Another week of running

We have had another full week of ball games, summer appointments, errands, and dog sitting.  Mallory returns from Florida today, we returned her dogs to their house this morning.  Our neighbors leave this afternoon and we will be watching their dog (who thinks she lives at our house anyway) and their cats.  Pet sitting is apparently our new gig.  :)  

The girls have been playing a ton of softball.  I finally got to see Quincy play again!  Jim has taken her to a couple of her games because the other girls have played on the same nights and since she plays double headers, and he loves ball - I send him!  She played at Harveyville this week.  The first game, her team lost 0-16.  The second game, they lost but it was 13-15.....same teams, same players.  Sometimes I don't understand what the heck happens!  Quincy tends to get hit by pitch a lot.  She refuses to flinch or move, or try to jump out of the way....she laughs when they hit her.  It is sort of a game to her.  She was hit by pitch in her first time at bat, but in the second game, she ripped a monster hit for a 3 run homer.  It was awesome!  This is her last year to play rec league ball.  I think she has made good memories, and she does love to play - but only for fun.  She says there are too many people who take softball way, way too seriously.  She thinks it is a fun sport and she doesn't get too upset over anything that happens....that being said, she is an amazing player, and I love watching her!  

Saige and Harper have had a lot of fun painting the rocks in the new rock garden.  I love their creativity and the little pops of color!  Evelyn and I painted a few as well, but not as many as the painting queen, Saige!  

Amongst the running, the games, and the craziness that our life is right now, I hope that there are good memories being made!  I certainly am enjoying our summer!  

Cray cray weekend

Mallory left for Florida bright and early Friday.  We are babysitting for Olive and Daisy Paige.  We truly don’t mind having them with us, but they are somewhat high maintenance.  They bark a lot.  They tend to get up early, and I can tell they wonder why they aren’t going home.   They come out here a lot, but only for a few hours at a time.  When Mallory left, Daisy Paige chased her down the driveway.  We had to go retrieve the hippo who was so winded I worried she would die.   That’s probably more exercise than she usually gets in a week!   

On Thursday, when Mallory was explaining to Evie where she was going, Evie became very distressed.  She wanted to go too.   We explained that she didn’t have a ticket.  She then told Mal that Peppa pig did have a ticket.  So Mallory agreed to take Peppa, and take pictures of her all of the places that they went on their trip.   Evie seemed pretty happy with this idea.  aunt Mal  has kept up her end of the bargain. I don’t exactly know if Peppa will have fun at the teaching conference, but she had fun at the beach and Disney world!   

Saturday morning, the girls and I were up early to work at the goat/sheep auction.   Although, not as early as we had originally planned!  The original Saturday plan included getting up really early and going to pick blackberries and buy peaches at Baldwin.  When the alarm rang, the late night ball game from Friday came calling, and I crawled back in bed for a couple hours.   We may try that later this week!  We did work though!   The 4-H did concessions.  It was easy, but somewhat slow.  I much prefer going to an auction rather than working at an auction.  It worked out ok though, since there were lots of leftovers, I didn’t have to cook dinner before we ran to Saige’s game!   

Friday was Colin’s 24th birthday.  We obviously didn’t see him then,  but we did have plans to see him this weekend.  We drove down to Wichita today to go with him to a Wichita Wind Surge game.  I was planning to take him out for lunch, but when we got there, he and Spencer were  cooking street tacos.  He was excited to try out his birthday gift from Spencer!   The street tacos on his new grill were amazing!   

Cameron also met us at Colin’s.   It was great to get to see everyone.  We all went to the game.  I haven’t been to a pro (or minor league)) game in years.  I had said I wasn’t going to go, but some sort of a cool front pushed through, and with highs in the 70’s, it was a gorgeous day to go!   Colin and Spencer got the tickets - I believe they were some seats that Colin got through his job.  They were on the front row right behind home plate.  It was a ton of fun.  I’m so glad I went along!   The girls had fun too!   Happy Birthday Colin!   We love you!  

I didn’t get Harper or Spencer in my amazing group shot somehow!   Next time!  

Now on to quickly running the laundry through so we can go back to work!   Sad the weekend is almost over!   

One other thing that we spent a great deal of time discussing this weekend was SCOTUS overturning Roe vrs Wade.  I am beyond frustrated, disgusted and saddened by this decision.  From a personal standpoint, at one time I had a miscarriage.  I suffered greatly because of this, just from the mental anguish of losing a much wanted child. I cannot imagine adding any other misery to it.  Misery from not being able to have adequate healthcare to take care of myself, is an absolute slap in the face.  But the thing that makes me saddest is that we have 5 daughters, a couple of we hope daughter in laws and one granddaughter who we love dearly.  Their personal decisions, the access to adequate healthcare, and the unfairness of this decision has me absolutely angry.  It is a disgrace.  Anytime we set the country back 100 years it angers me.  We shouldn’t still be discussing race issues.  We shouldn’t still be discussing same sex marriage.   We sure the hell shouldn’t be discussing women’s access to healthcare.   Nobody has the right to limit someone’s ability to get medical care that they may need.  Their body, their choice.  A big old F you to SCOTUS this week.  We can do better.   

What the ????

We are having a wild week.  A week where we have too many activities, too many obligations, too many things going on.  Most of it is just normal in the summer, but as I told Jim this morning, summer is kicking me in the pants.  It has been so much stuff to do, that I was sincerely looking forward to Thursday evening because we had nothing to do, and then Quincy's coach moved her games to Thursday and I had a moment where I legitimately thought I might cry.  Instead I laughed and said "of course he did!" I can't make this stuff up.  :)  

Tuesday evening, Harper had a game in Pomona.  I love summer, and rarely will you hear me complain about the heat, however Tuesday was brutal.  It was literally 99 degrees, the ball park in Pomona doesn't seem to have a single bit of shade, there was absolutely no breeze.  I had a moment where I thought I might actually melt.  The dug outs there are cinder blocks.  I was worried about the girls.  Harper rolled her eyes several times as I kept bringing her more drinks!  Luckily, some storms were brewing, and the sun eventually was covered by the clouds, which helped!  We got the game finished just in time for storms to blow through.  The good news is it wasn't as hot on Wednesday!  

On a completely unrelated topic, a story of my  nerdiness.  Jim and I have been making a rock garden where there used to be a flower bed in front of the house.  I had agreed to this project on the condition that we could get the pretty beach pebble rocks and not just common gravel or landscaping rocks.  Jim said he didn't care, so we have been buying the rock at Menards, and it is sort of expensive, and they ran out.  We found some at Home Depot but it was twice as much money.  Yesterday, as I was picking the girls up at the Baldwin church, I happened to notice that the hardware store across the street had some pallets of rock.  I stopped to look. and they had this stuff called "pond cobble" for half of the price that we had been paying.  The stones were the right shape, although they were smaller.  I decided to buy some.  The bags were pretty muddy, so as we were dumping it, Harper and I decided to wash it.  We were blown away with how pretty it is!  I was so excited.  Saige and Harper were excited too. So yes, I paid money for rocks, and I washed them too!  Now my hope is that they still have some more bags today, because I am going back for more - we are getting close, but not quite there!  I was so excited about it, I couldn't wait for Jim to see it.  I gotta say, he was not nearly as excited as I had thought he would be.  I guess the "prettiness" of rocks is a girl thing?  Or maybe a nerd thing.  He was happy that the rest of the project can get finished at half the cost though! 

Last night, Saige had a game at Harveyville.  In our league there is early game - starting at 6:45, and late game which starts at 8:30.  Saige had early game, so we finished our projects, did chores early, and made dinner early.  I busted it out the door, because she needs to be half an hour early to warm up, and I needed to pick up Jim and make the 45 minute drive to her game.  We pulled in right at 6:15 and parked right beside one of the assistant coaches.  I took a second to breathe, and then got out of the car where the assistant coach said "wow, you guys are extremely early!"   Ummm Saige had the late game.  He was there because his other daughter, whom he also coaches, was playing in the early game.  Which meant we were 1 hour and 45 minutes early.  In Harveyville.  I do not know if you have any idea where Harveyville is, but it is in the literal middle of nowhere Kansas.  There is nothing in the town except a park and a bar.  There is nothing close to the town.  Gas is almost $5 a gallon, and if we went clear home, we would have had to turn right around and come back.  We opted to go eat at the bar, and then let Saige play at the park while Jim and I used the dumpster there to clean out the car.  Since I had lost my key in the car several weeks ago, and since we found it as we were cleaning, I can't say it was a complete waste of time.  Plus I got to spend the whole evening with a couple of my favorite people.  

I am thankful that it was cooler weather as we were hanging out for such a long time!  It was worth it, as Saige had a great game.  She had a couple of really nice at bats and pitched for several innings.  I enjoyed watching her.