Zachary

Today is Zachary's 9th birthday!

Zachary is our 17th grandchild and 10th grandson.

He is an important part of our very large family.

And a very important part of this smaller family.

I wrote about Zachary for his birthday last year in this post and visiting there will show you links to all his previous posts.

And the links in THAT post will take you to many pictures and stories of how he's changed over the years

So I'll just post a few pictures here

 and talk a little about what's been going on in his life during the past year.   First of all, after a great school year, where his favorite subject was math and his least favorite was a tie between science and language arts, he's moving on to 4th grade in August!

His favorite sport is baseball and for the first time, he's played in or is still playing on three different teams.  The first one is his regular season team, the Marlins, where (for the first time again) he's playing with his best friend who also happens to be the best player in the league.  Zachary falls into the 'not too shabby' top ten in the league category!  And not surprisingly this team won the league championship and the post-season playoffs. 

He's also playing on the All-Star team and on a travel team.  Zachary loves baseball and he's really good at it.  He's one of the few kids to hit an over-the-fence homerun on the All-Star team.  He definitely plays with determination and focus.

He's also active in Cub Scouts and his car got first place in his pack for speed in the Pinewood Derby.

Of course, he and his family were in Gulf Shores with the big family over the holidays and Zachary enjoyed every moment.  (This water was really shallow but the wave was really big!)

 And I should mention that he loves both of their dogs although this picture only shows him with Charley.

So in addition to the information on his past year, Zachary also gave me a rundown on how he spent his birthday.  He spent some time playing with his friends, then he and his Nana went bowling where they each won a game.  Then when his Mom got home, they went to Taco Bell and then Zinga's for frozen yogurt and finished up the day watching A Dog's Purpose - a really good movie according to Zach but kind of sad.  And that's a glimpse into the life of our amazing, smart, and athletic Zachary!

We love him very much and we're very, very proud of him.  AND, we're wishing him the happiest birthday ever (which he pretty much had already) and an amazing year ahead!  Happy Birthday, Zachary!!