Love-40?

After watching Venus and Serena play at Wimbledon, I started reminiscing about my childhood days of playing tennis at the Wichita Racquet Club and thought to myself, I need to teach Hannah how to play tennis.

While Rachel is away at a Student Council thing,

Hannah and I can have a lot of fun playing tennis.

We headed to Target, that's Tar-jay pronounced correctly :-), and purchased 2 racquets that were on sale. My childhood racquet is probably considered a classic. It's a beautiful Wilson, Chris Evert signed wooden racquet from 1976. The head is a little small for someone who is almost....I can't believe I'm going to type this....um 40 years old.

That's Chris Evert and her racquet, which is exactly like my classic.

I definitely needed a bigger head on my tennis racquet, so this momma isn't having to run as much! Ha! Hannah was excited. She was so excited about learning to play tennis that we practiced hitting pretend balls in the family room underneath the blessed air conditioner.

We watched a couple of lessons on Youtube....how cool is that by the way that you can pull up instructional videos for free on youtube, then she was ready to hit a few balls.

I remember beating the tar out of the garage door with my racquet and tennis balls when I was a child, so we headed outside in 101 degree weather and hit balls at the garage door. My second ball just missed the garage door and went over the roof into the backyard. I heard a familiar chuckle next door...it was my dad.

I had to chuckle a little too and then retrieve my ball. Dad gladly brought over a ziplock bag full of tennis balls because clearly we needed more to practice with. Our garage door session lasted for quite a while, well okay about 20 minutes but that is a long time especially in our Texas heat, until we could stand it no longer and we ran in for the good old air conditioner and some water.

We worked on her grip some more and waited for Daddy to come home from a business dinner. At 9:00 he came in the door and by 9:30 we were on the courts.

It was fun to chase balls all over 2 courts and sometimes across the fence into the other people's courts. Hannah was a quick learner and seemed to really be enjoying herself. Mr. Incredible and I had to play a little bit in between too. I must say that I may be older, but I've still got it....well sort of. There's nothing like hearing the heavy breathing and the knees that pop and crack and realizing that yes, in fact all of that noise is coming from you. Oiy

Feeling pretty good, I had to try to serve...and I can still do it! Woo hoo!

I heard, "Momma, when can I learn how to do that" and my heart just soared!

One of my students from 3 years ago was playing tennis with her dad. She was home from college and it was so good to see her. I apologized for my sweat laden body but hugged her anyway...and she was sweating too which made old girl feel better.

I got tickled when her father begged her for mercy and asked her to please go purchase one of those scooter things for him immediately because he wasn't sure that he could make it to the car. We played until 11 under the tennis court lights. It was so much fun!

From the backseat of the suburban, Hannah exclaimed that she wanted to get up early so that we could play again. So, here I sit at the crack of dawn. My contacts are in, my teeth are brushed and I am ready to go play tennis. Where is my child???? Oh, the young one is back in bed. She changed her mind and wants to sleep in instead! Seriously?! Mr. Incredible said that I should yank her out of bed anyway...but to be honest my body is a little grateful. I think I can wait until tonight! Do they still make Bengay?

Love (tennis talk ya know),

Kristi