Baseball Princesses

OK, leave it to me to start a blog, post in the blog once, and then abandon it for months. But I am back, and I promise to do a better job of journaling our princess activities. This Spring and Summer have been very busy. Baseball. It was all about baseball. We traveled nearly every weekend. However, the girls and I have managed to do some girl stuff. The weekend of Joshua’s first baseball tournament this season was an incredibly cold one. The highs were in the lower 40’s. Too cold for us girls. We did brave the very first game, which was on a Friday night. It wasn’t too terribly chilly, but then the sky opened up and it rained and rained and rained. They called the game while Kathleen, Leighton and I sat huddled in the car. I managed to get them in there before they got wet, but I was drenched! The following evening, it was way too cold and damp to take them out, so we had a girls’ night out instead. We went to Johnny Brusco’s for pizza and then to Pinnacle to see Gnomeo and Juliet. This was Leighton’s very first movie. It’s never too early to expose kids to Shakespeare. Luckily, this version of the tragedy ended happily and not like the original, although there was a reference to the “right” ending.

Since then, we have enjoyed several girls’ nights, but we don’t usually go out. On the nights that Joshua had basketball or baseball practice, I would do something special like make milkshakes and then we would watch Cinderella or Snow White. These were originally Joshua’s movies and they came with him when his mother sent him to live with us, so they were likely his older sister’s originally. They are on VHS, so I had to dig out the VCR and hook it up to the TV. Before we bought a new television and were watching these movies on Geoff’s old big screen, the picture and sound were horrible. It was almost painful to watch. We bought a new HD flat screen sometime in the Spring and it has made all the difference! Kathleen now loves Cinderella!!! She has a blue leotard that she wears to gymnastics. It has a little tutu on it. It must remind her of Cinderella, or maybe I told her she looks like a princess in it, because she actually calls it her “princess.”

There were also a few times when Geoff was traveling on business and I had to take Joshua to basketball practice. The facility where his practices were held is absolutely filthy, so there was no way I was sitting in there for an hour with a two-year old. That’s like asking for a staph infection. It is GROSS! Instead, I would drop Joshua off and the three of us girls would go to Chick-Fil-A. Kathleen and I would share a milkshake and she would play in the play area.

As the weather grew warmer and baseball season was in full-swing, our girls’ nights have been fewer. It’s been baseball, baseball, baseball!!! But Kathleen loves it. She wants to wear her Storm t-shirt (what she calls her “baseball shirt”) ALL the time. Then, the other day, Kathleen was loving on Leighton. She was saying, “Hey, beebee. Hey beebee.” Then, she said, “Hey, baseball princess.” Ahh, out of the mouths of babes! Where does she get this stuff? Spring baseball ended just after the 4^th of July with a week-long World Series tournament played in Dallas, Texas. We had a few weeks of down time, and Joshua had his first baseball practice for the Fall season last night. We left Team Storm, and he’ll be playing on the Bobcats this Fall and next Spring. Time to buy new “baseball shirts” for the “baseball princesses!”