Baseball in Brussels...

Charlie just wrapped up his first season of baseball, after playing cricket and begging to play baseball instead.  He is hooked! 

I got to help coach his team and had fun teaching all the good games I fondly remember.  I'd have to say the kids loved pickle and 500 the most!   We also did some other activities like hitting and throwing water balloons and trying to bring down a drone with baseballs that some guys were flying over our practice.  (drones are super distracting to a field full of kids)

Here is the team...the U10 Zombies...they named themselves....

Greg was the pitcher for our away games...here is a picture from our game at SHAPE...which stands for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe...Charlie was most impressed with the field because he called it a real field with dirt, dugouts and a pitchers mound.  Our home field is at the kids school is on turf and  I agree with Charlie that it doesn't quite feel the same as a real field!

 Charlie at bat!  This is our home field...not quite the same huh?

Hustling down to first, or else the mean first base coach will yell at him!

One afternoon after we finished baseball we saw our neighbors heading out and they told us they were going to family day at the Coudenberg Paleis.  It is the site of the old palace of Brussels and it is basically under the palace of today.  We decided to go check it out, the girls had to study so we just took Charlie.  The boys got to shoot little crossbows, we got to taste some beer, I was most impressed because one of the beers was brewed by the guy at the tasting table!  We also got to dress up...here we are...

Greg said his beard made him look authentic!  He was mad the lady made him hand me some silly flower instead of letting him hold the crossbow!

 Outside the guy at the crossbow stand recruited him to shoot it...so he finally got the crossbow!

He was happy with his shot!

A cool view of a Brussels landmark that we walked past on our way home, sadly we just missed the six pm chimes!

One of the best parts of keeping this blog is it makes me go back and learn about things that we see...here is an article all about the carillon in this picture...happy reading!

Carillon at Mont des Arts