"Best Day Ever!"

Anna said that: "Really!  The best day ever!"

We all looked at her funny, so she explained, "Because everyone said it couldn't be done and I proved them wrong!"

This is the story.  Gabriel comes from a long line of baseball players, and like many nine-year old ball players, he has a favorite hat, a favorite glove, and a favorite ball.  You see him pictured here with his favorite baseball playing trifecta:

That's his big brother's high school ball cap and the glove du jour.

And here's his favorite ball.  

But, alas...  We live in a house right now with a backyard not well suited to playing ball.  It's way too small, surrounded by high walls, and most of the space is taken up by a swimming pool.  We've warned all the children that they can fish the balls (or frisbees or army guys or spoons or whatever...) out of the pool, but if they go over the walls, they're at the mercy of our neighbors to throw them back over.  They can't climb over the walls and trespass, so they know they play at their own risk -- or at the risk of their toys, more precisely -- if they throw things around in the yard.

So.  This morning, around ten o'clock, having the day off of school for Presidents' Day, the children took themselves outdoors to play.  It wasn't long before we heard a wail of disbelief from the back patio.  It seems Anna had been playing with Gabe's baseball, and at first everyone thought she'd thrown it over the high wall -- but upon further investigation, they discovered that she'd actually managed to throw it down the crack in between the two walls back there.  Oops.  Big OOPS!  

This is actually Anna re-enacting the moment.  She says that, in reality, if she was 

going to be perfectly honest about the whole baseball-down-the-hole-in-the-wall 

affair, she had to admit that, when she first did it, she laughed.  But then, when she 

realized she was going to have to buy Gabe a new ball, she got serious pretty fast.  

 To make a long story short, Anna and Cathy teamed up to rescue the ball.  They went through practically every tool in the shed in their attempts to reach down into the crack, about five-and-a-half feet down to the ball near the ground.  While they could get to the ball and actually touch it with several different implements, they couldn't manage to scoop or grab it up.

They spent all day trying!

(Have you ever seen Sandlot ?  It was like that without the big monster dog...)

Until Anna fashioned this contraption out of a PVC pipe, a pair of tongs, and a length of string.  See how it works? 

She threaded the string all the way through after tying it to the end of the tongs.

When she pulled the string, it forced the tongs to close.

Voila!

A very good, satisfying day's work for Anna.

Gabe, however, is not impressed.

(I strongly suspect the baseball will be hidden from now on.)