Oh, so many other things, really. I have things I meant to blog about...weeks ago. But I dunno. Things have been getting away with me fairly often lately. I forgot about the appointment to get the kids' flu shots last week. Totally forgot until the next day. Ugh. I suspect it's a sure sign that, once again, I'm in over my head. Soccer, speech, soccer, chess, Daisies, soccer, soccer, soccer, rest, repeat. Forget the volunteering at school. And totally forget working...that doesn't even make it onto the calendar.
I helped put together a teddy bear factory for the first graders a week or so ago. I'd neglected to tell Mam that I was helping out with her class that day. She was ridiculously thrilled to see me.
It's such a cute little event...very much like Build-A-Bear at the mall, but in our multipurpose room...
and Mam loves her new bear, who she named Corduroy.
Meanwhile, the kids are still playing soccer weekly. Mam seems to have regained last year's form in large part.
Although the other girls are much, much better than the girls were at this time last year, she's back to being her feisty ol' self, scoring goals, hugging her teammates and squealing like...well...an Orange Super Monkey.
And, really I just mention that because it made for a cute title.
Daddy had a birthday.
I made another yummy cake...
same one as last year and the year before. With all the balls I've got in the air, it was hard to shop for fun birthday gifts. I ended up purchasing Jon Stewart's new book,
Earth - A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race, which came out on Daddy's birthday, so didn't arrive 'til the next day. Funny book, but I had to have Daddy take it directly to work.
Definitely not kid appropriate! Still, it was more exciting than the couple of shirts I'd bought him.
Any of you who have been reading my blog for awhile probably know that I'm a barely closeted baseball fanatic. A couple of weeks ago, I got a phone call during the day...for Smunch. Turns out it was
a store where we went last year so Smunch could meet Pablo Sandoval and get an autograph. They just wanted to let him know that they'd lined up a new signing event with both the Panda and Aubrey Huff...one of the Giants' most popular new players this year.
I spend a lot of time at home alone these days. So you can imagine how delighted I was to find a baseball fan on the other end of my phone. Not only someone to talk to, but someone to talk
baseball to. He almost talked me into going to meet Will Clark...one of my own baseball heroes. But we had a wedding to go to and I finally let that one go. But I quickly signed Smunch up to go meet Aubrey Huff. So, Thursday, Daddy came home early and I picked the kids up from school and drove them directly to the train station. This signing was at AT&T Park, rather than "a nearby city". Smunch (mostly) happily did his homework on the way there.
We got there about half an hour before the signing was set to start. The daytime game had just ended. The team won. The postgame show was being taped right in front of the park, so we got to see some TV personalities, including Rich Aurilia, who just retired from the team last year.
The fog was rolling in. How long have a lived here now? Why didn't I bring sweaters for everyone? I know better than to go to The City without sweaters. No matter. The Giants Dugout store was right there, not 50 feet from where we stood in line. Daddy went and bought a blanket.
And the shivery wait was worth it when both Aubrey Huff, aka Huff Daddy, and Pablo "The Panda" Sandoval walked out and sat down to sign autographs.
I even had a funny little conversation with Mr. Huff...starting with telling him how much fun it's been watching him have fun playing and ending with him picking on his teammate down the table for swinging at too many bad pitches. Of course, the Panda hit one out of the park that afternoon, so I'd say they were equally well loved that night!
Yeah. Something like that, but different. 
But you'll have to wait until Halloween...or sometime after that when I get around to posting...to see the finished product!
and went to Gram and Grandpa's house for the game.
There were peanuts.
There were crackerjacks too, but Smunch couldn't eat them with his braces. There were ballpark-style nachos.
And, of course, there were hot dogs...although several of the adults opted for chili dogs.
I'm not sure they have these at the ballpark. When you go with young children, there isn't a whole lot of opportunity to shop around for your food.
Happy boy. 
Don't think they sell that at AT&T either, but it seemed appropriate anyway.
We spent almost the entirety of Grandpa's birthday at the kids' school...walking and walking and walking. But that didn't mean we didn't have a little celebrating to do too. Of course, we'd already taken Grandpa to the baseball playoffs with us and that was a pretty nice little present. But I thought it would be equally as nice to save him from canned cream cheese frosting. Really? Duncan Hines makes something sort of resembling cream cheese frosting? I looked at the ingredients. Didn't recognize anything. So I purchased...some cream cheese. Gram had been kind enough to bake a cake for me to frost.
Yum. It was still a nice little evening, with super tired kids and good cake. Hope there are lots more of these to come!
A coworker of mine was once floored that a mutual coworker of ours never went to concerts. "That's what life is all about," she said in disbelief. I thought the disbelief was a little funny. To each her own, I thought. I'd been to plenty of concerts, but never thought they made my life worthwhile...although maybe that one I saw in LA last spring came close.
I know it's just a cheesy marketing slogan, but it really was magic inside. I swear.
Daddy came home early, we dropped Mam with Gram and picked up Grandpa, then we waited with a whole lot of other orange and black clad people at the train station. We hopped on the train and we were off. There was so much anticipation and it was so much fun!
The park was packed, we were all issued orange "rally rags" and the place literally rocked.
And out came this guy...
the Giants' ace, Tim Lincecum. And this guy...
the Giants' rookie catcher, Buster Posey.
I know there are only 12 Ks in this picture. I'm not sure they ever got around to putting the other two up.
The rally rags spun, the sound was deafening, the place went wild. If I thought Smunch's reaction to getting tickets was worth the money, the experience was a gigantic bonus!
It was a late night on a school night for Smunch and I woke up with a splitting headache and ringing ears. I'm not sure how I would've felt about paying for those tickets if the team had lost, but as it was, I was thrilled we had them. 
It's such a cute little event...very much like Build-A-Bear at the mall, but in our multipurpose room...
and Mam loves her new bear, who she named Corduroy.
Although the other girls are much, much better than the girls were at this time last year, she's back to being her feisty ol' self, scoring goals, hugging her teammates and squealing like...well...an Orange Super Monkey.
And, really I just mention that because it made for a cute title. 
I made another yummy cake...
same one as last year and the year before. With all the balls I've got in the air, it was hard to shop for fun birthday gifts. I ended up purchasing Jon Stewart's new book, Earth - A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race, which came out on Daddy's birthday, so didn't arrive 'til the next day. Funny book, but I had to have Daddy take it directly to work. Definitely not kid appropriate! Still, it was more exciting than the couple of shirts I'd bought him.
We got there about half an hour before the signing was set to start. The daytime game had just ended. The team won. The postgame show was being taped right in front of the park, so we got to see some TV personalities, including Rich Aurilia, who just retired from the team last year.
The fog was rolling in. How long have a lived here now? Why didn't I bring sweaters for everyone? I know better than to go to The City without sweaters. No matter. The Giants Dugout store was right there, not 50 feet from where we stood in line. Daddy went and bought a blanket.
And the shivery wait was worth it when both Aubrey Huff, aka Huff Daddy, and Pablo "The Panda" Sandoval walked out and sat down to sign autographs.
I even had a funny little conversation with Mr. Huff...starting with telling him how much fun it's been watching him have fun playing and ending with him picking on his teammate down the table for swinging at too many bad pitches. Of course, the Panda hit one out of the park that afternoon, so I'd say they were equally well loved that night!
and the throwing weights over the high bar (weight for height contest)...
The kids enjoyed watching the sheep dog competition.
Mam loved visiting the Clydesdales
and the Highland Cattle.
We even stopped by a very crowded falconry presentation. The kids seemed to enjoy that too...or maybe it was just too packed for them to plan an escape.
We missed out on a lot of things...visiting clan tents and the Highland dancing among them...but we had a lot of fun and now we'll have something to go back and see next year.
So far, it's promising to be a pretty different year than last year. Soccer has never really been Smunch's sport. He enjoys it and he chose to play soccer over playing "fall ball", but he's hardly a star. In his first game with the Silver Sharks, he got tired and asked to come out of the game after the first quarter. Ugh!
But he happily celebrated goals with the team's star player. Then he got kicked in the foot...hard. Out for another quarter. He seemed O.K. later. He seemed fine until he played soccer again. It's a little hard to believe it's not just a mental problem. I'm hoping he makes it through a few more quarters this weekend.
But they're cute. Mam is nothing like the soccer player she was last year, however. Her fearless fiestiness has been replaced by hang-back-and-watch-it-ness...although she did score a goal in her second outing. There've only been two games, so maybe last year's soccer star will re-emerge yet. 
