Day 2393. Sunday and time to sleep in! However, I got up just before 10 am to go to the kitchen to put chicken and vegetables into a baking pan and put it into the oven. Then I went back to bed and got some more sleep. When I got back up, we sat down to eat lunch. Then it was time to get ready to leave the house. At 1 pm I walked out the door with Tammy, Sammy and Emmy as we needed to catch the 1:06 pm bus. Randy was right behind us but still needed to grab a few things. When we reached the bus stop, the bus arrived a minute early, and we got on - without Daddy. The kids were not happy but we had to get on to make it to the tennis school on time. Randy then took the tram instead, and he arrived half an hour after us.
The kids and I had three buses to take and reached the tennis school five minutes late, at 2:05 pm. Many kids were already on the court and warming up. Tammy and Emmy jumped right in, grabbed rackets and started playing with each other to warm up. Sammy and I sat down by them to watch. Sammy was turned to the door as he kept asking when Daddy was going to arrive.
After a few minutes all the boys were called together. The boys were playing against each other, as were the girls, and the boys were going first. The trainer split the boys into two groups of seven each that they then played in. All the kids were between 6 and 8 years old. As you can see in the pictures, Emmy was the shortest kid of them all. Every child had to play against each other person in the team. In the end, they had a seventh game playing against the person in the other team that was ranked the same as them.
Emmy went up first to play, while Tammy was still warming up with the other girls. Sammy was sitting where he could watch the door to see Daddy arrive. I sat down on the bench by the tennis court where Emmy was playing. The boy was quite a bit bigger than Emmy and played very well. They played until one person reached 7 points or had a two-point lead. Emmy lost the first game 4 to 6. But, he won 5 ouf of the 7 games. These were his scores:
4-7
7-5
7-1
6-8
7-1
9-7
9-7
He had scored 49 points in total.
Daddy finally arrived and sat down by Tammy with Sammy. The girls were playing in the big hall, while Emmy's team was playing in the smaller hall next to it. So I had to go back and forth between the two halls and that way I also missed parts of their games, when they played at the same time. One time I came from Emmy's hall, when Tammy already had 8 points and was winning. I thought I turned my camera on right away but it turned out that I did not record the remainder of her match which is really disappointing. It was only one of two games she won. She lost 5 of the 7 games. And she gave her everything. She jumped into the air every time she scored, and she cried more than once after losing a game. I kept encouraging her. These are her scores:
1-10
8-10
6-10
10-8
6-10
5-10
10-8
She had 46 points in total. The girls played until one player had 10 points.
As you can imagine, it was tiring to play that many matches, and it took time. Before the girls were done, they already did the award ceremony for the boys. We were completely clueless what the final ranking was. First they called the last three people to the front, 5th, 6th and 7th place, without telling who was in what place. Then the first four were called one after another from fourth to first. I did not see any trophies on the table, and the school founder explained that they start with trophies the next age group up as there had always been to many tears. That was disappointing to Emmy. When they called the second place player up, it was his name. Even though he was the shortest and one of the youngest, he was in second place! What an achievement! He was beaming from ear to ear and could not stop showing his excitement the rest of the day!
After his award ceremony - just as before - the kids were allowed to play with their parents, and Emmy was all excited to play with me. We had a good time playing before and after, then stopped to go to the girls' award ceremony. Tammy was called up with the first group of three kids, so she was either 5th, 6th or last place. She was still excited but did have a hard time with Emmy's excitement of being second place the rest of the day. Every time I told Emmy how proud I was of him, she asked me whether I was also proud of her, and I assured her I was.
It was all over. One of their friends from their tennis class was going to McDonald's and asked our kids whether they could join. When I found out that it was in the opposite direction of where we were going, that did not seem like a good idea as we had a one-hour trip home. Unfortunately the girl's grandma was unwilling to go the opposite direction as well, so they had to say good-bye. We walked to the tram stop and got on. Once we got off where we have to change trams, we went to the McDonald's right there.
It was our first time at that McDonald's, and we were not very impressed with it. However, we had a good time eating. It was already after 5 pm, and the kids were really hungry and ate well. They couldn't have waited until getting home. By 6:45 pm we were back home.
Even though everyone was exhausted, it was time for piano practice. Back upstairs, it was bathtub time, followed by story time and prayer time. Then they went to bed. I was glad not to have an 8 pm student for a change. I had plenty of tennis pictures to work on.
