FL2...

Tate loves the beach! So, it worked out that we planned a joint family vacation with the Witt's this year to the Florida panhandle. In case you're wondering: no sign of oil except for the anti-BP shirts in the souvenir stores, BP claims office in one strip mall, and cheaper rate we got on our rental house. Works for us!
Tate got to spend the whole week with some of his best friends in the world (he's the one on the right with the super-white hair): Walker, Lanie and Jackson.
Our little surfer boy. Tan skin from swimming a ton this summer to go with his bleached-out hair. The kid is a fish.
Tate and Walker: 4 months apart in age, used to live 4 houses apart (now about a mile), and pretty much best buds.

Accommodations...

Did I mention that we had the ultimate "pastor hookup" for the wedding? The couple who owned this condo on the beach go to one friend's church in Ohio in the summer and Nate's church in Florida in the winter. All that added up to us getting to stay in a place where we were serenaded by waves hitting the flour-soft white beaches. Oh, yeah. I could get used to that.

Nate Gets Hitched

Good times with college buddies 7 years after graduation. What's that? We should go on another baseball trip. Well, okay...
Tate and Dean were pretty much the only little kids there. The good news is, they carried the cool factor and brought all the right dance moves.
Now, there have been Concordia pictures taken in various settings: Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota...none of those places had palm trees in the background, though.

Mickey's House

I took this picture for the express purpose of posting it on this blog without my wife's permission.
And this picture I was fine with being on the blog, because I make such a fine pirate.
Despite the scowls for pictures, he really was having a good time. Really. No, really.

Florida.

Nate and Jacqui's wedding was good enough reason for a trip to Florida, but how could we resist stretching it a couple extra days to see Mickey and Shamu?

We had one great day at each place. Tate was into it big-time.

I Go Airplane?

Yeah, we have to pay for a seat for him now, but he's a good traveler. Can you tell he was excited?

Home. Run.

So apparently T-ball wasn't enough of a challenge. Now, Tate wants us to pitch him the ball. The scary thing is that every once in a while he hits it. If the Twins or Cards were smart, they would use a draft pick on him now.