"Who is that, Erica who is that guy over there?"

Hellloooo! I hope yall are enjoying yalls nice weather on this Tuesday afternoon! Hopefully if yall arent maybe I can pep up your step with this funny story about Jess and I. As you all know from my previous post we had couples Bible Study last night. When I listed what teams were going to be there I didnt list them all so I wanted to correct myself. On Mondays we will have couples Bible Study with the Rangers, Royals, Whitesox, Dodgers, Reds and Brewers. A lot of teams, I know!

As anybody would be Jess and I were kind of nervous about actually going but we knew the LaPorta's would be there so at least we knew 2 people there already. When we first walked in the LaPorta's were there so we talked to them. As we scoped out the rest of the room different faces became recognizable. One guy in particular stuck out to Jess so he leaned toward me and said "Who is that, Erica who is that guy over there?" I then looked toward the direction Jess was motioning with his head (he was trying to be subtle and not point, so he did that little awkward thing people do when your trying to get someone to look at someone else doing something weird). When I looked over there and saw the guy I myself couldnt place him but I knew we did know him. I said "I dont know babe, but we do know him" then Jess said "Yeah we do know him from somewhere dont we?" I reassured Jess again "Yeah we do, but where from?" So we stood there for about 30 seconds and then DING! The light in my head went off! I looked at Jess and said "Thats David Murphy!" Yes! The DAVID MURPHY! One of the outfielders for the Rangers! We both started laughing because we dont even know him! We sure thought we did though! I guess the reason why we claimed we knew him is because we watched so much World Series coverage over the Rangers this past off season that his face was embedded in our heads. We laughed about that all evening. We sure did get a kick out of it. (Hopefully yall know who David Murphy is because if not then its probably not that funny to you that we thought we knew him.) After that Jess said "I wonder if Hamilton is coming?" (Josh) I thought that he would be there but he didnt end up showing. I would like to hear him talk during our study, I think it would be cool to hear how he sees things so maybe him and his wife will show up but if not thats not why we are there. We are there to learn how to let God deal with the stresses of Baseball and that is what we are going to do! Among others that were there were the Masterson's, Justin is a teammate of Jess' and Jason Donald another teammate. Jess got a blast from the past because Clayton Kershaw was there along with his wife. All the guys had to go around and say their name their wife's name and their team and after Clayton said his Jess leaned over and whispered in my ear "Clint hit the game winning run off of him when we were in High School." Its pretty crazy how you come full circle with some guys you played against when you were younger or even older. Blake Hawksworth was there too. He was Jess' teammate in Triple A with the Cardinals. Him and his wife have the same wedding date as Jess and I do and he was recently traded to the Dodgers. It was nice to see them and I know Jess was happy to catch up with him.

Bible Study was good, the leader really hit on some eye opening notes that Jess and I walked away from the Church with. One of them was this "If God wants you in the Big Leagues you will be there, It doesnt matter if your GM doesnt like you or your Coach doesnt like you! If God wants you there he will put you there. You have no control over it. All you can do is work hard and watch what happens." Pretty deep stuff if your a Baseball player. Pretty deep stuff if your anybody! By that man saying that it struck a chord in Jess' heart. As soon as we walked out of Bible study Jess said to me " That was really eye opening." I said I know it makes so much since doesnt it. I was really impressed and Im glad we have a positive outlet to go to while we are here because things can get not so positive in a jiffy!

Afterwards we went to Yogurland to get our Fro-Yo and of course our Southern Hill-Billy butts didnt like any of the flavors they had. I want to say first that the place we went last year was shut down so we had to go to a new place and UGHHH! The flavors were, EWW dont even get me started. They didnt have just regular Vanilla, how does that happen? They have what is called Tart, and believe me it is Tart-y! Very bitter and not good at all. What was shocking was that people were eating it like no problem! West Coast-ers are CRA-ZAY! So we left and went to Chic-Fil-A, anyone that knows me knows that Chic-Fil-A is my absolute favorite place to eat. We went and got ice cream cones and they were delicious! Just 2 plain little ole ice cream cones for two plain little ole southern kids. I was going to take a picture of them but I figured yall knew what an ice cream cone looked like and didnt want to be reminded.

Today was a big day for Jess. He threw "live" since he didnt get to the other day due to rain and he faced a lot of batters but only one of them got a hit. He said in the beginning he threw some balls but then got it together and was throwing good. The batters he faced told him his ball was moving unbelievably! He said he felt good about it and that is a great thing! Im proud of him, hes been working hard and today it showed! He will throw again on Friday which is good because that gives him 2 days rest instead of one. Jess has been throwing every other day for 6 days now and that is a lot! Being a reliever and pitching for 10 minutes straight wears on you. There isnt a pitch count they just have you pitch for 10 minutes and then move on to the next pitcher. I admire Jess' strength, he just gets on the mound and pitches. That for me is a high volume stress situation, the coaches are sitting right behind the fence watching every pitch and taking notes. I would literally just fall to pieces but I guess thats why God made me an athletes wife and not the athlete.

Otherwise things are looking good around here! Hope they are where yall are!
Love and miss yall lots!
-E