A Good Big Brother

Samuel plays with John Michael at his birthday party even though the toys were so "silly". He's a good big brother!

Birthdays and Baseball

This past Saturday was John Michael's 2nd birthday. He is such a big boy! We celebrated last weekend with a small birthday party for just a few of his little buddies. We did an Old MacDonald theme at the indoor playground at Imagination Station. They played and had a good time exploring & climbing. John Michael really enjoyed the cup cakes. As a matter of fact he helped himself to three of them! Then on Wednesday, his PaPaw and Nanny came and spent the day with him and took him to Chuck E Cheese. Of course, he loved that! On Saturday, his actual birthday, after spending the morning at the ballpark, we took him to see the horses, one of his favorite things to do. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon at the "poo" another of his favorite things to do. I think he had a good birthday and his proud to say now that he is TWO! But he's not finished yet! He still has one more party with his grandparents coming up soon.

On to baseball... Samuel's baseball team won their district championship game on Saturday morning. We were so proud of them. Samuel had a fantastic play at home plate tagging a kid out! He also hit a triple! They are doing a great job even in this extreme heat. Area tournament is this weekend. Go Americans!

Summer... Then & Now

I love summer. The only thing is, summer vacations are so short now. Wasn't summer break longer when we were kids? Was it really? I don't know for sure but summer seemed a lot longer when I was growing up. Of course we didn't have all of the many sources of "entertainment" that our kids have now. I grew up with two sisters and we lived in the country. We spent our days riding our bikes, playing with the water hose, "swimming" in a little plastic pool in the backyard, playing with our barbie dolls on the front porch, playing on a swing-set in the backyard, helping mom and dad in the vegetable garden, going to Vacation Bible School or a Gospel Meeting SOMEWHERE just about every night, chasing fireflys (lightning bugs) around at night, shelling peas, lying in the cool grass under a shade tree reading a book, playing with the neighbor kids, playing red-rover and rock-school for no reason other than to pass the time, and dreaming about our upcoming one & only annual vacation to the beach. How different is that from how our kids spend their summer days now? We stay so busy that it seems August rolls around before we blink an eye. Is it better this way or was it better the way I grew up? I don't know, just something to ponder. As I was sitting at yet another baseball practice over the weekend I was looking at our calendar for the remainder of the summer break. We have only two free weekends before going back to school and one of those weekends we hope to go to the beach. The word that comes to mind when I think about my summers as a child is carefree. How much "carefree - nothing to do - use my imagination" time do my boys have? Not much and maybe not enough. Again, something to ponder.

Moving On....

The Pirates came in 2nd place in the tournament which was great but I have to admit, we were all a little disappointed. Not in the team, just in the outcome. Winning the regular season and coming in 2nd in the tournament is nothing to complain about. That's a great season but we felt that our boys deserved to win it all. They played their hearts out the entire season with only 9 players when all of the other teams had 11. Oh well, we have moved on and Samuel is now playing All-Stars which means baseball all summer long. They have already started practices which have been for about 3 hours every night. He loves it and we are looking forward to it as well. We have been swimming most everyday since school got out last week. Samuel and I went on Saturday and Sunday then on Monday, of course, we took John Michael. I obviously wasn't thinking when I packed my book in our pool bag! I mean, did I really think I would be able to sit and read with a two year old at the pool? NOT! Let me say that the nice, relaxing, poolside visits are over when you take a two year old little boy who thinks he is as big as his eight year old brother. Needless to say, the book hasn't been back to the pool since Monday. Another interesting visit this week was to the library. I thought I could take John Michael in withOUT the stroller and we would sit and read some books while Samuel made his book choices. Mistake #2! Again, what was I thinking? We left with NO books, and one child kicking and screaming AFTER I found him hiding from me in the Adult book section! And don't even ask how many books had been pulled off the shelves when we made our escape. Aahhhh... the WONDERFUL TWOs! Isn't that what they are called?!? I am trying to plan John Michael's birthday party but once again, just as last year, we have baseball tournament conflicts. I thought I was being smart and started planning it for three weeks before his actual birthday because we know we have a tournament both the weekend of and the weekend after. We got to practice last night and found out we are playing in a tournment THAT weekend also. Poor thing.... will he ever get a real party?!?!? I am still waiting to find out if we will be playing on Sunday and hoping that it will work out. Don't even ask what Samuel's first and second birthday parties consisted of. Let me see, the word overboard comes to mind! Two words that have been on my mind lately are "simplify" and "rocketship". I will expound on the rocketship more later and I think we can all probably relate to simplify. My thoughts keep coming back to YES, but HOW? Can anyone else relate? Happy summer to all!