Ceremonies, first they brought out young kids carrying flags for each country and state represented at the World Series.  It looked like this:

Then, each team was paraded out and everyone cheered wildly for them.  Even the umpires got good cheers!

Next came the Little League pledge (which begins with I trust in God) spoken by a Little Leaguer in each of the languages represented and also the parent/coach pledge spoken in each language.  That was really cool to hear.  The mayors of Williamsport and South Williamsport both spoke and there was something from Kelloggs Frosted Flakes, the major sponsor, and a ceremonial first pitch from Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry.  It was all really fun to watch.  Of course, Aria liked Tony the Tiger the best.

Finally we got to watch a game.  The first one we watched was The Caribbean vs. Latin America, aka Puerto Rico vs. Panama.  It was just so fun to watch the kids play, especially the international teams.  We were sitting next to this guy who used to play football and coach at Michigan State.  There was also a family from Michigan who were Michigan fans.  And there we sat as Iowa fans in the middle of Penn State country.  It was just fun to chat with those people about the Big Ten and sports in general.  Like I've said, pure sports.  We let Aria pick one treat per day at the games.  Day one was cotton candy.  She had a lovely cotton candy beard and moustache.

Panama ended up blowing the game open a bit so we left a little early to get a seat in the other stadium for  Texas vs. Washington.  Well, there weren't any seats, so we headed to the infamous hill to watch the game.  This is how Aria took it in:

This was our view.  It was an interesting perspective from the hill.  It was very steep and hard to sit on, but we managed.  People had plastic chairs with the back legs practically sawed clear off to account for the slope.  We didn't get any home run balls, but we were right next to an ESPN camera.  Not sure if we ever made it on tv.  California ended up beating Texas pretty soundly.  We called it a day after that game and headed back to the hotel for more swimming.  :)

On Day 2 of the games, the game we wanted to see the most was Iowa vs. Delaware, which was not until 8:00 pm.  We had a lazy morning and didn't head to the complex until the afternoon.  Our first stop was the Little League Museum.  It was a lot of fun to see all the memorabilia and history of Little League.  It really is incredible how long it has been around (1930s) and how many people have been a part of it.  It was an interactive museum and I think Aria's favorite part was "running the bases."

It was just home to first, but there was a timer to see how fast you could go.  She was on a loop with it for awhile.  Thankfully there was no other kids wanting to do it.  We also sat in a model dugout and Justin attempted to "catch a fly ball."

After the museum we went down to the fields to take in some games.  The US game that was going on that afternoon was packed.  We didn't really see a place to sit, even on the hill so we decided to just find a seat in the other stadium for the Japan vs. Czech Republic that was soon to start.  We ended up sitting in there next to the grandparents of the boy who was pitching for Iowa that night and his little brother.  The kid was really nice and gave Aria a Bomb Pop pin.  Needless to say her treat of the day was a Bomb Pop.

It was incredible to hear about the Iowa team and how much it took for them to get to the World Series.  At the beginning of the series that had not been home for more than 2 weeks.  That means it would be a month of travelling for baseball.  They also told about all the things given to the players like bats, shoes, uniform, etc and some of the sacrifices parents had to make.  For example, one hour after the Iowa team qualified for the World Series, the parents had to commit to a hotel room, probably $200 + a night for a minimum of 6 nights.  Of course they could have searched for their own lodging, but if they wanted one of the rooms in the block reserved for the Midwest team, they had to reserve right then and there.  Crazy.  It was fun to meet those people and we were able to watch the US game on a tv while we waited for the Japan game to start.

Japan, wow!  They were like a machine.  They eventually became the champions and we could see why.  Their infield before the game was phenomenal.  At one point the second baseman backhanded a ball and flipped it from his glove to the shortstop and the shortstop turned the double play.  It was as smooth as butter.  The crowd cheered for that play and it was just in warm up!  The Iowa boys were lodged next to the Japan team and they learned that Japan practiced 3 times per day for 2 hours at a time, ran up to 4 miles per day and had time in the batting cages.  Unreal.  They were definitely fun to watch and they did seem like they were having a lot of fun getting to play there.

Part way through the Japan game I went over to Lamade stadium to reserve our seat for the Iowa game.  I sat there for 2 hours so we could have a good seat near the Iowa crowd.  The stadium filled up so fast.  Because it is all free, general seating, you have to get there early.  Even though we didn't know any of the people, it was fun to cheer for our state.  It was also fun to be there for the prime time feature game of the evening.  We finally got to see Dugout the mascot bear and all his antics like dancing with players, coaches, umpires, and volunteers.

We were bummed that Iowa lost that night and even more bummed that we were headed for home the next day and weren't going to see any more baseball.  I definitely could have stayed and watched the games all 10 days.  To this baseball fan, it was that cool.

One more cute quote from Aria, of course they sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" for the 4th inning stretch of each game.  She picked up on the song and enjoyed singing, "Buy me some peanuts and pepper jacks."  Pretty adorable.

Whew!  What a fun experience!  We will definitely be back.  I don't know when, but I could see, when we are retired, Justin and I going out for the whole 10 days.  If you love baseball, you just have to go.  There is nothing like it!

Vacation Part 3 --Pennsylvania

We arrived in Pennsylvania on a Tuesday evening after 4 hours of driving.  We decided to just have fast food and go swimming.  It worked out that we stayed in a Best Western in both places, kind of funny.  I wish I could have combined the amenities of the two hotels and it would have been perfect.  Anyway, we came to Pennsylvania to attend the Little League World Series in Williamsport.  We decided not to pay $200+ per night to stay in Williamsport and stayed about 40 minutes away in Danville.  And, about 20 minutes from there, nestled beautifully in the mountains, was a super cool amusement park called Knoebels.  We spent a chunk of our Wednesday there.  Funny how weather works, we were there on August 14 and it was in the 50s.  I had on shorts and a sweatshirt and in the morning I was cold.  It warmed up a bit in the afternoon, thankfully!  The admission to this park was free.  You simply had to pay per ride.  Online it looked like there were a lot of rides right at Aria's level.  We decided to get her a day pass, which was $22, but a random person handed us a $5 off coupon.  Most of the rides were between $0.75 and $1.50.  Aria easily doubled her value of rides for the $17 we paid.  Justin and I purchased $25 worth of tickets to ride some of the bigger rides with her.  We brought our own picnic and only bought a couple of treats for food.  We spent about $50 and had an absolute blast.  Definitely could not do that at a major theme park.  We probably couldn't even get in for $50 as a family.   

First ride we go to as a family is the Tilt-A-Whirl.  Justin is a spinny ride kind of guy and I thought I might throw up after one ride.  Aria is like her dad.  She was willing to try anything!  I like rides.  I just don't want to keep spinning and spinning and spinning...

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day:

Love the facial expressions in this action shot!

She rode these fire trucks at least 3 times.  She has a funny stick out your tongue thing going.

Doesn't she look so happy!

Wouldn't be an amusement park without a carousel.

See her goofy tongue thing again?  She gets it from her dad.  :)

The view from the top of the Ferris wheel.  Beautiful country!

It was windy up there!

It is kind of hard to see, but we are making silly faces at Daddy from the hot air balloons.

I think we exceeded the 160 lb weight limit on this one, but oh well.

Okay so I love the continuous shutter on my camera.  It is great for capturing awesome facial expressions and flying hair on cool rides such as The Mixer.

We went on this one as a family one time, too.  It was a great ride!



 

We had such a great time at Knoebels.  We rode almost all the rides that Aria was within the height requirements.  We didn't do the log ride because it was too cold and there was a boat ride and a small roller coaster that had really long lines we didn't wait in.  Otherwise we did it all.  It had larger roller coasters and things for bigger people, but we were content enjoying the day with Aria.  We got to go on a 1.5 mile train ride into a wooded area with a creek and some squirrels to look at.  We rode a falling star type ride and a crazy submarine boat thing.  There weren't hardly any lines for most of the things we wanted to do.  It was just awesome.  If you are ever in central Pennsylvania, I highly recommend Knoebels!  And of course, the last thing we had to do as we walked out of the park, Justin had to do the speed pitch game.  Of course he exceeded the day's previous best by almost 20 mph and won Aria a prize.  What a great dad!

Yep, he's still got that funky arm angle thing going.

We left the park and headed for Williamsport to go the Little League World Series parade.  Aria had a snooze in the 1 hour drive through the beautiful Pennsylvania countryside.  The parade was to start at 6:00 and we got there just a few minutes before.  I'm not sure if it was late in starting or if we were just way down the line, but we didn't see any action until about 6:45.  We had not had supper yet.  The parade candy and treats were welcomed by all three of us.  It was actually an amazing parade!  All 16 teams were on floats in the parade along with a whole slew of other things.  It was still going at 8:30 when we decided we had to have something more substantial to eat.  It was fun to join in the excitement and atmosphere for the big World Series.  Williamsport is not real big and it was obvious that this is the main event every year.  I loved the hometowny feeling.  At 8:30 we went and picked up a Domino's pizza and ate it in the car on the way back to the hotel.  Now that's how you roll on vacation!  Aria did so great at just going with the flow.  We had such a blast!  More on the actual World Series in another post.  Here are some pictures from the parade:

All the teams rode these large floats with one US team on one side and one International team on the other side.

Here is the team from Iowa!!

They were paired up with Japan, who won the whole tournament.  We also got some cool candy from Japan from them.  We didn't eat those pieces.

Aria loves mascots and Frenchy the french fry was alright, but...

...this vacuum guy was way too scary!  She kept saying she didn't want to see that scary big black guy.  I was really hoping she would use different words to describe him.  I guess he does look kind of mean.  They were part of an advertisement for Honda's new van that has a vacuum inside.