He loves to read and has really surprised me with the knowledge that he absorbs from the books he checks out of the library at school. Every so often he will spout off some random fact about snakes or tiger sharks or history. He got straight As on his last report card, which is the first report card where they gave "letter" grades. I hope he continues to love school and learning as much as he does now.
This past year he played two seasons of baseball. The first season he played "coach pitch", which was kind of hard since he hadn't played tee-ball for two years. Then came the second season or "Fall Ball" where he played kid pitch. Poor kid didn't know what hit him...although several times it was a very hard white ball with red stitching on it! It was pretty hard to watch the poor kid strike out time after time. After a few games of watching him hack at the ball with his bat we sought the help of a batting coach here in town and after just a few sessions Blake went from being the worst batter on the team to being....not the absolute worst. We never expected him to become the best, but we do want to give him all the tools he needs to at least improve. His regular coaches were also pretty great in teaching the boys how to slide and steal bases. I never realized how technical batting is. There are many little tricks in how you hold the bat and where you place your feet that I never knew existed. He is continuing to go to batting practice with Coach Clay and while he may not play baseball for many more years he is enjoying it for now.
Blake has also learned a few harder lessons this year. Since he was baptized last January he has had to make decisions on his own about his behavior and has had to be accountable for some of his not-so-great choices. For example, during Scout camp he borrowed a pocket knife from my mom to use for the whittling merit badge. Unbeknownst to me he took it in his pocket the next day as well. You can probably guess what happened next. He lost it. I probably wouldn't have been so upset with him if it had been mine, but I hate to borrow something from someone and not be able to return it in it's original condition. Blake really "cowboyed up" and called my parents to confess to them that he had lost the knife, and then he did work around their yard to repay them for the knife.
We are very proud of our hard headed almost-redhead. He is stubborn and ultra competitive, but he is also sensitive and usually kind. He is not one to physically lash out at his brothers when angry, which has always been something we appreciate (especially since Trevor is pretty much the opposite!).
When we asked Blake the other day what kind of cake he wanted he didn't hesitate to say that he wanted a Tron cake. I Googled Tron cakes and to my extreme delight found that I could make one very easily and I had most of the tools I needed. I went to Target and picked up a couple of "light cycles" and voila! A Tron cake was born.
