A lull

Another blog post on this lonely blog of mine, another blog post of me starting with “man I wish I wrote here more often”.

After many months of being very busy, we are in a lull right now. The kids still have indoor baseball and softball practices for their travel teams but swim is ramping down and spring ball hasn’t started yet. We have occasional nights off from activities but tonight it’s just Mallory & me at home; the boys are at Carson’s baseball practice.

The only sounds in my house right now are hysterical laughter from Mallory (who is watching some form of American’s Funniest Videos on Rick’s computer), the dryer (drying the sheets from my bed because I am sick and all I want are fresh linens to put my head on at night), the furnace keeping us warm (it’s a whopping real feel of 18* right now), and the click clack of dog nails that I should probably go cut but I don’t wanna.

Mallory is still doing travel softball, swimming in fall & winter, just started Science Olympiad and decided she wants to play basketball again next winter. She would also like to do gymnastics and dance again so we’ll have to talk about her priorities later this summer. She’s figured out how to keep up on her homework so our struggles of two-hour homework sessions from the beginning of 5th grade are a distant memory (THANK GOD). She is playing the violin and doing choir through school and I think only choir is going to stick for 6th grade.

I am afraid I’m going to jinx it but we are in a good spot with her meltdowns – it seems like what used to be an almost daily (or twice daily) occurrence is now not even every other week. I’m not sure what happened but we’ll take it. Perhaps it’s just the calm before the tween and teen storm.

I need to record this for my sweet girl. A year ago she had just gotten her brace off and was doing physical therapy and was waaay behind her softball teammates. She wanted to pitch and play infield but she wasn’t good enough for either of those for her travel team. She was adamant about wanting to pitch though so we got her a pitching coach last summer and have been doing almost weekly lessons and she has been great about practicing outside of her lessons and team practices times. The improvement she has shown over the past eight-ish months has been incredible (and SO FUN!!) to watch. We are so proud of her and all of her hard work.

Carson started on a travel baseball team last fall; they’ve only practiced but have their first tournament coming up over Easter weekend and I can’t wait. Carson took a baseball to the ear last fall (courtesy of Rick) and it ruptured his eardrum. He has been a little anti-baseball and is still a little nervous but I’m hoping when the excitement of a game, etc he’ll get over it. He did swim team in the fall and winter too and did GREAT. He’s getting first place in 8 & under events and he has a whole ‘nother year in that age group if he sticks with it. He tends to stop liking swim but then has a swim meet and gets a first place ribbon and is back on the swim train. He also played basketball this winter. It is really funny how he loves whatever sport is “in season” at that time.

Rick is coaching Carson’s travel team and will be coaching both kids’ little league teams this spring. That plus doing baseball & softball at Michigan is going to make him really busy. He didn’t like how I never cooked dinner before – not sure how it will be better when we are never home, but whatever. If he hasn’t bought stock in Aubrees by now, I don’t know what to tell him.

Me – I’m on the parent volunteer board for the kids’ swim club and for little league. I do the behind the scenes stuff which is perfect for me & my introverted-ness. I am still crocheting and knitting and have recently tried to figure out how to do screen printing (for shirts). It would probably have been cheaper to just buy the shirts I want to have made instead of buying all of the supplies but I love having the creative freedom (but Rick doesn’t like the extra clutter – oops!).

Well since it’s so quiet (the dryer stopped! My sheets are done!) I am going to go make my bed and get in it and try to sleep off the 14th cold I’ve gotten so far this winter (SO.NOT.COOL.).

I wish I had more funner stuff to report and dammit I wish I wrote here more.