40...again

There is a reason I don't plan big events. I tried it once several years ago and learned that it completely stresses me out. I'm not even worth being around because I'm so worried that things will go wildly wrong. But this year, I put all those fears aside to organize a 40th birthday party for my sister...in San Diego. I figured her husband wasn't likely to do it and no one really deserves it more...besides, her birthday is the day after mine and they fell on a Friday and Saturday this year. What better excuse to go spend my birthday with my sister??

So, after months of planning, a friend took me out to breakfast and dropped me at the airport on my birthday. And I hopped a plane to San Diego.
Unfortunately, I hadn't uh, say, read the instruction manual for the new camera lens I've got. I didn't realize you could turn the image stabilization OFF. Who'd want to do that, after all?? Not me. Except it was...until Sunday. So I have a lot of blurry pictures. Whatever.

Leaving my nephews at home with their dad, Karen and I set out for a nice dinner...all.by.our.selves. We had such a good time catching up, drinking pomegranate martinis and ordering too much food. I should drive to San Diego just for dinner once in a while. Well, maybe not really, but it's fun to pretend.

Saturday was party day. On the recommendation from one of Karen's friends, I booked the "back room" at a wine bar in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego. I'd corresponded with the manager via e-mail and talked to him on the phone a couple of times. But gosh, doing things long distance is always so sketchy. I'd ordered a cake the same way. I found a commercial kitchen that made wedding cakes and had a good online reputation. It was near Karen's house, so I ordered a cake from them. I thought I'd ordered a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and coffee mousse filling, but it didn't quite turn out that way.

O.K., so the frosting's the wrong color, but they wrote the right thing on top and it looks pretty...sorta. The gum paste flowers are lovely, but why are the roses so...uh...white. They're beautiful, but really, really chalky-looking. O.K., now I'm kind of freaking out about something totally ridiculous...and I'm thinking I could have made her a prettier cake (whether that's true or not), so I had Karen drive me to Michael's to buy some "lustre dust" and paintbrushes. I took the roses off the cake and brushed them with color so they weren't so darned pasty.

The first bunch was...well...experimental and reminded me of that children's book The Pinkish Purplish Bluish Egg. Ever read that? No? It's about a mourning dove who finds a funny-colored egg and it hatches into a griffin named Ezekiel. Oh, nevermind.

The second set of roses, I brushed with yellow, decided I liked them and left it at that. I carefully rearranged them all on the cake again and set about resuming my daytime job as a relatively normal person.

I left early to help a couple of Karen's teacher-friends decorate the room at Wine Steals. The room wasn't quite what I'd envisioned, but I think it was probably better that what I'd envisioned. It was a cozy little room in the back of the restaurant. We had our own little private wine bar, food and great company. Karen's friends are a blast.

Who knew elementary school teachers were such fun on the weekends? Well, other elementary school teachers, apparently.

Even our parents, who had also made the trip from the more northerly reaches of California, seemed to enjoy themselves.

If anyone finds this blog while looking for information on Wine Steals, I'd have to say the manager at Hillcrest, Nick, was super nice and easy to work with. I wish I'd caught the name of our wine pourer because she was fantastic. Once I figured out how to get my laptop all hooked up, the stereo system was great, the wine was good, the food was yummy. I don't have a single complaint. We had so much fun!

I'd brought some large truffles as party favors...and I had to take a picture of them because I was so proud of how cute they looked.

And that cake was pretty yummy too, despite the white frosting. I'm certain no one would have looked twice at the pasty white flowers, but at least I was secure in my knowledge that I'd done my part to make the party a little more colorful...well, by coloring the flowers, and drinking three glasses of wine.
Considering I was in a room full of strangers, the party was over far too soon. I'm so glad I put forth a little effort and it turned out so well. I've got an awesome sister. She deserved a great 40th birthday...and then some.

Quick Fix

It doesn't take a genius to see I haven't posted in more than six months now. There are myriad reasons for that. Maybe I'll get to those, but there's a lot to catch up on, so maybe not. Besides, the pictures are fun and life has been not-so-fun, so let's get on with the fun stuff...

Things happened after Halloween last year. For instance, Aunt Karen and her family (Spencer! and Lucas!) came to visit for Thanksgiving. Then I took our traditional Christmas Card photos.

Apparently, this tradition is somewhat fun, even if it involves getting dressed up and then being photographed for half an hour or so.

We got up at some ungodly crazy hour to see a lunar eclipse that went down behind the clouds before the moon began to peak out again.

There were truffles made for teachers...

and cookies made for neighbors.

The day itself didn't disappoint, apparently.

There was a monumental haircut.

Who would have known I would like the short hair so much better? The long hair was awfully pretty...for the 30 seconds after it was brushed, anyway.

There was a momentous trip to the tide pools on a beautiful day in January...

where we got to see our first octopus, scurrying for the water in its native habitat.

Later that month, the braces?

They came off. They're still off. Now if only I could remember to remind him about that darned retainer thingy!

Smunch once again tried out for his baseball league's "club team", the Mavericks.

For the first time, he didn't make it. He's now playing on a travel team called The Blues. He really enjoys it. I'm sure he'd enjoy it more if they had enough boys to actually field a team for tournaments! He's played in a single tournament so far and the team lost every game...just like the Mavericks did last year.

Mam, once again showed her skills in basketball, playing YBL with a team of girls very similar to the one she played with each of the previous two years. They called themselves "The Party Rockers" (Ick!!!) and won every game (or at least the vast majority of them.)

It's impossible to take good pictures of action in a gymnasium, it turns out.

In mid-February, Smunch turned 10. He had a laser tag party and I did my best impression of a laser-tag cake.

Since his party was before his actual birthday, we also indulged in our tradition of Sprinkles cupcakes on his actual birthday.

Later that month, Aunt Karen came for a visit with Spencer! and Lucas! We took the kids to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where they had a grand ol' time.

Then, in early March, Mam turned 8..with more cupcakes.

And she become a Fuchsia Firework.

She also learned the ins and outs (well, a few of them) of fastpitch softball pitching.

I'm still managing her team, and working on my posture.

Some time after her actual birthday, she had her first sleepover birthday party...with funny hats (oh yeah, it was on March 17th!)

She insisted she wanted to have make-your-own sundaes instead of a fancy cake. So, I was denied another crazy-making cake extravaganza and treated to the easy purchase of ice cream, fudge sauce, caramel sauce, strawberry sauce, whipped cream, sprinkles and, of course, maraschino cherries.

The girls had a blast. Fortunately (for me), only two girls spent the night. They were treated to homemade buttermilk pancakes the next morning.

Meanwhile, Smunch became an Angel.

About time.

Easter came...

and went in a blur of plastic candy-filled eggs, cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs.

The day after Easter, I took the kids to Uvas Canyon County Park for a two-day camping trip. I was joined by another mom...and her FOUR kids. The creek was fun.

The rain was less fun.

But the waterfalls were lovely if you were up for a hike in the rain.

We left a night early, filled the garage with dripping camping gear and had our spaghetti and s'mores camp dinner right in the living room...complete with "campfire".

There has been, and continues to be much baseball playing.

And much softball playing. Two games a week for each of them this year, with a practice for good measure.

This picture was taken during tryouts for the league's Nova team. It's a summer travel team. She was awesome and did all kinds of things I didn't know she could do, including hitting every ball pitched to her from a pitching machine. I was told later, after Mam didn't make the team, that the team selection strongly favors third graders.(Mam is still in second grade.) More than 20 girls tried out for the team. Only 12 girls made it. I imagine most of them are third graders. Since the tryouts, one of the girls on the Nova team has broken her wrist and Mam has been asked to play with them. She is over the moon. My summer calendar weeps at the prospect of five softball tournaments before the end of June.

And there we are. Mam just made the Nova team earlier this week. There are three more baseball games and two more softball games in the regular season. There are camps and trips planned for the summer...including a weeklong trip just for Mommy...to Wyoming.

And to prove that I really am nuts, here's a nice little photo I took while I was out hiking last weekend...

Please pray for my sanity.

Blah, Blah, Blog

I don't know what it is about this time of year exactly. Maybe it's the relief of having the birthdays over with. Or maybe it's the craziness of baseball and softball season. I took a hiatus from blogging about this time last year as well. But this year I also have a job and I've been working out like a crazy woman. I'm not totally sure what's up with that either, but the bathroom scale? It's not up at all. In fact, it's down, so I feel the need to keep working out like a fiend. I doubled down on yoga this week, made it to pilates, ran about 10 miles (total). I've also been at school a lot, taking kids to the library, helping kids with writing, helping kids with reading, helping them construct bird nests, serving lunch.

At the same time, turning 40 doesn't seem to be agreeing with me very well. I'm facing a very classic mid-life crisis and dealing with it poorly. Here I am at 40. I've achieved most of what I set out to do. I'm in desperate need of a second act, but I don't know what that is and I'm not willing to do less parenting to achieve it. Hmmm.

Anyway, so where were we anyhow? Well, there was this:Smunch started his baseball season as a member of the Phillies. He has a nice team. I like them. And, much like last year, he's one of the better players on this team, where he's one of the weaker players on the club team. It's probably good for him to have the contrast.

And there's this:Mam seems to be enjoying playing with the Pink Butterflies. And I'm enjoying being the team manager again, but parents really are crazy. I feel ridiculous having to tell another mom that her 5-year-old daughter canNOT play with those big earrings in her ears because she really might tear her earlobe off. It's very obvious. It's not my kid...and yet, I'm responsible. And I ask them not to bring snacks for their kids to eat during the game because it's very distracting both to their kid and to the other players. The game is only an hour. I think they can wait. FEED them before you come for heaven's sake! But several parents don't take my pleas to heart. Their children are a problem. Apparently, I also need to ask them not to bring toys for their daughters to play with during the game. Ugh. At least the girls themselves are fun.

One of my other high school buddies finally saw fit to turn 40 as well, so my group of friends all attended her party in The City. It made for some fun photo opportunities.And all of us were there...which is always nice. This will be a fun year that way.Got to hope it's this good ten years from now!

Spring break came and went. I took the kids up to the zoo for part of one day, but mostly we were at home, waiting for Smunch's next baseball practice to occur. So, it wasn't quite the fun spring break one might hope for. We spent the final weekend in Manteca, playing at at baseball tournament with the Mavericks.

There's not a lot to do in Manteca, but they do have one heck of a baseball facility there. Each field was built as a replica of a famous ballpark. On Saturday, the Mavericks played a double header at Yankee Stadium. Apparently, the tournament organizers weren't really up on the habits of 9-year-old boys because their games were scheduled back-to-back at 6:30pm and 8:30pm. Although they didn't get back to the hotel until 11 that night, they were all psyched to get to play under THE LIGHTS at least.Now, the day before the tournament, the coach sent the parents an e-mail saying that not everyone was going to be in the starting lineup this time around. This time, he said, he was going to field the most competitive team he could. I knew what that meant. It meant we were driving to Manteca to see Smunch play just a few innings of three long games. Bummer. That's pretty much the way it played out too, but the Mavericks played respectably. The mercy rule was never invoked. They always played to the time limit. And Smunch even managed to walk, steal second, have a short conference with the coach...steal third,and finally score the tying run by stealing home.He never actually got a hit during the tournment, but he had a good time, even though he didn't play much. And the hotel had a pool, so he and Mam got to swim with the rest of the team before their lackluster game at Fenway Park on Sunday. Who could blame them? They were tired. They hadn't slept well at the hotel. Their opponent was relatively local and their team got to go home early and sleep in their beds Saturday night.

I admit it was kind of fun, but I was still left wondering why we bothered. While Daddy kept score on his iPad, I took over the controller for the outfield scoreboard. At least that was mildly entertaining.

And last weekend was Easter. I guess that ought to get its own blog entry. I didn't take nearly enough photos, but that's O.K...