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.

Halloween 2011

No, it's not all about the crazy pumpkins I carve. All-in-all, I sometimes find the traditional ones more charming anyway. And really, the only things at our house more charming than the rest of the family's pumpkins were this creepy vampiress and her scurvy pirate pal.I didn't bother to take any pictures at the school Halloween parade. The kids never quite manage to get their costumes on quite right and I'd been told (errantly, it turns out) that makeup was not allowed at school. It made everything that much more fun to put together on Halloween night. The kids had no idea what I was about to turn them into.And maybe that's just as well because I don't think Mam really understood the purported demeanor of vampiresses.And although pirates are generally surly, Smunch was particularly surly on Halloween night. He didn't want to pose for pictures and he made that very clear. In fact, it was not at all clear that he'd be going trick or treating with his rotten behavior.Say what?But, of course, they both got to go after gamely posing for pictures in front of the house I'd painstakingly decorated just hours earlier.I'm not sure why I bother with this. On holidays like Halloween, our quiet little cul-de-sac is kind of a bummer. A whole bunch of effort and almost no one gets to see it. I took it all down today. Harumpf.

The kids had a grand time trick-or-treating while I took the guinea pig to the vet. They came home with WAY too much candy, much of which was donated at school to be sent to the troops overseas. Yes, I'm that mean.

I wonder what it looks like by the time it gets out to the desert. That's an awful lot of chocolate to melt along the way!

Ryan Vogelsong, the Squash

It isn't really Halloween if I don't do something crazy with a pumpkin, right?

For the past couple of All Hallows Eves, I carved two of the San Francisco Giants' more colorful players, Tim Lincecum and Brian Wilson. I had a lot of different thoughts about who to carve this year. An ode to Buster Posey seemed like it might have been in order after his season-ending injury, but his clean-cut, boyish face just didn't seem like it'd make that great a pumpkin. I thought Pablo Sandoval might be a good option, but couldn't find a picture I wanted to emulate. But I liked the idea of carving Ryan Vogelsong on a pumpkin. He's got that interesting goatee and the intense pitcher's eyes. And he had a great backstory...having been around the block several times and having been traded to the Pirates from the Giants about 10 years ago. Most, recently, he was playing in Japan. Then, he came back and earned a job in the Giants' starting rotation. It was super impressive and fun to watch. I wish I'd made it to one of his games, but I never did.

I started my latest pumpkin-carving adventure with this photo:

photo courtesy of Charles LeClaire, US Presswire

I enlarged it, altered it in Photoshop a bit and used it as a template, which I painstakingly transferred onto a rather large pumpkin. Then I started in with some of your standard carving tools that you can pick up at the supermarket...and a plain ol' kitchen knife.

This particular pumpkin, it turns out, was pretty dry and hard to carve. In the end, I needed to use a Dremel tool to get the not-cut-entirely-through parts deep enough for plenty of light to shine through.All told, I worked on it for two days, over 6-8 hours, I figure.The final product looked like this: It's always fun to light it up and realize that it really kicks some serious butt, even though it doesn't look like much when it's unlit on the kitchen table. I decided it needed the SF logo and added that at the last minute.

You may recall I won the Giants' pumpkin carving contest in 2009 with my Tim Lincecum pumpkin. I think this one turned out even better and I entered it as well. I haven't heard anything, so I'm going to assume I didn't win this time around, but I'm always ready to be surprised!