Paying the Piper

I don't even know what that means.

I finally returned to the gym yesterday.  After ten days off! A tip: don't take ten days off from exercise. It is not worth it! Holy soreness Batman.  I'm kind of hard on myself, so I did thirty minutes on the treadmill, mostly walking at an incline, before Zumba.  I can usually get through Zumba with no problem and would actually love a longer class.  Except for yesterday.  I wasn't the least bit sad to see that class ended five minutes early yesterday. In fact, I think I would have hugged Maria, our awesome teacher, if we weren't both sweaty messes.

Today I went to kickboxing. And almost died. Seriously, I have never felt as weak as I did today.  I made sure to eat before I went.  We warmed up with a 0.75 mile jog outside.  That alone just about did me in. Then we are punching and kicking and sprinting. And I was trying to keep my protein bar down.  I walked out of that class vowing to never take that kind of a break again.

I have yet to find that workout warrior in me that was there before I had Benjamin.  I've been consistent with exercise (minus this recent break) for a year now, but I have yet to kick it up to the level I was at before.  I'm frustrated at myself, but I think also finally motivated.  I was going to try to run the White Rock half marathon in December, but I think I will aim for The Big D Half in April instead.  I want to try to beat my previous time and I know I need a longer time to get ready.

So anyway, if you are exercising regularly, keep it up! Those first days back after a too-long break are killer.

If It Was Friday

This would be a Quick Takes post. But since it is Tuesday it is just random bits.

We finally got some blessed rain last night! But this being Texas in June, that rain came with thunderstorms and straight line winds.  My kids were all in my room.  Lily was in my bed all night. We had to get in the closet for a bit around 2:45 a.m. due to high winds and hail, although the hail here was small.  The sirens went off around 3:45 and stayed on for about 15 minutes, but I'm not sure why they sounded at all at that time.  All that to say it was a night of not much sleep, especially sharing a bed with a 3 yo darling who wants to be ascloseaspossible.

I haven't been to the gym in over a week, thanks to VBS last week and general laziness this week.  I'm pretty sure this is making me grumpy, but I have yet to do anything about it. Since I'm running the Jailbreak in September I have got to my rear in gear. Anyone else struggling with their exercise mojo right now? How do you get out of it?

Perhaps related to my non-existent exercise routine I've been making/craving sweets lately.  So I made cupcakes last night, just because I wanted to.  This is bad.  My kids bug me incessantly for a cupcake and I can't resist eating them myself.  Summer is not the ideal time to be lazy and hungry.

I have to go to the grocery store today.  I'm trying to decide if I'm taking all the kids or if I'm going to pay the neighbor girl to stay home with the kids.  It almost seems mean to make anyone else deal with the kids though.  They are all kinds of wound up thanks to ridiculous heat followed by rain which makes outside play nearly impossible. 

I Was Going To Say

About twenty minutes ago I was going to sit down and write a post about how life is not always loud and chaotic with six kids.  Because some people think it is, all the time. 

But then the baby started crying to be let out of his highchair, even though his big sisters were trying to keep him entertained (yes I still call Ben the baby).

But then Lily stole the toy the boys were playing with and ran away with it, laughing all the way. 

But then someone screamed at someone else about some injustice and the cry for "Mommy!" went up.

And so it is loud and chaotic. 

But then I wouldn't have it any other way.

Winning Weekend

The Dallas Mavericks won the NBA title last night! We are admittedly only casual fans of professional basketball most of the time. We don't watch every game, or even one whole game, most of the season.  But the playoffs came around and our Mavs were winning.  When we swept the Lakers we were well and truly dialed in.  This is a team of men who play hard and live seemingly respectable lives (or they at least keep their shenanigans to themselves).  The leader of the team is Dirk Nowitzki and I have never been so happy to see someone win something as I was to see it happen to him.  Now the only thing I need to see is my Texas Rangers win a World Series.  Anyway, hooray to the Mavs. 

But that is not what was our personal highlight of the weekend.  Due to a rainy spring our baseball season lasted longer than usual.  And then there was an end-of-season tournament for Caleb's team.  I will honestly say that I had moments of just wanting to be done with sports, and that is saying a lot.  But we had a tournament to play, so we did.  Our first game of the tourney was over two weeks ago, the Friday of the holiday weekend.  We lost.  So we were dropped into the losers bracket, at it was a double elimination tournament.  Our boys were good players, they just weren't focused that night. 

So then we played on a Thursday, over a week ago.  We won! So we played on that Saturday.  We won!  We had to win to stay alive. So exciting.  We played Monday. We won! We played Tuesday. We won! We played Thursday. We won!

So Friday had us facing the Rangers.  Caleb was on the Giants.  A World Series rematch.  And this time we were cheering for the Giants.  The Rangers beat us in the regular season.  They had not lost in the tournament.  If they won the game they were champions. If we won, we would play again the next morning.  This is a coach pitch league, meaning one of our coaches throws to our players. Travis pitched every single game of the tournament.  The games last week all went 5 or 6 innings and the kids can get up to six pitches an at-bat if they don't strike out before that.  So by Friday Travis was working tired and also under the pressure of being responsible for our ability to hit.

Friday night had us all keyed up for baseball. The Rangers were formidable opponents.  They batted first and scored the maximum 5 runs allowed in the half-inning. We went up to bat and scored five as well.  Next inning each team scored 3 runs.  We just kept swapping runs.  The sixth inning comes up and there is no run limit in the sixth.  The score was tied 13-13 going to the 6th inning.  The Rangers scored 5 runs before we got 3 outs. So we had to come up and score six runs in the bottom of the sixth to win the game.  And we did it! We finished the game 19-18.

So after pacing and yelling and sometimes holding our breath we had to go home and try to rest before we faced off again the next day.  Travis said he woke up off and on throughout the night thinking about the upcoming game and getting excited and nervous all at the same time.  It is a big deal to throw to these kids and make sure they have something to hit.

Saturday morning we arrive at the fields ready to go.  Our boys seem to have energy and all the parents are gearing up for excitement. We got off to a great start.  We were up 10-6 after two innings.  Once again we had last at-bat for the game. This would prove crucial.  We led 15-8 after 3 innings.  Things were looking good.  19-10 going to start the fifth inning, if we had scored one more run in the 4th inning we would have won right there, due to the ten-run rule. We gave up 3 runs to make it 19-12 when we went up to bat but we didn't score. So we go to the sixth inning up 19-12.  If we could just hold them to six runs or less in three outs we were winners. The boys had been playing for over 1.5 hours at this point, after two hours of baseball the night before.  Things did not go well for us that half inning and the Rangers scored seven runs to tie it.  Okay, so we just need to score one run in the bottom of the sixth to win. Except the Rangers had a great inning on the field and we couldn't get a run across.  So we're going extra innings at this point.

At 12:16 we come up to bat down 22-19 in the bottom of the seventh inning. Our game started at 10:00.  It is hot.  Our team is playing their 7th game in 9 days.  We haven't scored in two innings.  Somehow our boys scrape up some energy and we get three runs.  So we are tied again.  And going to the 8th inning. This is epic and very unusual for this age group.  The Rangers scored four runs! They go up 26-22 and we come up to bat.  We have to score five runs to win.  We haven't scored five runs in one inning since the third. All of us parents are feeling like this is a mountain that can't be climbed.  But our boys sure didn't know any better.  Caleb led off the inning, at 12:48 in the afternoon, 2 hours and 48 minutes since the game started. He got on base safely and made it to second on an error.  He got us started. 

The Giants got it done!  Winners! Epic come-from-behind victory to win 27-26! 

Travis couldn't stop smiling the rest of the day.  It is possible that the parents were more excited about this than the kids.  Who knows.  What do we know is that it was a great day.  There was a lot of pacing and screaming and jumping (from me at least).  There was tons of smiling from all the boys.  Such a great day.

Champions! As a parent it was crazy tense but so fun.  I hope we have many other chances to experience this in our future, but I know we will never forget this one.  Also, we had great coaches and happily both games were fun for everyone.  Coaches on both sides kept things friendly and fun and let the boys play ball.  I hope we can say the same every season.

Unsolicited Observations

Things I feel like sharing, regardless of how interested my readers might be. You're welcome.

There are some things that I think are always worth the money, especially as a long and hot summer with six kids in the house stares me down.  Plenty of crayons. Small notepads and spiral notebooks. New markers. Card stock.  A giant container of bubbles for the backyard.  A giant container of bubble bath when it is just too hot to be outside.  The $5 movie bin at Wal-Mart.

I'm reading a book called Faithful Place by Tana French right now.  It is a great read.  She's written two other books. In the Woods and The Likeness. Those two books should be read in that order, as they have characters that have an important story in the first book that influences the second book.  French writes really good characters.  These books are all mysteries but they are not just mundane whodunits.  Faithful Place also takes place in Dublin, but has different characters.  Great reads if  you are looking for something to keep you busy.

Speaking of books, Madeleine and I are really enjoying first book in The 39 Clues series, Maze of Bones.  I'm reading it aloud and she is the only one who is by my side the entire time.  The books are written by different authors and the first one is by Rick Riordan, who wrote the Percy Jackson series.  I'm just as intrigued by the story as Madeleine is.

Real Housewives shows on Bravo are like crack.  So bad for you, but so hard to stay away from them.  Except Atlanta, I've never been able to get into that one.  However, I can easily get sucked into all the other ones.  And now I feel like I should go to Confession.

I got to see a movie with my girlfriends last week.  We saw Bridesmaids.  It is hilarious! Yes it is full of the F*word and there are a couple of crude/gross scenes, but it is really funny too.  It was just what I needed after a long day. 

Check out the band Gungor.  Really beautiful, really moving Christian music.  It is not your typical schmaltzy Christian music at all.  We're excited to see them in October, with David Crowder Band.  Hooray!

Caleb's baseball team is still alive in the tournament!  They play the Braves tonight.  We are having so much fun watching them play and get better with each game.  But, it is also nerve-wracking.  Caleb was up to bat with two outs and the bases loaded Tuesday night.  We had a lead, bu we really needed more runs before going to the next inning.  Travis was the pitcher.  I could barely watch.  Thankfully he got a base hit that scored two runs.  I was so happy/proud. 

Mavs, game 5 tonight.  Beat the Heat.




Disclosure: Links to books are affiliate links. I make a few pennies if you purchase via the link.

Summertime

As if my blogging could get even more sporadic, here I am to say that summer will likely make things even less consistent around here.  I want to spend time with my kids doing fun things.  I want to take naps.  I will go to the gym, hopefully a lot, because I need to do that.  I'll be here to share fun things when I can of course. 

Right now we are in the thick of a baseball tournament.  Caleb's team is pounding the ball and it is so fun to watch.  However, we are in the loser's bracket since we lost our first tournament game, so we are playing to stay alive every game.  I think the parents are a little more excited/nervous than the boys.  We play a game to determine if we play the next day, which means we don't make any real plans other than baseball. Thankfully we have had good friends willing to let Lily and Ben hang out with them because they are just done with baseball.  It makes it easier for me to focus on the game too. 

Oh, I never told you guys about my new opportunity.  I'm getting paid to Tweet!  The fabulous Holly asked me if I would start doing some promotion for She Is Dallas on Twitter, via the account for the site, not my personal one.  All I do is schedule tweets for the articles that are posted daily and try to interact with our followers.  It is fun and fits into our life perfectly.  I'm more aware of what is going on in the metroplex too, which means we might have a more exciting summer than we thought. And, I'm using my first paycheck to get Travis an awesome Father's Day gift.  I'm so happy about this opportunity.  If you are local you should really check out She Is Dallas to find out what is happening around town.

I'm also trying to squeeze Timmy a little tighter and hold on to him a little longer.  He starts Kindergarten in August and I am just not ready!  I could write a whole post about this, but he's been  my buddy for a long time, as we've had the three big kids in school for two years now.  Timmy has been my big helper and he is just so fun to be around.  I think his starting school is going to be harder than it has been for the other kids. 

What is happening in your summer? Taking any trips or doing anything fun at home? Share!