Susan’s Journal

This really is a video, I swear. It’s not just a black rectangle. Click on it, and you’ll see!

Dylan’s baseball team had a fundraiser, and it wasn’t for some big charity–it was to raise money for their end-of-season party. They called it a hit-a-thon. Each boy would get twenty hits, and people could pledge to donate like a dollar a hit or something, or just a one-time donation.

I wrote down on Dylan’s form, in big letters, FIVE BUCKS!

Dylan is a wonderful soul. He is always smiling, and he loves baseball. Up until this year, however, he hasn’t exactly been a baseball superstar. My friends at work who donated, when they asked me how many hits I thought he’d get, I said about four out of twenty. He’s hit a total of about five balls in live games his whole life–and though he loves the sport, well, he’s no Babe Ruth.

I took this video of him hitting (it’s edited for time, since Flickr likes videos under 90 seconds). Every time he got a hit, Rain and I, standing behind the fence, would call out the bucks. After the first hit, we yelled, “FIVE BUCKS!”… then “TEN BUCKS!”… then “FIFTEEN BUCKS”… and I started thinking… how many balls is he going to hit? I’m going to be broke!

Dylan got NINE HITS. I was SO proud of him! Completely awesome. Rain was excited too, telling him, “Forty five bucks, Dylan! Mommy’s broke! Good job!”

Now after a performance like that, how could you not get your kids ice cream? We stopped at Baskin Robbins around the corner from the field, and I told the kids, one scoop, sugar cone, pick whatever you want.

Rainlin got a chocolate dipped cone with chocolate chip ice cream. Dylan got–get this–green and pink swirl sherbet, with POP ROCKS in it, and a chocolate dipped cone with rainbow jimmies (or “sprinkles” to all you southerners) all over it. I looked over at him a few times to see him there with his mouth gaping open, apparently savoring the pop-rockedness. It was hilarious. My Dylan, the hit-meister!

And on this day,
May 30, 2008… “my wonderful husband”… so funny how times change.

Man, I have been so busy, I haven’t had time to write! Last night, it was 9:30; and I was going to stay up and edit some movies; but I decided that sleep sounded much more inviting

Anyways… Monday morning… Rainlin reminded me more than once that “the guy at the front desk said we have to be out of our room by 11:01 am.” I just thought that was so cute. Can you guess where we spent our morning?

Yep… first, at the waffle iron… then, at the pool.

The pool opened up at 9am, and I think we were in it at 9:05. Dylan brought down his new frisbee he had gotten from George Ranch, and the kids played dive-and-find-it games. I just enjoyed relaxing and watching them, and even tossed it to them a few times.

We did have places to go… including home… and things to see though, so after a while I rounded up the kids, and we rounded up our luggage, and we headed on our way back north. Our next destination, the NASA space center, was on the way home, so it shaved an hour or so off our total drive home.

I didn’t know quite what to expect from the space center. The one thing I definitely wasn’t planning on was the gigantic playland! The kids spent forever in this huge climbing, ball-shooting jungle gym thing. If I didn’t have to make a five hour drive, I would have let them stay in it all day. They also got to try out some space experiment exhibits, including trying to land on the moon, and seeing how much they’d weigh on different planets. Then we took a tram tour, kind of like being at Disney World, where they weaved through the NASA complex of buildings (it was like being on a miltiary base). They told us what was in each building, but they were just all square and gray, and you couldn’t see much in them. The real coolness was when we got to go into the building where the astronauts train, and we got to look down on the real training grounds, where astronauts learn all their space-type-stuff. It was incredibly cool–and real, if that makes sense.

This weekend, I learned from following Rain around that she gets this expression on her face when she’s seeping in information. She looks almost pissed; but it’s her “I’m learning” look. Usually there’s a thumb being chewed on too, and her arms are crossed in front of her. Now that I know what it is, I love that look now. I love taking the kids to places where they learn new things.

They’ve both told me how much they loved this weekend. They talk about all the new things they learned. Last night, I burned a DVD of just all the raw footage I took while on our vacation (an hour and a half!) and the kids watched on in wonder as the ladies walked us through George Ranch… and they listened to their little lessons all over again.

How awesome to have all this learning and play wrapped up in one excellent weekend.

You would think we’d all sleep in late today… But not the case. We were all awake before 7, and showered and out the door & down to continental breakfast by 7:30.

The kids both have this fascination with the industrial sized waffle iron, even though neither one of them is really big enough to operate it. A little while ago, when I asked Rain what her favorite part if today was, she said”the waffle iron.” the waffles did come out absolutely perfect though… I’ll give you that.

I wanted to head to the zoo early, hoping it would be a little cooler in the morning. It was, but not much. It was blessedly overcast like yesterday, but still very muggy and hot. We saw more fish, lots of different kinds of birds, zebras, guinea hogs… And a few other animals before we decided it was too hot and headed back out. I certainly didn’t have to drag them out. After a quick stop in the gift shop for a keychain and some chomping animal toys, we were back in the car and on our way to the children’s museum.

We were the second or third people at the children’s museum. We waited outside a few minutes in the heat until they let us through the doors. I gave them the citypasses, and they ripped out the children’s museum ones. It was nice and cool inside, and squeaky clean. Dylan made a cool little sail for a hot wheels kind of car, and he tested it out with a big fan blowing it across the table. Both kids made Mosquitos out of clear plastic wings, Popsicle sticks, little black straws, pipe cleaners, and little sticky foam shapes. Then they had a race to see who could make a block castle fastest, from little playing cards with different block castle styles. The children’s museum was kind of geared towards younger kids, but they seemed to have a really good time anyways.

We hadn’t eaten since our morning waffles, and everyone was starting to get really hungry. So as we headed home, I started looking for the sign for a Joe’s crab shack that we had seen before. It’s apparently one of Dylan’s favorite places, and we can get out of there eating pretty cheap. Both kids got little pizzas and fries, and I got an appetizer plate with crab dip and some jalapeño crab thingies. For desert, Rain painted a crab (chocolate syrup with a paint brush on a rice crispie treat) and Dylan made his own sundae (with ice cream sandwich wedges and whipped cream). We all loved watching our waitress dance for us. It was a great place!

Back at the hotel, we decided to hit the pool while it wasn’t crowded. I spent half an hour in the hot tub… Man that was nice. The kids splashed and played with their big green goggles on. Then Rain came up for air at one point and said, “can we go to the beach now?”

I don’t know if it’s because there’s only three of us or what… But we sure seemed to have a lot of stuff to carry to the beach. Beach chairs, towels, a blanket, a boogie board, a mesh backpack of toys… Yikes. But we got down there and set up, and Rain commenced to making a tent out if the chairs and towels while Dylan headed towards the ocean with his new boogie board. The ocean here is so different than in New England… You can go way out and still just be up to your knees! Rain picked out a bucket and started walking the shore for shells while Dylan came back in and started digging in the sand. She came back to where I laid on the blanket and placed all the shells she had collected in a row, first rinsing each one off with the water in the bucket. I just watched her with a smile on my face. This was paradise for me. I couldn’t imagine going on a vacation like this without the kids.

After another boogie board round with both kidlets, we packed up all of our stuff and headed back to the hotel… And got back in the pool.

It was about 8:30 when we realized we were a tiny bit hungry and hadn’t had dinner. There was a MacDonald’s right next to the hotel, and the kids ordered two happy meals so they could get more speed racer toys. Miraculously, they both got cars they didn’t have yet! On the way out the door we got ice cream cones for the kids to walk back to the hotel with.

The only problem, that I really didn’t think would be a problem, was the wind. I told the kids to walk behind me on the ramp. Halfway up to the front door if the hotel, I heard “mmooommmmyyy!” and I turned around to see both kids, licking for dear life, with ice cream dripping all over them. I ushered them both inside the front doors and told them to stand on the tile.

Rain was kind of winning the battle at that point, but Dylan was a mess. “Lick the bottom!” I kept saying as I wiped the ice cream off him. The wind had even made it drip on his shoes. I finally cleaned them up (and the floor) and we headed back to the room.

The TV was on monster truck racing, but not even for ten minutes before we were fast asleep.

I intentionally didn’t bring my laptop with me; yet here I am, at poolside, watching the kids have a blast, blogging on my iPhone. I am such a friggin geek.

We started our day at 3:30am, me taking a shower and the kids helping do the last minute things, including putting the dogs out and feeding them. We were rolling out of the driveway at 4am, just like I wanted.

Our five hour drive to our first destination was incredibly perfect. The kids slept the first few hours, and there was zero traffic. We stopped halfway to get some pancakes and gas up the car. We rolled into the George Ranch parking lot five minutes after nine, just as it opened.

Getting there first thing on a Saturday morning was perfect. It was a cloudy day, so for most of our three-hour day we didn’t have the sun on our backs. A tractor pulling a people-moving train brought us from historic house to historic house on the thousands of acres of land, and each ranch house brought us through a different part of the 1800s. The ranch hands had fun teaching the kids about spinning cotton yarn and tending pigs, answering all their questions. I loved that they got all this personal attention! We eventually ended up with a group of about four old-folk tourists, going to the different houses. Dylan even had a real blacksmith make a J-hook and give it to him. He was thrilled! A stop at the gift shop got us a rabbit pelt, a raccoon tail, a keychain for me, a frisbee, an old man coin purse, and a pen–all for under ten bucks. I was very impressed with the prices.

Lunch was at Burger King. Yes, I know we ate junk today. But you know what?We’re on vacation. The kids has been out in the muggy heat for hours, and they got to play in the air-conditioned playland for half an hour. They also got Indiana Jones toys, which seemed to make it all worthwhile.

We had used our Houston Citypass voucher at George Ranch, and the next place we took the Citypasses to was the Downtown Aquarium. These passes basically let you go to a bunch of places in Houston for one price. The aquarium kind of gabe us a run around about getting our tickets, and it was muggy, and I was getting miffed, and finally the manager came out, and I discovered that it wasn’t that the Citypass wouldn’t be honored, but that the girl in the window didn’t know how to put it in the computer the manager did. We got inside and loved all the fishies! The kids spent half an hour alone petting the sting rays. As I’m sure you can imagine, I got tons of videos and pictures

It took us about 45 minutes to get from the aquarium in Houston to our hotel in Galveston. I kept seeing LED signs that said, “ferry wait: 45 minutes” and I kind of worried… We didn’t have to take the ferry, did we? Heh… Nope. There was a little bit of traffic, but nothing unbearable, and we were soon at our hotel on the beach.

It was about 4pm, and the first thing the kids begged to do was jump in the pool. It was dinnertime, and there was almost no one in there, so I thought it was a great idea. They splashed around for about an hour, and then we decided to get something to eat. We had all agreed to skip the beach for the day.

I was worried about taking the car and losing our parking space (the Travelocity reviews had warned about such), so we decided to just walk a block or two to dinner. I saw a Luby’s and pointed it out to the kids, so we walked a block to it. Scott had always called it an “old people’s restaurant” and that he didn’t like it, so we had never been. The kids and my final opinion afterwards, though, was that we all liked it. It’s no different than Golden Corral, except for that the food is better and they serve you instead of you getting your own.

On the walk back home, Rainlin started picking wildflowers. Well, some of them weren’t wild and were on big bushes, but I figured no one was going to arrest a little girl for picking a handful of flowers. They’re now in a cup on a table in our hotel room.

Pajamas, a cartoon (Ben 10, to be exact), a prayer, and a couple of wonderful kid cuddles later, we were all falling asleep. I told them both that I loved them very much.

Something terrible happened last night.

The evening didn’t start out terrible. It included the normal Thursday-night fare, which included Rain’s softball practice. We had shown up at the field where the coach had said in an earlier email we should meet; but when we got there, two little boy’s baseball teams were all suited up and about to begin a game. I gave Rain my phone, and she called the coach to let him know what was going on. He was a little miffed–he had paid for this field and everything–but he wasn’t about to tell 50 people to leave. He called the city, and they apparently assigned him another field over the phone. So I had him take Rain with him, and I stayed behind to point anyone who showed up to the new field he was headed to. Dylan sat in the back seat, in the air conditioning of the car, and watched youTube videos on my iPhone while I directed a car or two to the other field. Twenty minutes later, I headed that way msyelf.

Practice was fun and pretty much uneventful. I pulled out my folding chair and kicked back in the shade with a couple of other parents, watching our girls bat. Dylan took his MacDonald’s Speed-Racer cars and VROOMed them across the bleachers and across the dugout benches. He also borrowed my little red camera for a few minutes and took some kickass videos–I was amazed–he kept stopping the vids while the car was flying off the bench, in mid-air… if I can figure out a way to make them into a vlog post and do them justice, I will. He even made a “Hi, my name’s Dylan from duckduckdylan.com” intro all on his own, which made me feel guilty for not putting the time in to get his website ready to go. Maybe I’ll take that as a hint and work on it

About fifteen minutes before our practice ended, a string of about five high-school boys walked across the field. If I were to stereotype them I would call them thug-types–all Mexican, long shorts halfway to their ankles, slunking across the outfield in a line, heading towards the library building behind our field. I looked up at them for about five seconds, but then disregarded them. Now I wish I hadn’t–and wish I had even taken a video or a picture–I had my camera right there. Apparently, after they crossed the field, they stopped briefly behind our bleachers, then went into the library, then tore off across the parking lot and into the neighborhood.

One of the little girls on our softball team, her grandpa (I think it was) was visiting from out of town. He was probably about 60, very pleasant, wearing a dress shirt and dress slacks. At some point, between ambling after his two-year-old grandson and climbing on and off the bleachers, his wallet fell out of his pocket. It fell right behind the bleachers–right where the boys had stopped. He didn’t realize it until it was too late. They went into the library, into the men’s room, all before the grandpa realized what happened… dismantled his wallet in the men’s room, taking everything but a few scraps, and stuffed the wallet under one of the toilet seats. When he had realized what happened, and turned around, they were coming out of the library, and when he yelled “HEY” and headed after them, they tore off into the neighborhood. At his age, he couldn’t keep up. They made off with about $500 in cash, his license, his birth certificate, all his credit cards, just about everything in his wallet. All of the parents of the team were standing around talking to him. He was so nice, and we all felt so bad.

Before the wallet itself was found, when the grandpa was talking to us and we were hoping the boys had ditched the wallet somewhere, I said to Dylan, “did you hear what’s going on?” He nodded his head. “Do you want to say a prayer for him?” He nodded again, and bowed his head beside me. Dear Lord, I said, please help that nice old man find his wallet. Amen. That was pretty much it. Well, they found his wallet… but there wasn’t much in it. I guess I should have been a little more specific.

I don’t know all the details here, but I did overhear that he was supposed to be flying home today… so that makes this story just that much worse. Rain was talking about it on the way home, and I reinforced something to her that I believe–kids are not born bad. It’s up to parents to teach kids right from wrong. So what about the gang they hang out with? If it’s a bad gang, parents have the ability to steer kids away from them. I’ve done it myself. It’s like Mr. Miyagi says– “No such thing as bad student–only bad teacher.” I firmly believe that. That doesn’t take the blame away from these kids–but it points out that we all have a responsibility to teach our children well. Teach your children…

On the way to her softball practice yesterday, Rain started telling me all about her class trip to the aquarium. I asked her if I could make a little video of her telling about it, and I did–but I think her story could have easily ended up ten minutes or more if I had let it Of course, flickr video is 90 seconds though, and I wanted to post it up there. She’s telling about toucans, jaguars… this was the aquarium, right? So now she’s got me really curious about it.

I made a cute little video of Dylan, too, playing with this hopping thing that you put around your ankle, then swing, then jump over it. He’s got a good buddy, also named Dylan, that’s also a sibling of a softball player… so whenever I’m at practice, he’s got someone to play with. Last night they were giggling running back and forth, throwing Speed Racer plastic cars around (don’t ask) and just generally having an absolute blast. Peas and carrots, them’s are.

Tonight is the Police concert. I’m going with a girlfriend of mine from church who will really appreciate it, loves the Police–which is what I wanted all along. It will be my second time seeing them in the past year, but no matter–I’m sure I’ll absolutely love it just as much.

Whenever Dylan gets a hit during a baseball game, his coaches put a star on the back of his helmet. We’re talking about Dylan here, the one who only got one hit all of last season–and only one hit all of the season before that. It was so rare for him to get a hit, that when it happened, all of the parents would FREAK OUT, jumping to their feet, yelling and screaming for my boy, even if it was just tink hit in front of the pitcher. A hit is a hit. Here you can see three stars on his helmet–one from the last game, and TWO from this past Saturday! That’s right–he got two hits in one game! Some of the other boys’ helmets on his team are littered with stars… but my Dylan, these three little red stars, they’re precious and important. I love him so much!

I really have to get with it as far as video content goes. I’ve done a complete overhaul of my video blog, but I still have footage from before Christmas that I haven’t edited yet. You see, events come up like SXSW, and I want to edit that right away… or like the Dirt Rocket video, which I also wanted to edit right away, for the kids… but there’s still old footage that I haven’t gotten into video blog posts yet.

The problem is that I haven’t done a 2007 backup yet. Yes, I know, this year is already half over. But usually, at the end of a year, in January, I’ll back up all my photos/videos and tote them on DVDs to my safety deposit box. I haven’t done that this year yet. I feel like a terrible mother, like my house is going to burn down and I’m going to lose everything dear to me–including pictures like this one, on my laptop hard drive, of my seven year old son with his hit stars.

No wait… that photo’s on Flickr now. Never mind.

I’m liking Flickr videos. It gives you a 90-second glimpse into my uncut life. It saves little snippets of the kids’ history in this easy-to-use format. It forces me to make something short and, in most cases, not worry about editing.

We weren’t sure if Dylan was going to have baseball practice tonight. It rained a good part of the morning, and there were dark, ominous clouds overhead. Practice completed without a weather-related hitch, though, and the boys thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to pry big clumps of mud off their cleats and fling it at each other. they were all filthy–all, that is, except Dylan. I seem to remember the coach saying to Dylan as we left, “You’re going to get dirty next time, Dylan.” It was like a threat and a giggle-factor comment all rolled into one. Dylan smiled.

I played it smart this time, picked up the kids and brought them home, made them sandwiches that they inhaled on the way to practice, and even got Dylan’s red drink. Rain had to poop halfway through practice though (hey, it’s life), and there are no porta- or un-porta-potties at this park. One lady told me it was because parks made in this town after a certain date didn’t have them–because of child abductions. That’s nice to think about. So I ran Rain to the store, and she went potty, and I got myself a soda and a snack (I hadn’t had dinner), and she begged for a snack for her and Dylan, so I made her get ham-and-cheese-and-cracker lunchables–something, I figured, at least halfway healthy. They inhaled them too.

Back home, Mario Kart, showers, reading, praying, bed. That’s all she wrote, folks.