So last Thursday I decided that my older three kids are old enough to start teaching how to play baseball (softball, T-ball, or as Kyra calls it, “soffeeball”). They’re eight, seven, and five. It’s never to early for indoctrination, errr, training.

Since this is a bit past ball season for buying gear, everything was on sale and I picked up three mitts, six softballs, three bats, five T-balls, and an equipment bag for about $100. The kids and I trekked out to the ratty diamond by our house Thursday evening and practiced throwing (step with your glove hand straight toward who you’re throwing to, throw with your other arm, and point at who you’re throwing to. This way you can see the relationship between where you end up pointing to when you’re done throwing and where the ball actually goes) and then batting.

They did great! Georgie is apparently just the right age for this (he’ll be nine in three months). Two years ago he played T-ball, which he enjoyed but wasn’t particularly into, and when I took him out on Thursday he said he didn’t want to go. I told him too bad.

He’s getting old enough that there will be opportunities at Family Camp and wherever else to play and all the other little boys will be playing and he’ll want to do it too. The game will be much more fun for him if he’s had some practice and can actually play it. He seemed satisfied with that and didn’t give me any more argument.

Then we went out and played, and he discovered that not only can he throw straight and far, but he can actually hit the ball (I didn’t buy a tee so they’re doing batting practice on pitched balls). He had two or three good hits out of twelve pitches the first night, the next night he hit four or five, and Saturday night when Grandpa and Grandma came out with us, he hit five or six. A couple of them sailed right over the infield and were just wonderful. Now he’s pretty much hooked and wants to play all the time. That took even less time than I was expecting!

The girls are both doing really well too. They hit two or three usually out of twelve and both throw nice and straight, although not very far. Anika tends to release the ball a bit late, so hers mostly end up as grounders; but that’s ok. They go right to whoever she’s throwing to and for only three days of practice, that’s quite good.

Trinity has that look about her that in another year or two when size and coordination finish catching up, she’ll be a good little player. She’s just on the edge now. Her main problem is she tends to get distracted by insects on the ground at her feet, and then wants to go off catching them when she’s supposed to be watching the ball that’s flying towards her head. I think this will be a self-correcting problem.

Speaking of Trinity, she had her seventh birthday party on Saturday. Another little girl in church turns seven this month as well, and since all the same kids come to both we decided to have a joint party this year. It was at a little fountain park about ten minutes from our house. Wow, was that fun! We ended up with something like thirty kids and as many adults, and the girls (and everyone else) had a ball.

Trinity got all kinds of new bug gear: bug flash cards, bug box, gummy bugs (like gummy worms), plastic bugs, and my personal favorite - a Turbo Bug Gun which looks like a thin car vac that sucks up bugs and holds them in a little containment section in the barrel of the gun. Hahahaha! Being the bug nut that she is, Trinity was thoroughly delighted. She got some ballet books, Polly Pockets, and other non-insect related items as well (which I find her playing with after church with a band of other little girls who are less interested in bugs). Overall, it was a lovely birthday.

Parenting is so obnoxious. I spend half the time wishing the kids would grow out of whatever they’re doing that’s driving me nuts at the moment and the other half of the time wishing they would stop growing at all because they’re so sweet when they’re little. Georgie will be ten in another year! Okay, well I’m off to go have my panic attack now.

Rachel

Not to be confused with our church Family Camp that we went to last month, this last weekend we went camping in Central Oregon (about three hours away or two and a half if you drive as fast as my Hubby….) over last weekend. Yes, three glorious, sleepless nights of tenting with five small children.

Actually, we borrowed a tent and this raised bed thing from George’s parents, so at least we weren’t down on the floor where the kids could spend all night stealing our blankets.

This is the first time we’ve been camping altogether with the kids since Georgie was a baby, I think, and I was a bit concerned about how it would go. George is typically not a happy camper. He’s more like a highly disgruntled camper. Dirt, not so much his thing, and he’s not huge on sleep deprivation either (although that doesn’t seem to discourage him from staying up half the night at home).

Since these are two of the main components of camping, one could see why his response to my camping queries over the last several years has been to glower at me with the heavy brow of the Neanderthal. Typically he only likes camping if it is done in a hotel.

This weekend turned out to be more like camping lite than actual camping. My Grandparents rented two cabins at the resort, and then the rest of us all camped next to the cabins (I can’t figure out how they can call an RV park with half a dozen cabins and a few tent sites a “resort.” Seems the definition of the word has slipped a wee bit. If room service and a gigantic pool overlooking some spectacular view is not included with the accommodations, then it does not qualify as a resort.)

Since the cabins were right there, we could cook breakfasts and dinners (both of which I did) and hose down the children every night. I was particularly glad about that last part. It’s astounding how utterly filthy children can get when they spend the entire day in their swimsuits roaming around the riverbank looking for bugs and other small creatures (that accounted for at least 90% of Trinity’s camping activities). One hundred degree weather doesn’t help to much either…

The day we left we went to a fish hatchery, which turned out to be vastly more entertaining than one would expect from a place with such a mundane name. Fish eggs, pop, baby fish. How exciting can that be, right?

The hatchery raises a bunch of different kinds of trout and salmon plus sturgeon for some inexplicable reason, which then get sent off to stock lakes all over the state. The fish are organized into tanks by type of fish and then age or size, so they have round tanks for teeny fish, and several rectangular ones for different sizes of bigger fish.

You can buy food pellets to feed the fish. While this sounds about as thrilling as dumping a little bit of flakes on your goldfish’s head, it actually bears a much closer resemblance to what I imaging those shark feeding tours must be like (the ones for crazy people who seem to think that sinking a block of frozen fish on a rope into the sea to attract sharks so the people can watch the sharks devour the fish is a good idea. These people may perhaps be possessing appreciably fewer brain cells than the rest of us).

Anyway, when you throw even one pellet in the water, the fish go nuts! The swarm and start jumping and thrashing about like they haven’t been fed in weeks. Makes you glad you’re on the side of the tank. My brother discovered that this frenzied behavior is different depending on the size of the fish. The smaller (8″ or so) fish of the same species (rainbow trout in this case) swarm in a spherical pattern. When you throw in a pellet, all the fish immediately flock to the area and form a big ball just below where the food was. Large fish (over two feet or so) are much slower about their response times and tend to do the fishy version of ambling over to the food.

My Dad noticed that the fish don’t like shadows, so if you stand at the edge of the tank with the sun at your back and stick out your hand so that the shadow of your arm falls in the midst of the fish, the fish will all scatter every which way. Trinity cottoned on to that immediately and spent the rest of the time frightening unassuming fishies.

The smallest fish (4″ or so) don’t like you waving your hands around even if your shadow doesn’t fall into their tank, so naturally we spent a fair amount of time standing on the side of the tank waving our arms in the hot sun and watching baby fish shoot every which way. Yes, high entertainment from the freshwater world.

Seeing most of my aunts and uncles, a few cousins, and all my grandparents plus my own immediate family for four days was quite delightful. I even taught my Dad how to play Dutch Blitz, which is that speed game I play every other Monday night with my girlfriends. He got an 86 the first time he played, which is excellent since the first person to make it to 100 wins.

I grew up playing double solitaire with him, so I knew he was fast and have been trying to schmooze him into playing Dutch Blitz with me for years. He’s going to be formidable in no time if I can con him into playing again. Hmmm, I think it’s about time to teach my older two kids how to play. Hehe. Ahhh, the virtues of early indoctrination!

Well, that pretty much wraps up my weekend. I am going to clear out my inbox real quick (ha ha), and then read some more of Harry Potter 6 in preparation for the seventh book, which comes out a week from Saturday (as I’m sure you all know). I decided to reread the entire series before the last one comes out, so I’ve been intermittently working on them since the spring.

I took the oder three kids to see the fifth movie this morning, but I think I’m going to wait until I see Transformers to do a write-up because then I can do a comparative review (that’s code for “I’m too lazy to do the review now, so I will make up a plausible-sounding excuse for delaying it” in case you were wondering…).

Last weekend’s camping trip marks the last of our big summer recreationing, so I’m hoping the rest of the holidays will be a bit more relaxed. It seems like I’ve been packing, unpacking, or vacationing for the last six weeks. It’s been delightful but mildly grueling, and I’m looking forward to a more more low key remainder of the summer.

Rachel

Jonathan and Joanna surprised me with tickets for the Chris Isaak concert  for my birthday last week, and the show was tonight so George and I and Jonathan and Joanna and Joanna’s sister Charity all went. It was sooooo great!

We have five of his CD’s (well, six counting the Christmas CD) and the live concert DVD, so I guess that sort of makes us fans… He’s excellent in concert! About halfway through, he took a portable mic and walked through the entire crowd while he sang “Return to Me.” The show was outdoors at a lovely venue, the weather simply perfect.

He came out in a turquoise blue wool, rhinestone studded suit with black diamonds on it. I think the entire audience felt sorry for him because it was hot out, and the poor fellow must have been roasting. About two-thirds the way through the concert he went back and changed into a suit made of what looked like about 3″ x 5″ mirrors. It sort of was like looking at a human disco ball.

On the commentary for his live concert DVD he mentions something about his concert apparel (he’s wearing a bright pink suit all the way through that one). He says that when you give a poor guy some money and put him on stage, the first thing he does is runs out and buys the flashiest looking suit he can find. Seems to be pretty much the case! He’s got such a self-deprecating, smooth sense of humor though that it works on him. How many guys can make a mirror suit look charming?

With the general admission, lawn-type seating, we wandered around and found seats (or grass, rather) pretty close to the front and way off to the left side (traffic was terrible. We left early but didn’t arrive until right before the show started. You’d think it was the day before a holiday or something!). This turned out to be good though, because we had a clear view of him from not too far away; and even better, when he came to or from the stage, he walked maybe thirty feet from us to get to and from the stage.

After the show, Joanna, Charity, and I all bought stuff and went through the line to have him sign it (apparently he signs things after every concert and stays until the last person is done). When I got up to my turn I told him he was my birthday present. He drew a birthday cake on the shirt he was signing for me and asked how old I am. I told him “thirty-two,” so he promptly wrote “thirty” on the shirt instead and admonished me that I “gotta start lying sometime.” Guess it’s time to go check Amazon and see if there are any CD’s of his out that I’ve somehow missed…

I don’t think any of the pictures we took came out (unless you’re interested in seeing Chris Isaak’s nose hair), but that’s ok. It was a lovely evening and I think I have satisfied my inner fangirl for now. Hurray! Thank you, Jonathan and Joanna!

Rachel