Making Memories

I'm sure I have mentioned somewhere in the 500 posts of this blog that our family is part of Red Sox Nation.  By that I mean we are Red Sox fans.  Well, let me qualify that.  Andy has been a long suffering Red Sox fan since the day he was born, watching them lose throughout his childhood.  When they won the World Series back in 2004, for the first time in 86 years, I was pregnant with Sonya and only a month away from giving birth.  While I wasn't born a Red Sox fan as he was,  I became one in college.  I had never watched much baseball growing up, but if you are living in Boston without a baseball team you better start cheering for the Sox or you better get out of Boston.  So I did. Cheer for the Sox that is.  I loved Boston.  It helped that my best friend, Melissa, and I could see Fenway Park from the roof of our apartment Senior year.  So when they were in the playoffs back in '04 I was just as excited as any long life fan.  Okay, perhaps I didn't get all the suffering for so long, but still.  I was pretty sure I was going to put myself into labor cheering for those games.  Luckily I did not.  Since then we have gotten to watch them win two more World Series.  One when Lana was just a baby and one a couple years ago when all three girls were old enough to watch it  on TV.  Luckily they will not spend their baseball fan years pinning away for a team that seems cursed.  They get to watch and cheer for the Red Sox knowing they have won 3 World Series (so far) in their lifetime.  

Before we had the girls, Andy and I would go to see the Sox play the Angels every summer when they came to Anaheim.  We went a couple years after having the girls, and even took Sonya one year when she was about six.  However, we haven't been in at least four years.  We've taken the girls to a couple Dodgers games, just to see some baseball.  For a long time the tickets for the Red Sox/ Angles games were way to expensive for five of us.  Just Andy and I going meant our tickets plus babysitting so we just forgot about it for a while.  Then this summer, Melissa mentioned to me about going.  She still tries to go every year.  While the Angels have been doing well this season, the Red Sox, not so much, so I thought perhaps I could find some reasonable tickets.  Fortunately, there were plenty.  They were the seats pretty high in the stadium, but they were $18 a piece.  Perfect to take the girls to.  It would give them the baseball experience, while cheering for our favorite team.

For those of you who don't live in California, you have no doubt heard about the drought horrors here.  The stories are all true.  In the 19 years I've lived here, I've never seen it so dry.  We are constantly monitoring how long the water runs in the shower, flushing toilets with water we collect in the shower, not watering our lawn, whatever we can think of.  When we went back east a couple weeks ago, I cringed at all the water waste there and had to remind myself that Florida has plenty of rain.  I don't think we've seen real rain since February?  Maybe there was a storm in March?  I can't remember.  So, when the weather reports were all predicting rain for this past weekend, Andy and I pretty much ignored it.  First of all it is July and even in our wettest years, it did not rain in July.  Second of all- no rain since this past winter.  Tickets for the game were for Sunday evening at 5pm.  They were talking rain Saturday and MAYBE Sunday.  Even if we got it on Saturday that would be it.  It would definitely not rain on Sunday.  When it did end up pouring all day on Saturday, we figured that was it.  We go rain-Yay!  But we would not see it again until November.  

I'm assuming you all can see where this is going....

Here..

That is Angels stadium at start time on Sunday evening.  Good thing I got the high up seats.  We were actually under cover.  We sat there for a while thinking it would eventually stop.  So did everyone else.  People who couldn't sit in their rain filled seats were hanging out on the concourse, consuming hot dogs and beer.  The thing is about rain in SoCal, is that even if is does actually rain, it never lasts long.  Maybe an hour, hour and a half tops.  Well this is what the powers that be thought too, because they moved the start time of the game from 5:05 to 7:15 thinking that they could wait it out, clear off the field and start the game.  We too were hopeful.  

We hung out with the rest of the fans at our seats, ate hot dogs, had a couple beers, chatted with each other, and were entertained by the videos of Angels players trying to "name that tune", and watched it rain.  My favorite part of that was when Sonya named Michael Jackson's "Beat It" well before the player in the video.  You gotta play the classics for your kids!   

At one point I realized my friend BethAnnDoddKoehn was there with her family just a few sections over from us.  So we all took a walk to say hi and chat with them.  It was a party at the stadium in the rain!  And it did continue to rain.  Huh.

Then 7 o'clock came.  The sky started to look lighter and it appeared to be slowing down, but when you looked at the tarp covering the infield you could see it was still coming down.  Still, it was slow enough for them to decide to do this...

They were out there with push brooms, doing their best to get the water off the field, but it was a futile effort.  They worked on it for 20 minutes, but the rain kept coming down.  Then a few of them huddled together and five minutes later we heard what we were dreading.  

"Ladies and Gentleman, today's game is being canceled due to rain."

A huge groan mixed with boos went up from the crowd.  What is this "game being canceled due to rain you speak of??"  That was the thought of  everyone there.  We don't see this kind of thing.  We see sunshine and blue skies and sure, brown grass, but at least our outside activities never get ruined!  Unfortunately this one did.  It was hard to be mad about it though, because damn do we need any rain we can get.  We were informed that we could have come back the next afternoon for the makeup game, but unfortunately the girls were starting an afternoon Girl Scout camp.  I would have been the only one able to go and where was the fun in that?  

The girls were definitely disappointed. I was sad for Lana and Georgia who had been so excited to see their first Red Sox game.  On the other hand, we kinda had a really fun night hanging out in the stadium, having dinner and watching it rain.  It no doubt became a core memory for me as I'm sure it did for my girls.  (For those of you who don't know what I mean by "core memory", go see Inside Out.  The best Pixar movie ever.  Loved it!)  It will go down in our family history as, "remember that one time when we were supposed to see the Red Sox and Angles play...." 

When we got home that night, I said to Georgia, 

"I'm sorry that we didn't get to see the game."

And she answered, "That's okay!  I had fun anyway!"

It's all in how you look at things.  Plus! We a got to become part of baseball, and more specifically Angles history, by being at the first rain out game in over 20 years. And who doesn't love being a part of history?

The mixed "core memory" emotions of the evening. 

Fact or FIC-SHUN?

A couple weeks ago, Georgia celebrated her seventh birthday.  This time in our nation's capitol of Washington D.C.  That child has not had a birthday at home for the past 3 years.  The pitfalls of having a summer birthday.  She doesn't seem to care though. In fact I think she likes being on vacation for her birthday.  Really- who wouldn't?

Let me just reiterate the fact that she is SEVEN.  You guys-I have been pregnant free for over seven years now!  Yay!  Although in all honesty, I am sad about that fact as well.  However, having older kids does have it's benefits, like being able to travel much easier and having three slaves capable children to do my bidding.  You know like oil changes and plumbing repair.  Okay fine!  Just unloading the dishwasher and making their beds, but still, at least it's less for me to do.  

Georgia has grown up so much in this past year.  She looks more like a little girl now than a kindergarten baby of last year.  She reads like crazy and she can do so much for herself now.  Although she still won't walk to my bedroom in the middle of the day.  You know we have monsters in our hallway that like to eat little kids.  Did I not tell you that?  Yes, if a child under 10 walks down our hall alone, the monsters will get you.   At least this is what I'm fairly certain Georgia thinks.  She is also getting better with the lying.  Well, let me rephrase that.  She is getting better with telling us when she is lying or telling us a FIC-SHUN story.  No, no.  I didn't misspell that.  That is how she says it.  "This story is FIC-SHUN!!"  That is something I started making her say to us about a year ago when we realized she was making up stories that sounded very real but in fact were not.  One of these stories led me to talking to her teacher, when she claimed she was having problems with a boy at school and told a entire story about him that was not true.  So now when she starts to tell a story that sounds like it might be a tad outlandish I give her a look and she will say-"Oh!  This is a FIC-SHUN story!"  Her sisters will even call her on it when they feel like it's being made up asking her, "Georgia is this a FIC-SHUN story?"  The good news is she always cops to it and while she still makes things up, she at least lets us know she is doing so.  

Regardless of all that, she will still start off with a lie now and then.  Especially when she feels like it will make her sound or look better than another person, usually her sister.  The last week of school was more or less nothing but fun times for them, as it always is in elementary school.  Lana was telling me about all the fun things her teacher had planned for the week and Georgia was standing there listening.  Now I don't know why this is the favorite fun thing for them to do at school but it is,  wear their pajamas one day.  Georgia and Lana love doing this.  Lana's teacher had planned a PJ day, but Georgia's teacher had not, even though they had other fun things planned that week.  The fact that Georgia was not getting to wear her pajamas, made her a bit jealous of Lana.   I wasn't surprised at her response to Lana telling me,

"We get to have pajama day on Tuesday!! I'm so excited!"

Georgia looked at Lana and said, "Yeah well my teacher said we get to wear our pajamas watch a movie, have popcorn AND pizza!"  

Now I don't know about you, but that sounds like a pretty kick ass day in first grade.  I also know that about 75% of what she said was completely untrue.  Even though she said this to Lana, I was sitting at the counter in the kitchen and heard every word.  She looked over at me, caught me starting at her and before I even had a chance to open my mouth she said, 

"I just made all that up."  

All I could do was laugh.  So far I think I have curbed the lying without squelching her imagination.  Point in the mommy column!  I only hope that when she's 16 she continues to tell me when it's a FIC-SHUN story or that she made something up.  You know -like this...

"I'm spending the night at Luna's.  Okay no.  That's FIC-SHUN, I'm really going to a party over at the abandoned where house where there will be lots of drinking."

That's totally plausible right?  

In the meantime, I will enjoy this win and wish my beautiful last baby a Happy (belated) 7th Birthday.  You are the sunshine in our mornings and the laughter throughout our days, and I promise that is not FIC-SHUN!