Play Ball!...Again

Last weekend was a super sports extravaganza all over the place. Smunch had two hours of practice with the Mavericks Friday evening, followed by an hour of basketball practice. We started Saturday morning getting Smunch to the tournament ball field at 7am for an 8am game. *yawn* Daddy took that on while I dropped Mam off with a friend so she could make it to opening day for softball. Then I took off for the tournament myself.

It was early and chilly. The Mavericks have been practicing for just a couple of weeks. The other teams at the tournament have been playing together for months...or years in some cases. It was a valuable lesson in humility for a bunch of boys who'd tried out and made the team.There was a lot of stealing during this game. The Mavericks' are Mustang 1 level PONY players...and they've only barely started practicing for their regular season. Mustang 1 is the first level where they learn to steal bases and such. So, it's a little mystifying to them yet.Smunch is attempting a steal of second in the picture above. See the ball? He didn't make it.

I left after that game and picked Mam up, fed her lunch and whisked her off to her last basketball game. Smunch was also supposed to go to his last basketball game...and maybe if his coach hadn't given out trophies at practice the night before, he would have done that. Instead, he decided to play the second game of the baseball tournament...and I made him call his basketball coach and tell him. Unfortunately, the coach didn't answer, so he had to leave a semi-intelligible message an hour before the game and Daddy took him back to the diamond.

The Killer Penguins made their last stand. It was one of their most challenging games of the season and only seven girls were available for the game, instead of the usual 10. The girls played hard and they did well. I don't do a very good job of keeping score, but I think they were probably a little behind at the end.

No matter, I had to whisk Mam off to her opening day softball game with the Pink Butterflies. We weren't too terribly late to the game. Just missed the first inning. Mam seemed to have fun.I forgot to take off her basketball jersey and didn't even notice until the end of the game.

I called Daddy when the game ended to see if I needed to head back to the baseball facility. I didn't. The score was 21-0 and the game was almost over. The Mavericks would have one more game on Sunday. Just about the time we set the clocks forward an hour for daylight savings, I got the e-mail that the game was at 8am the next morning. The boys would need to be there at 7am again...only this time it was an hour earlier.

Daddy got the early morning job again and Mam and I made it there during the first inning...to freeze our butts off in the foggy, breezy early morning while the Mavericks got pummeled one last time. It might just go without saying that we did *nothing* for the rest of the day.

Hasta, Killer Penguins

According to our schedule, last Saturday was the final stand for the undefeated Killer Penguins. I'd offered to make a cake for their celebratory end-of-season party. Of course, I didn't know at the time that the end of season party would be scheduled on Mam's birthday. It prompted us to have her party the previous day. And it prompted me to take the entire week off work to complete two cakes at once.

In typical Killer Penguins fashion, they vanquished the competition.Mam scored three baskets and her teammates scored many more. The other team might have scored three total. I was glad they scored, at least.This basketball season was so much fun. The coaches were great, the girls really enjoyed each other and played really well. Not surprisingly, that meant I wanted to make a really special cake for them.

I started experimenting with making fondant figurines. I'd never tried that before and wasn't the least bit sure I could pull it off. I liked my killer penguins though...and judging by the number of people who asked me where I'd found them, I'd say other people did too.I wanted an "icy" look to the cake, so I chose not to blend all the color into the fondant and make it marble-y. And knowing I had a team and siblings to feed, I put it together just like Mam's ladybug cake.It sat like that for a couple of days, which was a pity because it didn't look nearly as marble-y by the time I got to decorating it. We had to go to several stores before we found an appropriate basketball hoop. I just couldn't imagine making an edible one of those. Store #3, which was out of them, called store #4 and put it on hold for us. I made a little lake and piped on some snow.I added borders to both layers and carefully started placing penguins. Note to self...it's much easier to have a consistent border if your cake is in the middle of the plate.As a final touch, Daddy helped me engineer a dunking penguin.Somewhere along the line, I got an e-mail saying the reservation at the restaurant was for 46 people. I briefly panicked and made a quick sheet cake...which was, um, not particularly attractive, but functional.

Driving the cake over to the pizzeria was a little dicey and dunking penguin didn't show up entirely intact, but it was easy to fix and the cake went over well. The crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to Mam and most important, she got her trophy, as the coaches described her as a "little fireball". Ah, yes. Fireball, indeed.Naturally, it turns out that the coach's schedule was wrong. The Penguin's last game is this coming Saturday, overlapping with Mam's first softball game. There won't be any more cake.

Turning 7

I'm finding that it's hard to plan anything truly special for my daughter's birthday. I don't necessarily do a whole lot better with her brother, but as soon as his birthday's over, it's already too late to start thinking about hers from scratch. So, it was several days after Smunch's birthday that I sat down with Mam to talk about a guest list.

I don't know where this child came from. I really don't. She isn't a thing like her mother. I can tell you that. I always had a few really good friends and some peripheral friends, but I wasn't friends with everyone. Mam, is friends with just about everyone. There are some notable exceptions, but there are 24 kids in her class. Even if she's not fond of a quarter of them, that's still 18 children to invite. In the end, she invited 17, including a kindergartner from down the street, a friend who goes to another school and two girls who aren't in her class this year...in addition to a full half of her first grade class.

I made a snap decision that if we had to have that many children at our house, they were going to watch a movie. I chose "A Bug's Life". Despite the ladybug in the movie being a rather surly male, I figured it was probably as close to "on theme" as I was going to get.

The kids started arriving at 4:30. By five, they were sitting down creating their own mini-pizzas out of English muffins and all the fixins I could come up with. Pizzas were flying into the oven and flying right back out.It was complete chaos. Kids were loud, kids were crazy, some kids were grumpy. Prodded by her current "boyfriend", Mam announced it was too loud. I suggested she rethink inviting so many kids next time.

Once kids started finishing their dinner, we sent them off to play Twister in the family room with Daddy.With 15 kids, it was still crazy. Not too many kids can play Twister at once.

Mercifully, we started the movie as soon as 5:30 rolled around. And a beautiful silence filled the air as 15 children became complete zombies in front of the TV. Of course, there was plenty of giggling, but relatively speaking, it was so under control!When the peace was finally over, at least there was cake to keep them occupied.Naturally, half of them complained about either the fondant or the strawberry filling. Cake never occupies kids for as long as you'd hope. We ended up having Mam open her presents...something children rarely do at birthday parties anymore.

When that was over, they all went HOME. And that was the best part of all! That and the next morning...Mam's actual birthday...when she got her brand new bike, which she already loves.Funny to think there was a time when I was near certain that she'd never be able to ride a bike...much less have a crazy birthday party.

Ladybug Birthday

Mam decreed that this year would be a ladybug year for her birthday. Well, O.K., I thought. I had visions of an oval-shaped cake that I could decorate as a ladybug. That's a lot of red stuff. It's hard to color things red. It takes a lot of coloring. It took a long time for my vision of this cake to finally take shape. As always, it had humble beginnings.This was a white cake with strawberry filling...as requested. Naturally, upon actually tasting it, Mam decided that she doesn't like strawberry filling. Such are the whims of a 7-year-old.I wasn't so sure what color I wanted this cake to be either. I wanted it to be bright and cheerful. Ladybugs make me happy. I wanted this cake to have that same effect. After seeing Mam's rather extensive guest list, I also decided it needed two tiers.And now it was yellow. It wasn't quite the bright, cheerful yellow I'd been looking for, but I decided to go with it rather than doing anything rash, like making a whole new batch of fondant...because yeah, I make my own fondant and color it myself.I added grass. Lots of grass. As much grass as I thought I could add without turning it into a jungle cake. The grass is just rolled out fondant, cut with a pizza cutter. I added a leafy fondant border...because it just needed a border.I made daisies out of gum paste and let them dry so that they curved just so. I made ladybugs out of red fondant, rolled into egg shapes and cut in half...then added heads and spots with a FoodWriter pen.Last, but not least, of course, I had to add the flowers and the ladybugs to the cake. It was looking promising, but it was hard to know for sure until they were on.I always take a picture at this step because I'm so worried that I'll write on the top of the cake and that'll ruin everything. Honestly, the writing, while being elementary school perfect, turned out oddly centered. Fortunately, a few strategically placed daisies and ladybugs seemed to make up for it.I admit I was pretty proud of this one. It turned out every bit as cool as I'd envisioned. Mam loved what it looked like, even if she's refused to eat any of the leftovers. Of course, I don't want to be stuffing myself with them either. Maybe next year, I should just whip out the canned frosting and a box of cake mix!

More Snow...a Lot More Snow

On the way back to the cabin from Homewood, we stopped at the ski rental store and turned in my skis for snowshoes. At that point, when I was feeling, oh-so-not-part-of-my-skiing-family, I really just needed the promise of doing something I would really enjoy, even if it was going to be a solo trek. It seemed like some snow hiking and a peaceful afternoon to myself might be just what I needed.

It was snowing when we got up on Thursday, making Daddy decide not to take our fledgling skiiers back out to the slopes. So, there would be no peace in the cabin. Daddy put the chains on the van and we had breakfast at my favorite little spot in Carnelian Bay. And we went back to the cabin. As soon as there was a sign of the snow letting up and with the rest of the family all zombiefied by one screen or another, I put on my snow gear, swiped Daddy's nice sunglasses and set out with my camera.

Ahhhh. There's nothing quite so beautiful and quiet as the woods in the snow.Walking in snowshoes can be hard work, but I was much more in my element than I'd been for the past couple of days. I took photos of the cool little things I saw along the way.One of my boots was giving me problems, but I managed to ignore it for the most part. That is, I ignored it until I suddenly realized I'd dropped Daddy's expensive sunglasses in the snow where I'd last stopped for photos and I really needed to go back for them. Fortunately, I hadn't gone too far, but by then, my boot was really killing me. I triapsed back up the hill, found a piece of the glasses sticking out, grabbed them and headed back the way I came. Now, I was really going to have to head back to the cabin. I couldn't keep my socks from slipping and the rubbing on my left heel. I got a little lost with all the trails in the snow, but fortunately not disoriented. I made it back within half an hour or so.I arrived back at the cabin to find Daddy creating a sled run on the hill across the street. I was relieved that the kids were finally back outside. And sled runs are fun!Until this happens...That doesn't even look so bad, but then this happens. and sledding is done for the day. Too bad. I missed most of it. But with my foot still hurting, I couldn't have made it up the hill anyway. And no wonder it hurt!Maybe I should learn to pay better attention when my body's trying to tell me there's a problem. Ouch!

We knew there was a storm blowing in later on Thursday and that it was supposed to last through Friday, but we stayed in our cabin because a) I'm cheap and we'd paid for it and b) I really wanted to visit some friends on the way back and Thursday was a school night for them so we really needed to swing by there on Friday. It retrospect, it probably wasn't our best choice. This was our driveway on Friday morning.I hurried to clean up the cabin and feed the kids breakfast while Daddy went out, excavated the van, reinstalled the chains he'd been able to remove the previous day and packed the car. Still, we weren't out of there until just after 9 o'clock. The road wasn't looking so good.But CalTrans' website said the highways were still open and we'd already been told the next renters would be coming regardless and we had to get out. So we left. The road up to the main freeway was dicey and by the time we actually reached the freeway, they were turning traffic around. We were stuck.Stuck in McDonalds. Turns out there are worse places to be. McDonalds has cheap coffee and free WiFi. We hung out for an hour or so. Daddy's iPhone went off with a Facebook update from one of his friends.

She wasn't going skiing because they'd closed Alpine Meadows. It was going to be a lazy day at the cabin for her. Oh, really? I thought. "Think she'd let us crash with her if we need to?" I asked?

I hastily composed a quick message asking if her cabin could be our emergency backup. She replied. "ABSOLUTELY!" They weren't far away either, so we readied to leave McDonalds, which was getting crowded, and head to her cabin. The storm was still pretty ferocious as we left.We ran into a long line of cars waiting for the freeway to open and couldn't get past to the road we needed, so we turned around and headed for another street that would connect us with where we wanted to go. Should have known better, of course.

The road to hell, I'm convinced, is paved with steep, snow-covered hairpin turns.

We reached the uphill hairpin, but had to slow too much for an oncoming car and couldn't make it. The van wouldn't move. We backed down the hill, so a four-wheel SUV could get past us. It had a hard time making it too, but cars kept coming and we had to keep moving back and back and finally into a snow bank where we couldn't get out.

Fortunately, people in the mountains seem to be pretty nice and very helpful. A good samaritan in a big red truck came by and offered to help. He also had a shovel. He and Daddy dug us out of the snowbank and having had enough of the hill, we turned around and went back to the main road.

This time, we made it to the turnoff we needed and slowly made our way to our friend's ski rental cabin. The snow was so high in her neighborhood, it was hard to find, but we made it sometime between noon and 1 o'clock. And there we stayed, learning that the friends I'd hoped to visit had stomach flu plaguing their house and keeping an eye on the highway webcams and the CalTrans road conditions pages for hours...partaking in our generous hostess's tea and hot chocolate and feeling thankful for saving our leftover pizza from a few nights before and bringing it with us...for just this occasion.

Right about 3:30, there were signs that the main highway was open again. Cars on the webcams appeared to move and as soon as the CalTrans page said 80 was open, we packed up our stuff and left, with Daddy's friend and her boyfriend blazing us a trail in their GMC Denali.Although it started snowing like crazy again by the time we made it to the highway, we got there without incident and started the slow trek through the mountains towards home. By now, it was 4 o'clock and we were just leaving Tahoe.

It was a long drive into Auburn, but it was nice to finally see the sun again, hitting the snow-covered trees. (If you look carefully, you also be able to tell that our drive probably wasn't nearly as long as the drive in the other direction.)We stopped for dinner around 6 and arrived home around 9:30, exhausted but happy to be here...where there was a reported chance of snow while we slept.

Ski Week

Ah, Winter Break. After the rush of Smunch's birthday and his big Jackie Robinson presentation, the break from school was most welcome. If you live around here, you've doubtlessly heard this week called "ski week". It starts with President's Day weekend and goes for the rest of the week.

Since I'm one of those inflexible kind of moms who don't believe in pulling my kids out of school for something like a ski trip, we go to the snow during ski week. I've figured out a way to make this work for us. We leave on President's Day and come back on Friday, missing the entirety of the weekend traffic. I'd booked our cabin back in October, I think, so we were set.

I love the little cabin we've found. It's old and shabby, but warm, incredibly well stocked and with enough bedrooms for the kids to each have their own. Oh, and it's cheap. Did I mention that?

So, we headed up on Monday. There was no traffic to speak of. We made it to the cabin before the cleaning crew was even finished. So, we sat outside for a minute or two and then moved right in. We went into Tahoe City and picked up all our ski rentals. The kids had reservations for a private lesson at Squaw on Tuesday and I was planning on a group lesson while Daddy cruised around the slopes freely. Although we were staying about half an hour away, we got there without incident, negotiated the rather huge resort and found all our lessons on time.The kids went off with Celeste, their very awesome instructor. I joined a Level 2 class and we took off up to High Camp where we had our skills assessed before learning anything. There were four women in my class. I enjoyed them all and Curtis, our instructor, seemed good, but the class wasn't really what I'd hoped for. Instead of learning anything new, we rehashed all the stuff I already knew how to do. It meant I got some instruction on how to refine the "skills" I arguably possess, but not much more.

And it was COLD up there at High Camp. I'd purchased nice ski pants and a new ski jacket before leaving. I was wearing four more layers of clothes under that, but I was freezing and traveling the lifts was particularly painful. Despite my nice new ski gloves, my fingernails felt like they just might pop right off. They hurt.

The kids arrived at High Camp shortly after I did. I saw them several times as I skiied down the beginner slopes.I didn't enjoy myself very much even though I was in good company, but I agreed to go back up with Daddy and the kids after lunch. It was windier and colder. I was with Mam and she'd been trying to tell me something about being bored, but truth be told, I'm scared to death of ski lifts and I was barely listening to her. I should have.

It turns out what she meant was that her lessons about making big S-turns were boring and she planned to take off like a shot from the top of the run. And she did. I sent Daddy after her, but she was already at the bottom.

I took a couple of runs and then left them all up there...while I went back down the mountain, grabbed my laptop and found myself a cushy chair and a $6 mocha at Starbucks.

Half an hour or so later, I got a call from Daddy. He'd overshot the Funitel that would have taken them down the mountain and ended up on an intermediate slope. The kids had done a good job negotiating it for a while, but finally gave out. Ski Patrol was coming to pick them up. They'd be late getting back. I laughed. I was so comfy at Starbucks that I didn't mind if they were late and obviously Daddy had it handled. He called me again when they were down.

I met him and a couple of hysterically sobbing kids on the way to the parking lot. They were totally fine, but Daddy had had to ski down the mountain while Ski Patrol whisked them away on a snowmobile for a lonely trip to the bottom on the Funitel. Daddy met them there, but their little hands were so cold that they really hurt. And the sobbing went on and on for at least 15 minutes. Given my general love for skiing (which, for the record is still non-existant) I tried really hard not to laugh as they sobbed.

Despite the slighly traumatic end to our day on Tuesday, the kids were rarin' to go again on Wednesday and I was game to take another stab at enjoying skiing. We headed to Homewood...which is smaller, shabbier and a whole lot cheaper. It also happens to have beautiful views and some nice, long beginner runs, all the way from the top of the mountain.As expected, Mam has become a fearless little skiier while her brother, so much more like his mom, is ever-so-cautious. But Daddy helped them along. And I followed them around the mountain. I think we hit every beginner run there was. The kids seemed to have fun. But I most certainly didn't. I'm clearly not cut out for this stuff. I don't like being cold, I don't like going fast, I hate ski lifts, I don't like people coming up behind me at 50mph. Oh, and I'm not a fan of wiping out.

My overdeveloped sense of self-preservation, I'm afraid, will forever keep me from enjoying skiing. I quit at lunchtime and spent a couple of hours reading in the car...because Homewood is too shabby to have decent indoor places for those who aren't skiing and certainly no Starbucks! The van was comfier. And after skiing for the morning, I was pretty convinced that this is going to be my last ski trip. Daddy can take the kids, but this is such a monumental waste of money for me...