I have some people in my family who really enjoy baseball. The males seem to think it is a pretty important part of life. Because of this,
last year we tried little league for the boys, however I didn't enjoy all the running and time away from home very much so this year (which has an even fuller schedule than last year) I decided I wanted to find a different alternative.
I talked it over with Ken and he was willing to try something different if I was able to get it organized. We decided to see if other families would be interested in joining us for one evening a week for kids baseball with parents coaching. I put it in our homeschool newsletter and we started getting the word out. We weren't sure if people would really show up or not but we have been very pleasantly surprised!
The first week we had 18 players ranging from 5-13 years old and some older ones helping out and some younger ones playing on the sidelines. The dads helped in the field and we mothers had a very fun time visiting.
The next 3 weeks in rained and we had to cancel and we wondered if it was going to rain every Thursday evening. :-) It didn't. We have now been able to play the last 3 weeks though tonight we had to rush to the dugouts several times to avoid a drenching.
We have had up to 30 players and were able to play in 2 different fields (last week we split the kids up in the bigger and littler kids). The kids all seem to be having fun and the parents are having fun too. I love it because my men can still enjoy baseball but they can do it in a evening when Ken is off work and he can be involved. Also I like to just have it one evening a week rather than 4 mornings a week. That is much more doable for my schedule. I am also loving the friends that all of us our making from this activity. Some of us are talking about trying to arrange a monthly wintertime get-together too. I also like it that all my kids can play together rather than us all watch one and then the next hour watch the next child. For us this has been a win win situation!
The moral to this story.... Don't be afraid to try to arrange something better for your family. You might be surprised like we were at how many others are interested in the same thing.
