After a relatively quiet March, things are picking up around here. In fact, as I write this, we are currently at Kalahari Resorts in Round Rock for a quick one-night stay, just a twenty minute drive from home. Kalahari is the nation’s biggest indoor waterpark (235,000 square feet). We’ve heard such great things from local friends, but it’s so damn expensive most of the time. It’s actually cheaper to get a hotel room and do two days of the waterpark than to just get a single-day pass, in some instances, if the prices drop. I’d been keeping an eye out for price drops and found a random Sunday night in April that was way less than normal. Yes, that would mean missing a day of school and work, but everyone will just have to get over it.

Our Sunday at the park was pretty awesome! John was brave and did all the adult slides even though quite a few scared him. Edie even did all the ones she qualified for including some pretty intense enclosed pipe slides. I did one called the Tanzanian Twister where I was taken off-guard and did a huge downward plunge in a dark pipe and then plunged into a bowl where you spin around the edges several times before falling out the bottom opening upside-down into a pool. The four of us enjoyed the park from 1-5 before running into our friends the Grosses, and then we spent 5-8 doing slides with them. It was seven consecutive hours of intense stair climbing and sliding. Several hundred floors climbed over the day. I think any one of us would have been happy to have just gone home after that, but we had the hotel room and now we have a whole second day of it today.

House Reno Continues

Next week things get really wild at the house as two separate contractors coincidentally are ready to go at the same time on two different projects. One team is tackling the master bathroom while the other gets to work on the kitchen, two rooms in dire need of repair. Some have said “why put more money into that house, just move!” but those people may not understand the dire state of those rooms. No one in their right mind other than a flipper would purchase the house in this state. The kitchen has a lovely hole in the ceiling from my plumbing mishap, for starters. It also has no lower cabinets after a dishwasher malfunction leaked water into them. The popcorn ceiling is browned above the microwave vent after 40 years, and the countertops are homemade.

With each project expected to take 2-3 weeks, we will probably have to vacate the house and get an Airbnb in the neighborhood. I hate to do it. It will be really inconvenient. But I suppose it will be just as inconvenient trying to live in a house for 3 weeks without a kitchen. Well, by mid-May all should be back in order and the home improvements will be complete. Then, should we choose, the house could be in selling condition!

Baseball

The spring baseball season is half over now, and our Orioles are finally in the win column with a 13-5 victory Saturday, bringing our record to 1-3-1 on the season. John had one of his best games, pitching 3 very solid innings, striking out five. At the plate he batted four times, singling twice, walking once, and getting hit by a pitch, driving in a run, stealing a base, and scoring four runs.

Edie and the Dodgers have “won every game” as she will tell you, though they do not keep score in beginner teeball, every batter gets to reach first base every time, every runner gets to advance a single base every time, and everyone is a winner! But she has been putting some good swings on the ball.

This is John’s last season of 10u, or “minors”, baseball. In the fall he would move up to 12u, the majors, despite only turning 10 in late August. At that point, I will bow out of coaching his team. I am already in over my head coaching 9 and 10 year olds. Having not played beyond eighth grade, I have very little idea of how to actually coach these kids and improve their skills. I am fine at wrangling them up, getting them to run some drills, and making batting orders, but I have little knowledge and instruction to pass onto them.

Below is the scorecard from our last game, which is much different-looking than normal. We’re used to not scoring and striking out a lot, so I made the team a deal. I’d give them each $1 for every ball hit in play. Seemed like a safe bet, as the previous game I would have had to pay out a grand total of a single dollar. The perk must have worked, because the bats went wild against the league’s top team. I am out $18 or so. Money moved the needle for these boys.

Summer

We gotta start thinking about summer plans. The annual pilgrimage to the Midwest is slated for July, centered around Steve’s memorial weekend. The current plan is to drive up over the 4th of July week and make a bit of a trip out of it, then stay and work remotely from Minnesota for a while. Then we’d drive over to South Dakota for another week or so. On the way out, we’d leave John on the farm to spend some extra quality time with Grandma and Grandpa, possibly for as long as two weeks! I’d drop Lauren and Edie at the Sioux Falls airport, and drive back myself, stopping off in Tulsa and Dallas for work and get some face time in with coworkers.

If things worked out, there is talk of a Rust Belt baseball trip, seeing the Pirates, Guardians and Tigers stadiums which are less than 3 hours apart. Not sure if we will have any money leftover after house stuff for that, though.