I guess it's been awhile...

OK, OK. I know. I have been slacking off on the blog... Here's some stuff that's been going on lately...

Baseball
Keeper Boy's baseball season actually ended today, one game shy of the championship game. They went out in spectacular style... a 13-1 loss. Ouch. While he hasn't complained (too much), it's been a frustrating baseball season for him and for us. He joined an already formed Majors team as a 12-year-old. That means he had only one season on the team before he aged out. Some kids have two or three years on a Majors team if they get drafted as 10- or 11-year-olds. Don't know if it was a matter of not wanting to make the investment in a player they'd have for only one year, whether it was a matter of baseball playing second fiddle to hockey for Keeper Boy, whether it was a matter of Keeper Boy being one of only a couple "new guys" on the team, or whether it was something else... but he played the minimum required time for Majors (2 innings; 1 at bat) in EVERY game this season but two. And in those he got three innings in one and four innings in one. Long story short, I think Keeper Boy's desire to play baseball has been severely curtailed through his experience this year, and it's a shame. I am very glad this season is over and I hope that some day he might want to try baseball again because he does have some talent.

J-Mav is having a great Single A season. He still has four games left. He's figured out the pitching machine and is getting hits in every game. In Single A the kids play all positions, so he's getting exposure to all of them. He is loving baseball (except when the pollen is really bad) and I hope that he can stick with his coach next year. He's great!

Speaking of allergies...
J-Mav was hit hard with allergies this year. Apparently the pollen is worse than it's been in 12 years. He was a MESS in April and through most of May. It seems to have gotten better now. I don't know if it's because the pollen counts are lower or if it's because the medicine regime is working. The doctor has him taking two 30mg Allegra pills in the morning and one at night, as well as antihistimine eye drops twice a day and prescription nose drops as needed. He also uses a Neti Pot sometimes. Poor guy. For a few weeks he didn't even want to go to baseball practice/games because his eyes hurt/itched so much. :-(

Other medical issues...
J-Mav has been dealing with a pesky case of ring worm for MONTHS. The actual rash/scaley stuff went away within a week of going on prescription cream. However, there are still a few red bumps so we continue to use the cream religiously twice a day, keeping it covered with a bandaid when he goes to school (as we were told to do by the doctor until it is completely gone). We have graduated from extremely large bandages at the beginnig, to regular sized bandaids, to the small bandaids he is using now. We are dredging the bottom of the bandaid barrel, using up all the random bandaids we have collected over the past 12 years. I think he's even worn a Sesame Street bandaid or two over the past couple of months. We'll always remember "the ring worm era" of J-Mav's life by the ever-present bandaid in all pictures taken of him from March until now. He has his 7-year well check in mid-July, so I guess we'll just keep using the cream until then and be sure to ask the doctor about it at that time. We were warned it could take a long time to completely clear up, but this is kinda bordering on ridiculous...

Hockey
J-Mav started hockey!! He's taking a learn-to-play hockey class and is all grins when he's on the ice. He'll be taking seven lessons (he's already had two) through the summer, and he will be playing on a Mites team in the fall. He looks so cute in his uniform. :)

Keeper Boy played the spring season with a great group of kids, competing in two tournaments: one in Richmond and one in Philly. The Philly tournament was over Memorial Day weekend. His team ended up winning its division and bringing home a big trophy. Woo hoo! There were three other teams in our division: a doormat team that scored, I think, one goal through the entire tournament; a thug team from New York; and a well-behaved, competitive team from New Jersey (the team we ended up facing in the finals). While playing the one team, our coach told our kids they had to pass at least three times before taking a shot, and Keeper Boy and our other goalie went almost entire periods without seeing the puck cross the blue line into their end. At any rate, the kids had fun (except for the one who broke his arm during the first game), and it was a good introduction to the world of checking for those who are new to Pee Wee level hockey. Keeper Boy will be playing with some of the kids from his spring team in the fall, so it was good to get to know their families over that weekend.

The hotel we stayed in in Philly is a whole 'nother story. It was a Quality Inn that is in the process of being renovated into a Wyndham Gardens Hotel. We checked in with little fanfare (once we figure out where to get into the hotel... construction had the front entrance inacessible); however, when we returned to our hotel that night after our first game, we were met with water streaming down our walls and out of the light fixture in the bathroom into the bathtub. That wasn't something we wanted to deal with all night, so we went downstairs to request another room. We discovered that the toilet in the room above us (one of Keeper Boy's teammate's familes) had overflowed while we were all at the hockey game. Great. Not just waterfalls within our room, but TOILET water falls. Ick. We got a new room, but it was a King bed instead of two doubles. Of course, this is the one time we didn't throw in a sleeping bag. Had to wait for a cot to be delivered. By the time we were all set up, it was after 10pm. Late night for J-Mav! Our room was fine after that, but we weren't impressed with the hotel for a variety of reasons. I won't even waste time talking about them, but I was moved to write a review on TripAdvisor.com. It's never good to piss off someone who likes to write letters. ;-P

Braces!
Keeper Boy FINALLY got his braces in April. He had relatively little trouble adjusting. I think he took Motrin for two days after he got them, and ate mainly soup, pasta, and mac & cheese for about a week. Since then, completely normal. And we've already seen a big change in his top teeth! Good thing because OMFG! Braces are WAY more expensive than when Hubby and I wore them many moons ago!

School
Eh. Not much new to report. Same old struggles. Keeper Boy did bring his Math grade up from a D (yes, he had a D for the second quarter) to a C and everything else back up to As and Bs. We're hoping for all As and Bs for the last quarter. We'll see. He has MUCH room for improvement in his study habits.

J-Mav is doing well in school. His reading has improved enormously since the beginning of the year, as has his writing. And he likes school most days. The attitude toward school is directly proportional to how tired he is. More tired=less enamored with school and with his teacher.

Weight Watchers
Yeah, not even going there. Let's just say I have A LOT of clothes in my closet that I can't wear right now. :-(

Hockey, Part II
The Capitals. Sigh. We had such high hopes that we'd be sitting here watching the Capitals in the Stanley Cup finals. But alas, instead I'm sitting here watching the Flyers (which I guess, for me, is the second best scenario) and Blackhawks. The Captials just couldn't get it done against the Habs. I guess the only thing that makes it slightly better is that the Habs also took out the Penguins.

We did hear late last week that the Caps will be playing in the Winter Classic (in Pittsburgh) on January 1, 2011. That's very cool. We entertained the idea -- for about a second -- of making a hotel reservation and trying to get tickets. But we quickly came to our senses and realized we'd be a lot more comfortable sitting in our own rec room. And we'd save A LOT of money. So that's the plan. Perhaps we'll try to go when DC hosts it, which apparently is also in the works for sometime in the next three to five years. Not quite sure how THAT's going to work since some years it's in the 60s over new years. This past year would've been perfect, though! Guess the NHL takes it chances...

Work
In other news, I quit my job at ManTech. My last day was May 24... almost exactly a month shy of a year there. Weird to leave a job so soon after I started, but it just wasn't the same job I took those 11 months ago. Re-orgs (yes, multiple) and executive management changes just weren't making me very happy to go to work every day.

I wasn't completely miserable, and I could've stuck it out, but I had an oppoturnity to take a position as Corporate Communication Manager at a small government contractor... Zimmerman Associates, Inc. I have been there a week and so far, so good. :) I will still be working in proposals, but I will also be working with website content and marketing material... much like I did when I first started at Datatrac all those years ago. :-) I am in the process of creating and implementing standards for proposals, style, editing, etc. Stuff I love! :)

Grandpa
When we were in the Philly area for the hockey tournament over Memorial Day weekend, we went to visit my grandfather. Well, first, J-Mav and I went with Mom and Dad to Grandpa's house. I wanted to visit it as I haven't been there in more than 20 years. I have such good memories of gathering there with my dad's side of the family every Thanksgiving, up until the year after my grandmother died. I remember the house being big, with a big yard. The thing is, it's not really so big! My dad pointed out that it seemed big because I was smaller. That's probably true. He said my next-oldest cousin had the same thought when he visited a few months ago.

I wandered through the house, which my parents and my aunts and uncles have been working on going through and boxing up since my grandfather moved into the assisted living facility. It was dark and seemingly stuck in the 50s or 60s. But it was much as I remembered it... except for the not being as big as I remembered it. J-Mav thought it was cool that my Dad had a bedroom in the attic and was very concerned that the floor was "tilty" in various parts of the house. He was fascinated with the sunroom for some reason. I finally saw the basement and wine cellar. In all my years, I had never been in that basement. I took some pictures of the outside when we left. It definitely needs some work, inside and out, but it's still my grandparents' home and the house my dad grew up in. J-Mav said it looked like a haunted house. That may be, but I think any ghosts that are there are the good kind. :-) That visit makes me want to go back and walk through my other grandparents' home again, just to see what the new owners have done with it. It was also a big, cool house.

On Sunday, Hubby, Keeper Boy, J-Mav, and I visited Grandpa between Keeper Boy's hockey games. We spent a little over an hour with him. He was eating lunch when we arrived. The man can put away some food! I went and said hello and told him we'd sit in the TV area and wait for him to finish because I didn't want him to not eat because we were there. I'm not sure he recognized me right off the bat. We took him down to his room after he was done, but not before a woman came over and told Hubby that he was very handsome and she loved him. :-) Did I mention my grandfather lives in the memory unit of his assisted living facility?

We took him down to his room, which is very nice. The whole place is nice, actually. It's in a residential area and it has a homey feel. Even the dining area looks and feels like a super-sized dining room in someone's home. Very nice. Anyway, we took him to his room and he was telling us how the restaurant has "gone down hill" and that they'd been going there for years and it just wasn't the same anymore. We played along. Then we started looking at some pictures that were displayed and at that point he definitely knew who I was, and he made the connection between the pictures of the boys and the boys standing in front of him. Keeper Boy and J-Mav did great with him. They didn't seem scared or put off by anything or the fact that he was in a wheelchair. We had warned them that great-grandpa might not recognize us, so they were prepared.

The TV had been on when we went in, I had my back to it most of the time. After a while, Keeper Boy made an interesting face and we realized it was on E! and the show that was on was Kendra... a reality show about a former Playboy bunny. We asked grandpa if he was watching it, and he said he never watches TV, so we turned it off. Didn't think the boys needed to be seeing it, though they might have disagreed. :-) Anyway, we looked at all of his pictures and talked about who was in them. And then we gave him a couple more that we'd brought. He seemed to like them -- he flipped through them multiple times, either to look at the again, or because he didn't remember seeing them a few seconds before... not sure which -- and made comments about how the boys are both so tall. Eventually we had to leave to get back to the rink, but it was great to see him and he looked good.

Summer
I think we're mostly organized for summer. We're renting a lake house with friends in late July. Keeper Boy is going to sleepaway camp in early August. J-Mav is doing the same camp in early July, but as a daycamper. He's not ready to go away for a week yet. He's a homebody. They're spending a week at Grandma and Grandpa's house in PA, and a week at Grandma's house in OH. Keeper Boy is doing tennis camp and is on the waiting list for an adventure camp. He's also doing a half-day, week-long camp as a sort of orientation to middle school at the end of August. J-Mav will be spending time with the same wonderful girl who watched the boys last summer, as well as a week with the college-aged daughter of family friends. They'll be busy all summer and I think it'll be a good one! The boys and I are also meeting my college roommate and her kids for a weekend at Knoebel's Grove. We're all looking forward to that!

I'm done...
OK... that's all I can think of for now.