Run With The Fishes

Wednesday was a low key, take it easy day. We stopped by Greg’s mom’s house and traded the kids for Christi. While they were making stepping stones with their footprints, we shopped for wedding gifts, had some lunch, and loafed around Barnes & Noble. I forgot to mention that Kathy had themed meals planned for the nights we ate with them. Monday was Hawaiian night which included leis. Allison was thrilled to pass out to everyone, “You mean we get to keep these?!?”. Wednesday was Mexican food night, complete with a pinata. I used Patricia’s camera so hopefully she has some pictures of everyone chopping off the donkey’s head. Poor innocent paper donkey. Greg was in control of the rope and he is a much braver person than I am. Blindfolded kids (who know how to swing a bat) facing my direction just sounds scary.

Thursday, Friday, and part of Saturday we got to hang out with Greg, Sr. (Big Greg, Greg’s dad, Pop) and Kelly. We started out with an afternoon baseball game. We hopped onto the trolley which took us into downtown. Allison had mixed feelings about this. She was excited that we would be riding a trolley like on Mr. Rogers, but was afraid that once we got on, it wouldn’t stop or let us off. I guess she had visions of a demon trolley or something.

Our first professional game was a completely different experience than this one. Instead of sitting way up in the nose bleed sections we opted for tickets close to the field along third base line. Things were just more laid back. At the Rangers’ Ballpark they strictly enforced seats with guards at each section entrance. The ushers at Petco Park didn’t care where you sat as long as you weren’t in someone else’s seat. Guys were sitting around in the bleachers without shirts on and beach balls were tossed around. Nathan and Zoey had big hopes of catching a foul ball, and even though some were hit our way, they stayed on the field.

After the game, we made our way to the skate shop where Nathan was hooked up with is first custom board. He put his board to good use the next day when we went to the YMCA skate park in Encinitas. I’m sure it is slightly intimidating when there are kids your size and smaller whipping around on the course. For the first 30 minutes we were there, Nathan basically stood in a corner, building up his nerve. By the end of the day, he was rolling all over the beginner course.

After the skate park, we went to the public beach for some splashing fun. Because we thought we would just be stopping by, we started out in regular clothes. We pulled a reverse and after they were soaked and sandy, the kids changed into swimsuits for dinner and the ride home.

The waves were bigger at this beach so there were several more surfers. At first Allison would not go near the water. After some coaxing and general silliness, she warmed up to the idea and started splashing away.

Usually Greg or I have the camera. This time, thanks to Kelly, we managed to get a family photo. I’m still uploading some pictures, but if you want to see all of them from our trip you can visit here.

Go here for part 1.

The whole week we were there it was pretty much non-stop fun. Tuesday Kathy took us to Sea World. By us, I mean all of her children* and grandchildren. As soon as we got there it was time for the Shamu ‘Believe’ show to start. We grabbed our seats and got ready. Of course everyone wanted to be in the splash zone.

A few minutes before the show started, Allison and Zoey decided we were just too close so we moved back a few rows. Towards the middle everyone started to do a “Shamu Rocks!” chant while moving their hands like a big whale fin. Nick and Nathan opted to stay close to the bottom in the hopes of getting wet.

The first sets of splashes came by and they got a few drops of water. I think they were a little disappointed. Just when they had given up hope of getting wet, the whale swam over super fast and soaked their section. Nathan was so shocked that he jumped out of his seat and started running up to where I was sitting. He says, “to show me how wet he got”.

After Shamu, it was time to watch the dolphins. Nathan and Nick must have made getting wet look like fun because Christopher and Allison insisted on sitting in the front row. This show was more light-hearted than the Shamu show. You can tell that dolphins are mischievous and their trainers have fun working with them. This is the show that made me think maybe the trainers weren’t really marine biologists, but were just hired actors**. To do the same show several times a day, every day of the week and still smile and laugh takes something. These guys were able to make it all seem like it was their first show. We got splashed, the kiddos loved it.

So, you all have seen the movie Happy Feet, right? You know the part when he gets caught and shipped off to the Zoo and the audience is made to feel guilty for humans keeping animals in captivity? The penguin attraction at Sea World was exactly like that. It was creepy.

We did see some other pretty cool exhibits and shows. After we got home, there are two parts of the trip that Allison described to my mom and then my dad on the phone. They must have made an impression. The first was the shark exhibit. She thought standing on the moving sidewalk and going through the shark aquarium was amazing.

The second was R.L. Stine’s Haunted Lighthouse , a 4D movie (3d, with some water effects) that we watched. She told my mom, “First the swordfish was coming at us and Mom kept saying it was going to poke her! Then we got fish slobber all over us but we couldn’t take a shower so we wiped some off, but had to walk around with slobber on us the rest of the day.” She was slightly grossed out and thought it was cool at the same time.

We wrapped up the day with the rides, which of course drenched anyone close.

*Jon and Leah of course were missing, since they were getting married and all.
** They are totally marine biologists. Sea World doesn’t let just anyone work with the marine life.

Allison was so excited for this trip that she packed everything she would need before the rest of us had a chance to pack. The signs were all positive that it was time start our trip except that we almost didn’t make it out of town. Because of the rain all day on Friday (June 15th, almost two weeks ago) our driveway and yard were flooded. If we had waited another hour to leave we wouldn’t have been able to leave the house. On the way out the door, Greg noticed a ssssssssss noise that meant there was a leak in one of the tires. All of the tire stores were closed and the Walmart Tire center would only be open for 15 more minutes. We raced there and begged for their help. Our puppy eyes must have done the trick because 20 minutes later we were on the road.

We made it to Ft. Worth around midnight and decided to just go pick up the mini van* we were renting for the drive then and hopefully bypass the busy airport traffic in the morning. What should have taken 15 minutes turned into almost two hours. I reserved the car under my name and swiped Greg’s card at the automated kiosk thing. The attendant at the exit said we had to have the reservation and credit card in the same name. Because there was already a hold on the card from the first swipe, it wouldn’t approve a new transaction. Most of the time waiting was on hold with the credit card people so they could clear up the first hold. We finally made it into bed at 3 am.

Driving through Texas takes up almost 14 hours of the 22 hour trip. The landscape changes so much through the drive. We started in forests of tall pine trees which gave way to scattered oaks and elms. This changes to low shrubs then rocks & cacti, to absolutely nothing but sand. To make us really appreciate the fact that we were leaving out for our vacation, it rained on us almost the whole first day of the drive.

Due to years of watching Wild E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, when Nathan and Zoey saw a large metal roadrunner along Highway 10 they both thought it was real. We saw an actual roadrunner (they are actually very small) and they didn’t believe it was real. We couldn’t convince them the big one wasn’t real.

After a long day of driving, we stopped for the night in Tucson. If I ever had to live somewhere where the temperature was super hot during the summer (it was 100 at 9pm), Tucson might be the place. It was beautiful.

The second day of the drive out was much shorter. In some weird – it’s a small world thing, after a call to let everyone know we made it, we stopped by a mall to pick up some shorts for Nathan and bumped into Greg’s mom. Pretty unexpected. We made it to Greg’s dad’s** house just in time for a bar-b-que and some relaxing. Everyone had fun pretending Grandpa’s hammock was a pirate ship and I got to hold the new baby Thomas. Thanks to Jeremi and Christina’s families there would be many more opportunities for nephew snuggling.

On Monday we woke up early and hit the beach. By the time we made it there (it takes a while to get 14 people ready for some sun and sand), it was really close to Allie’s nap time. The first thing we did was jump into the water on boogie boards which Nathan and Zoey loved.

Unfortunately, the water was still cold. Allison didn’t like it so much. She got wet, cold, and scared of the waves. She was looking forward to getting dirty but instead of building sand castles with all of the other kids, she stayed wrapped up in a towel beside me. Even though she didn’t get into the ocean or build any sand castles, she thought it was great fun to watch the birds and the waves.

*A mini van is perfect for long trips. Everyone had their own space and could stretch out. There was no, “S/He’s touching me”.

**for those of you with in-laws, what do you call yours? Mom/Dad? First name? Mr/s Last name? I have never been sure. Since my Greg is a Junior it seems weird to call his dad by first name because they both always turn around I may just start calling him Pop or something.

*THIS POST MAY RAMBLE* *NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN 10 and UNDER*

So, I have a problem. It’s not a horrible problem, but it’s not easily solved. My children have found my blog and like to read it. It’s not like they didn’t know I had one. We say things like, “I bet that makes it on the blog”, after someone does something goofy.

I try not to write negative things about them (or anyone really) and for the most part, it’s child friendly, so that isn’t really the issue. It’s just that, what if I ever did say something that could be misread? I really don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I don’t want to do any damage to their budding self-esteem.

Now I feel limited in what I can say. What I write also comes from a parent’s point of view. Sometimes my kids don’t need to see that point of view. How will, “Because I said so”, work then? Every once in a while I may need a place to get weird random stuff off of my chest things that my kids don’t need to hear.

I’m stuck because I feel bad asking them not to read it. I could do that and/or block the site from their computer, but I don’t want them to have the sense that someone is writing/talking about them and being anxious and worried that I’m not saying good things. It goes back to that whole self-esteem issue. I want my children to be comfortable with who they are and not worry about how others see them. I don’t want them to stop being themselves because they are afraid their mother is going to write about it on her blog for the whole world to read except for them.

I’m hesitant to write even this, because I know they are reading. I could just start each post with disclosures and warning labels like the ones at the start of this post. *KIDS CAN READ THIS ONE!* Really, I don’t want to do that. It just sounds silly. A warning like that would not have stopped me from reading. Maybe I’ll think of a solution while we are on vacation. I guess I could always start a separate blog and hope they don’t find it.

Things will be sparse for the next few weeks. I know what you’re saying, “Like they haven’t been already?”. One of Greg’s younger brothers is getting married and we leave next Friday for San Diego. Between the two days to get there, the whole week we get to stay and visit, then the two days to get back, we’ll be gone almost two weeks. I don’t want to get sand in my laptop, so there is a good chance there won’t be much updating.

With that in mind, here is a little something.

Allison is really looking forward to this trip. Greg was telling her about how she will be able to build sand castles at the beach and because there is water close by, she can wash off if she gets too sandy. She became full of wonder and excitement, turned wide eyed to Zoey and said, “Did you hear that Zoey? We can get as dirty as we want!”

In anticipation of lots of driving time ahead, I have been trying to make sure we have plenty of music to listen to*. I never did give that update on Zoey’s reaction to Jordin winning. Really she wasn’t very disappointed. “He’s going to be famous anyway and we can just buy his music then.”

She and Nathan were thrilled last weekend on our drive to and around Baytown when they heard a specific song being played. Then they begged to listen to the Blake Lewis version of “Shot Through the Heart” over and over and over again. Each time we got in the car it is the only song they wanted to hear. Every once in a while we managed to squeeze in some “Hips Don’t Lie” for Allie. She loves Shakira and asks me about once a week to make her a white dress like the one Shakira wears.

A few weeks ago, one of Nathan’s friends spent the night and cracked the kids up by singing that he was a Barbie Girl. Skip the next sentence, Amy. My kids had never heard this song or any others by Aqua. They were intrigued. After only hearing it from him once, they knew most of the words to the chorus and walked around singing it constantly. A couple of days ago (I think it was Tuesday), I showed them the video.

Wednesday, Greg sent me this:
Greg: funny scene in the car today
Greg: Zoey and Nate are singing Barbie Girl
Greg: me, “Did you guys just now learn that song or did you know it from before”. Nate, “I knew it from before. My friend sings it all the time. There’s a website that it’s on. Mom showed it to us yesterday.
Greg: me, “You Tube”. Allison, “Me Three!”

*Man, I just realized that the minivan we are renting probably won’t have a cd player that reads mp3s. I’ll have to decide if we want to turn the three or four mp3 cds into 10-15 regular cds.

All in all the weekend was fun. The girls won the first game of the day and lost the second. Both of the games were much more even. Some people think that the umpires had some bad calls* that could have swayed the game in our favor, but umpires aren’t perfect and the last team deserved to win.

I don’t have many pictures from these games because the whole field, including dugouts, was surrounded by chain link fencing. It doesn’t really make for the best photos.

After the game and getting cleaned up the whole team went to Incredible Pizza. After two softball games and a night full of arcades, miniature golf, go carts, and bumper cars, everyone was exhausted.

A funny thing happened on Friday night. After taking showers, Nathan came out griping about how small the towels were at this hotel. When we looked over at him we noticed he was wearing a hand towel instead of a bath towel. “Ah, that explains it!”. Hilarious.

Since we had nothing better to do on Sunday, we decided to see some historical sites. Just a few miles from our hotel was the Texas Monument, which marked the field where men yelled, “Remember the Alamo!” while fighting (and winning if you are a Texan) the final battle for Texas independence from Mexico. While the museum part of the monument was interesting, the elevator ride to the top was anti-climatic. It is a weird juxtaposition that the place of one of the most important events in Texas history has been surrounded by oil refineries and bays filled with trash.

We decided to have some fun with the monument.

Across the street is the Battleship Texas. For us, it was so much more interesting than the monument. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it on here or not, but Nathan has a true fear of heights. It’s not something he can control and he has always had it. Greg challenged him to climb as high as we could go on the battleship. If he could make it, we would pick up some ice cream. He barely made it up, but once he got there I was able to coerce him to the edge for one quick picture. He is pretty brave.

*One of the calls was made when Zoey ran to home plate, made a jukey move (like her brother) evaded the catcher who had the ball and stepped onto home plate. The umpire called her out saying that she stepped out of the base line. Our coach showed them where Zoey’s footprints were clearly still within the baseline, but the call had already been made.

We made it to Baytown for the 8 and under Pixie league state softball tournament. Zoey’s team played at 7:40 against a team that has played together for a while. You could tell they weren’t just an All-Star team because they all had matching equipment bags, matching shoes, matching helmets, and even their moms had matching purses.

Each time one of their girls got up to bat, the coach would give them a throw-away pitch. Their other coach explained that this was to get the girls to watch the ball. One of our moms explained that this was so that their girls would know where to bat the ball. I go for the second theory for 2 reasons. The first is that they hit the ball to Zoey and our pitcher two times each. Once, Zoey caught a pop fly, the other combined 3 times, our girls caught the ball and made the play at first for outs. The second is that they found our weakness right between third base and short stop and hit the ball out into the grass every single time with the exception of those other four hits.

Most of our girls didn’t even make it to first base (the other team was that good), and only two got to bat more than once. Zoey had a great hit that got her to second base but with two outs before her, she got stranded there. She has done amazing this season.

The final score after only three innings played ended up being 19 to 0. When you looked around the other seven fields at the scores, they all looked about like ours or worse. Someone explained that for the first round of the tournament is used to weed out the regular all-star teams from those that play all the time. This should mean that we have teams that we can compete with tomorrow.

As we were leaving we passed the concession stand, Zoey sniffed the air and said, “Mom, you can smell those hot dogs all the way at second base. They smell sooooo gooooood!”.