Baseball Player

In baseball, sometimes you get the ball...

and sometimes the ball gets you.

Despite what his coach referred to as "more blood than I've ever seen" coming from Smunch's nose after being hit by an errant one-hopper, Smunch still ended the week looking better than his little cousin, I think.

It's tough being two.

Cousins

It makes me happy that my kids are friends with their cousins on my side of the family. I was Smunch's age before my first cousin was even born, so it makes it that much more fun to see my kids interacting with my sister's boys.

Given my general success with Christmas photos, you might wonder why I'd be interested in taking all the kids to a cheap studio for photographs, but it's kind of fun to have someone else do the work from time to time.

Thankfully, we scheduled these photos for Saturday. Although Lucas! had taken several face-altering tumbles by then and Spencer! had given himself a goose egg on the forehead the previous afternoon, Lucas! had a couple more tumbles after this, making it look like he'd been in an altercation with an angry guinea pig...and Smunch hadn't yet been hit in the face with a baseball.

Hard to believe Mam's the only one who survived the holidays intact, but then, we've got a couple days left...

Images of Christmas

...with apologies for the fact that small, excited children do not stand still enough for decent photos on Christmas morning, but then it wouldn't be Christmas if they did.

Even people with the patience of Aunt Karen need a little glass o' sumthin during the holidays

No shortage of presents

The very beginning of the early morning blur

Lucas and his "Mickey Balls"

Mam is excited to try painting by numbers

Smunch is pretty psyched to have finger LEDs

Homemade cinnamon rolls

Homemade cinnamon pull-apart

Yummiest breakfast of the year

Grandpa helps break in the new Hot Wheels

Spencer! Lucas! - San Diego 2012

Early July marked time for us to head down to San Diego for our annual visit to the Westbrook family. Despite their sibling-like squabbles, Smunch and Mam never seem to get enough of their cousins. It's nice to see because I'm never really done spending time with my sister (Aunt Karen!) either.

This year's theme? Water. Then again, given the opportunity. I think my kids would have a water theme every single day of the year. This time, they had to settle for every day of the trip instead. So Monday...

we went to the swimming pool shortly after arriving. Smunch and Mam showed off their comfort in the water.

Although, frankly, they can't compete with Spencer! for pure fearlessness. This kid is only six.

They stayed in the pool so long that Aunt Karen had to take Lucas! home for a nap.

Then there was this, at Santee Lakes:

More of the same at 4S Ranch, where I took no pictures. And this on our last day:

I don't know why the beach always seems to get saved 'til our last day. It's kind of a production to get out there, but I think the kids would be happy to be there all day every day. Somewhere in there, we also visited the Flying Leathernecks Aviation Museum at Miramar. Smunch said he didn't want to go, but wanted to stay the longest. Of course. Mam enjoyed it too, to my surprise.

I don't know why I find it so amusing to be corrected by my 10-year-old. "Do you want to go take a look at the tanks?" I asked. "Mom, those are tactical vehicles," he replied in exasperation. (shrug) Look like tanks to me, but what do I know?

Of course, July 4th was thrown in there too. We opted for a short trip to Poway during the day to check out their Independence Day activities. It was a quaint and fun way to spend a few hours after an awesome pancake breakfast at Aunt Karen's house. The park has an old-timey steam train that was up and running. Every other train ride included a mock gun-fight.

And every hour, they set off a canon, just for fun. There was live music, there were snow cones and watermelon and barbeque. The boys all took a ride on the train with Aunt Karen.

It was a long wait for the train and Mam wasn't up for that, so I took her for some watermelon and a long wait to have her face painted instead.

The trip was a great success. Everyone went back happy with their day, especially after some snow cones.

I'd hoped to get some tickets to watch San Diego's "Big Bay Boom" firework show from the deck of the USS Midway, but by the time we arrived in San Diego, the tickets were sold out. Just as well. San Diego's fireworks show was probably the biggest fiasco it'd ever been. It made national news, it was so catastrophic. At least no one was hurt.

Instead, we took the mellower route of watching fireworks local to Aunt Karen from a nearby elementary school. The kids played with (er, ehm) sparklers:

and played catch while they were waiting. There was plenty of room.

Maybe the show wasn't quite as spectacular as what folks should have seen from the deck of the Midway, but I suspect it was a lot more fun that what they actually saw.

And that made our holiday a success.

Many thanks to Uncle David for taking all four kids for an evening and letting Aunt Karen and me go out for a terrific dinner. We got to enjoy a rare, great conversation and for a change, almost got to feel like grownups!

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.