Decisions, Decisions

Wow, who would have ever thought I could go silent?! And yet I have had nothing new to post for nearly a week! If you have gamely hung in there and waited patiently for me to return, I can't say that you will be rewarded today, but I do have a couple of snippets to chat about.

First, we have officially put baseball to rest for the time being. Over the course of the last couple of weeks we (Randy, Tyler and myself) have wrestled with whether or not to sign Tyler up for "Fall Ball," something we have never really considered in the past. I have always enjoyed watching Tyler play ball, but I have always been equally pleased to see the season come to an end. We have just felt so rushed much of the time, having to be at the ball field 2-3 hours three times a week. But as my faithful readers know, this season wasn't like the others; this season marked a real change in Tyler's growth and progress, and we thought perhaps it might be worthwhile to let Tyler gain a little more experience by playing another season beginning in September. In fact, Tyler's coach told us we should consider putting Tyler on a travel team, something we really weren't interested in doing, but we were also told that a lot of the travel players play in the fall league so we've been doing some serious mulling.

But timing is everything, isn't it? Just THIS MORNING, I had phoned the Parks and Rec department to ensure that Tyler could still get a spot in the fall draft (registration ended in June) and I was merely waiting for his tennis lesson to conclude so I could run by the office and drop off my payment. Okay, now let me back up a sec . . . earlier this summer when I was making plans for the kids, I signed Tyler up for tennis lessons (also through Parks and Rec) because he loves to play with Randy (when they get the chance). After his first lesson I tried to slip Darcy in--she wanted to take lessons too, unbeknownst to me--but the class was at maximum capacity. But back to Tyler . . . he has taken four hours' worth of lessons so far, and even to my "untrained" eye I could tell that he was doing really well. This morning after his lesson the instructor evidently asked him if he was enjoying himself and liked playing tennis, and then she asked to speak to me. I went over to her and she said, "I always like to let parents know when I see potential, and I just want you to know that if Tyler wants to keep playing, I think he could be really good." Wow!

I knew instinctively that Randy would be stoked when he heard this news, and just like that, in the blink of an eye, all our plans changed. Goodbye, Fall Ball! Now, instead of going to the ball park three times a week, we're going to be heading to the tennis courts 2-3 times a week, only now we ALL get to participate! All of the kids already have their own rackets and love to play (as do I), so no more sitting on the sidelines for us! Tennis, anyone???

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Tyler's baseball "banquet" was this past Friday night at Donato's. I can honestly say that this is the first end-of-season dinner that I have looked forward to attending--Randy and I were on very friendly terms with four or five couples throughout the season and we were all commiserating with one another and remarking on how we're going to miss setting up our camp chairs next to one another, reliving the last ball game, etc. But Mike (the guy who helped me look for Sawyer when he was "lost") told Randy, "You know what I'm going to miss the most?" Randy just pointed at Sawyer and Mike said, "Yep, I'm gonna miss this guy." Here's Sawyer saying, "Who, me?!"

 

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On Saturday Randy and I used a dinner/movie gift certificate that we received at Christmas to go and see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Ignore any bad reviews (I haven't seen any myself but my friend Jonathan from church said that Newsweek dissed the film) and just go and be prepared to come away satisfied. Sure, it's not going to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, but as always my ONLY complaint about the movie is that I wish it were longer! Too much of the book gets left out, as usual . . . and I thought the time FLEW by. I'm ready to see it again!