1. Kid Summer Update

John is done with Four Seasons forever… for real, this time. We previously said “final farewells” three other times, only to have COVID mess with our plans. But now, he has to be gone because he’s too old. Edie will still go there every day all summer as if nothing really changed, but school ended and John did a sports camp last week, has two weeks of YMCA coming up, and a week of ninja camp before summer travels pick up. Lauren is on the road a lot, again, so this week will test how much I can truly do alone. Wednesday, for instance, I will have to leave work and go get Edie from daycare in one direction, then come all the way back and then go get John from summer camp way in the other direction, then come back home, get them changed, and take them to swimming lessons. I sure never had to do summer camps! School ended and we just hung out on the farm all day with Granny. At least baseball is finally done, as of today. Speaking of which…

John’s first summer camp is already over and done with. A week of SoccerZone sports camp in Cedar Park was much more than soccer, and John knew a few kids there.

2. John’s Coach Pitch Baseball Career Ends

John was part of the Balcones All-Star team that participated in a weekend tournament against Austin’s best teams from various leagues. Our Balcones team was made up of 1-3 players per team from the Rockies, Yankees, Blue Jays, Astros and Braves. I was an assistant coach and pitched 2 of the 3 games. We went down in defeat in all three games—11-7, 14-0, and 14-4. John batted only 4 times and went 3-4, while playing a pretty solid second base and some third. In his career, he wound up with 81 hits, good for a .692 average. It’s onto kid-pitch in the fall! Poor John, though… our Rockies team went 1-11, then the All-Star team went 0-3. And if you count the end of last fall’s Twins team, we wound up losing 16 of our last 17 games! But fun was still had.

Will there be any future major leaguers in this group? Check back in 15 years or so…

3. Summer Travel Update

It’s been about three solid months of being in Austin for me, but that will soon change! Next week, I make my first trip back to Tulsa for work since last June. The full Lifecycle Marketing team will be gathering and meeting for the first time. I get home from that trip for a single day, and then John and I leave on our long-planned father-son baseball trip to Washington, DC and Baltimore! We’ll take in both games of a Phillies-Nationals doubleheader at Nationals Park on Friday. We’ll spend Saturday sightseeing DC. On Sunday we’ll go to Baltimore and see the Orioles-Rays game. And then we fly back Monday morning. Just a few short days later, Alex and family arrive for a visit to Austin! And days after they depart, we leave for our month up north in South Dakota and Minnesota. I’m sure I’ll be worn out after all that, but right now it sounds like fun! And we’ll be escaping the worst of the Texas heat, which is shattering records daily. After the hottest May in history by a considerable margin, June looks even worse, with 105º every day this week.

4. Flights

I’ll be driving on the July trip north, but the Tulsa and Baltimore flights in the next couple weeks have me nervous. I’m hearing horror stories of people trying to fly lately, with barely 50% of flights arriving at their destinations on time globally last weekend. With the DC trip, so much of the itinerary takes place on the very first day. If we were to even be delayed by a couple hours, we’d miss one of the Nationals games we’re planning on. I know I’ve mentioned on this blog recently how you have to go back to at least 2019 since the last time an entire round-trip flight experience went off without a single delay, tarmac delay, cancellation, or something else crazy. If anything goes wrong, I hope it’s either on the front end of Tulsa or the back end of DC. The middle two are too tight.

5. So Many Shows

Lauren seems to go to bed earlier and earlier, leaving me up to catch up on TV almost every night. If the Twins aren’t on, I’ve been plowing through lots of shows. I’m all caught on on Better Call Saul and can’t wait for the second half of the final season next month. Hacks returned for season 2 on HBO and I just finished that tonight. It’s a must-watch! Barry is in the midst of season 3 and is equal parts hilarious and suspenseful. I finished off Ozark, which I think was a little too tough for me to follow completely with its very complex storyline. Of course, Winning Time ended season 1 not long ago too. Sure I’m forgetting some, but I’ve made a big dent in TV the past couple months.