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Doug and Brad and their
cousins Kelsy and Quinn Rafferty.
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Linda, Betty, Susan join
Keith and the rest of the Sherwoods for the first invitation dinner
since the kitchen was completed.
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Brad (the catcher pumping his
fist) throws out the runner at third. During this one game, this
was one of three outs Brad and Win combined on to throw runners out: in
other innings Brad threw to Win playing shortstop and Win, playing
catcher, threw to Brad playing shortstop.
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I know I'm the proud father
(and impartial photographer), but is this not the perfect form Doug is
exhibiting on this hit? Head down, arms fully extended: it's got double
written all over it.
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That's Doug behind the plate
catching, and Brad behind the pitcher's mound umpiring.
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Doug (right) and Josh playing
chess at Camp Marston.
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Hike just outside of Camp
Marston that wanders through fire-scoured hillsides.
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Class model of Rancho
Penasquitos with Doug behind his model of the historic adobe.
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Brad running a relay in the
Sixth Grade Olympics.
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No time
to
dilly-dally with an introduction; let's just jump right in!
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Kristi
got field trip duty this month, taking one with each boy. Doug's
class went to another elementary school and met another class of third
grader's that they had been writing pen pal letters to all year.
Although they had pizza and played games, as far as outstanding field
trips, this does not rank up there with the floating lab (I mean, the
school was even in the same district!) Kristi also chaparoned
Brad's class on a sixth grade field trip to Seaworld. School
field trips are a good exercise of Seaworld's dual roles of educator
(exhibits) and entertainer (rides).
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| Betty’s excellent
caregiver of the last few months, Linda, is
retiring from the profession and going to live in Guadalajara,
Mexico.
We had her, Betty, and Susan down for dinner one night, both as a thank
you to Linda and to show everybody the progress on the remodel.
The
kitchen was just back together enough that we could entertain,
casually. The last time Susan was here (to do Betty’s taxes with
Keith
in April) we could only offer her microwaved tacquitos on a paper
plate. We transported the computer downstairs to show our photos
from
January’s trip to Cabo. Linda was a rarity in live-in caregiver
terms:
she was American and had her own car. |
So if Linda stays with
Betty 24 hours a day, 5 days a week (she's spelled by another caregiver
from the agency for 2 days off), what do Susan and Keith do? Susan
handles the finances and is first line of contact to the
caregivers. She lives closer to Betty than Keith does, and finds
it a bit easier to get over to her house. Keith handles the
doctor appointments. He makes the appointments. Because his job
is more flexible than Susan's, he leaves work in the middle of the day
and meets Betty and her caregiver at the doctor for the
appointment. He takes notes, helps answer questions (Betty
is not always able to differentiate between reality and replayed
memories), and tries to keep track of prescriptions and next
appointments.
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May is the highwater
mark in the baseball season. By the third month of the season you
really should be playing well by now, and there is only a week or two
of games in June. So this is it. Let it all hang out.
Neither of the boys' teams are going to win divisions and therefore
make it to the playoffs, but they're both having fun.
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| Doug continues to do
well at baseball. He is known mostly for his hitting, but
honestly fields and
throws well too. And he continues to do the occasional couple
innings pitching on the mound. His coaches are known around the
league as being particularly aggressive, sending baserunners on any
excuse and daring other teams to make a throw and a catch to get them
out. I don't know that they are very popular among other coaches
and parents of the 9 year olds division. |
Brad continues to have the baseball world
on a string, enjoying every game and doing very well. He's cooled
down a bit from March, but he's still batting over .600. He
continues to play 3 innings at catcher then three innings at short
stop, and he continues to gun down runners from either position.
As catcher he frames pitches very nicely for the perhaps under
experienced umpires, getting his pitchers extra strikes. He
claims now that he's an umpire, he knows all the tricks of the trade.
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| Brad umped one of
Doug’s games. He wasn’t scheduled to; in
fact, we had agreed as a family that he would turn down any game of
Doug’s offered to him. But when no umpire materialized one
Saturday
afternoon, he volunteered and the coaches accepted. (Coaches on the
other side knew Doug from soccer and Y guides, so they figured his
older brother was probably all right). Early on (in March),
Bradley
had
made a habit of taking his umpire tools with him to Doug’s games,
fantasizing about answering the call when it was discovered the umpire
didn’t show up. But he stopped because it never happened.
Until May
1. As the game began, Kristi was in the snack bar and Keith raced home
to get Brad’s gear. Brad umped 6 innings from behind the
pitcher’s
mound. Both Brad and Doug did an excellent job ignoring one
another
and going about their separate tasks, even the inning when Doug was
catcher while Brad called balls and strikes (Doug didn't ever pitch
that game). |
Doug and Keith went to
Camp Marston in the mountains near
Julian. Camp Marston has already received the “dedicated web
page” treatment
in 2002, so it won’t get its own photo
album page this
year. The last two years the camp has been scheduled the same
weekend
as the church musical. Last year we didn’t go so that Doug could
participate in the musical. This year, Doug decided he would
rather go
to Camp Marston than be in the musical. This being Doug's last
year in Y-Guides (and therefore the last time to visit Camp Marston),
we respected his wishes. This made Wednesday nights at church difficult
all spring as he
saw no point in participating in the only children’s program offered,
rehearsing for the musical.
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| The
only changes at Marston from two years ago were the lake was
drained down even farther now, so there was no boating at all, and of
course the fire. That camp Marston survived the fire was nothing
short
of miraculous. The fire burned all around it, in fact within 20
feet
of the very cabin we slept in, yet not one structure was lost.
They
attributed the Camp’s survival to the fact that just the previous
summer (three months before the October 2003 fire) they
had undertaken a great deforestation project, cutting
out and removing the dead pine trees and other dry combustibles all
around the camp. Doug and Keith left camp immediately after
breakfast Sunday morning to get home, shower, and get to church for the
second service and the final showing of the musical. |
The Spring Musical at
Church this year was Once Upon A Parable.
Brad is once
again the oldest boy willing to commit to the musical, and so by
default picks up some prime roles. The situation this year was
solved by having multiple people, mostly high school girls, rotate
through the Jesus role, and having Brad play the two roles of Judas and
the Chief Pharisee. Our son, Judas. Actually, the roles
called for acting smug, self-righteous, wounded and sulking, so Brad
was a natural: heck, he needn't act at all.
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May means school is
winding down for both boys, and it’s time
for Open House at the schools. Doug’s class made a model of the
town.
Each student was to pick one building in Penasquitos (other than the
school or their house) and make a model of it. Doug was
considering
Golden Bagel or Blockbuster (logical choices as they are important
community buildings to him) but Keith was able to get him interested in
the
one historic building in all of Penasquitos: the adobe ranch house from
1860 in the Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve. We visited it, took some
pictures, then modeled it in styrofoam, cardboard and sandpaper.
At open house, a not-to-scale model of town covered half the floor,
with the YMCA, post office and library laid out on construction paper
street map of Penasquitos.
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Brad's open house model
wasn't quite as successful. His project was a report and a model on a
volcano or caldera. He was almost as excited as Keith was to
report on the Valles Grande Caldera in the Jemez Mountains behind Los
Alamos. His report was excellent, but his modest clay model was
out-glitzed by some other volcano productions in class.
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| The
last big fun thing Brad's school did as the year wound down was the
Sixth Grade Olympics. Each of the 15 six grade classes named
themselves after an ancient civilization (Brad's class was the Han
Dynasty) and competed all day long in sporting events. It turns
out Brad has quite a penchant for running, a completely unsurprising
genetic gift from his grandfather Art. |
Finally, May concluded
with Memorial Day, which this year was spent on another Gail Bigelow
camp out. Now I know you're thinking. Aren't these big
multi-family campouts over Labor Day? Yes, they are, but this
year Gail is organizing two: one on Labor Day and one on Memorial
Day. Picking a spot was a little more difficult this year with
most of the mountain campsites burned or closed or both. So this
time out we picked a more urban campsite, a private park operated by
the water district built around 5 lakes (well, ponds) of reclaimed
water. It had all the advantages of being freeway close and yet
deceptively quiet and in the country. It had water for boating
and fishing, and was generally pretty flat for good biking. It
was the jewel in the crown of the Padre Water District, it was camping at Santee Lakes!
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The
Remodel:
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Stages of a
remodel:
In the beginning, if the dog can't find her displaced water bowl and
starts drinking from the toilet, it's "Dancer, no! I'll get you some
clean water." And you go into the backyard and search all around
until you find where her water bowl has gotten to, then retrieve it and
fill it and set it back where the dog expects it.
But by now, after your energy has been depleted through the months, and
there are no more working faucets either outside or even downstairs,
when the dog starts drinking from the toilet, it's "Dancer, no!
I'll get you some clean water." Flush.
Outside, the backyard gets finished up,
with sprinkler system, new grass, and a new patio cover (made from the
old patio cover). Inside, tile is installed throughout the family
room and kitchen. Downstairs bathroom (all 12 square feet of it)
is first room to be declared finished. There is less and less to take pictures of,
as the jobs become smaller and smaller.
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Links
Mentioned on this Page: |
You may have missed
these
links within the text above.
Church Musical
Memorial Day
Campout at Santee Lakes
Camp
Marston, 2002
This
month's remodel progress
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They Said
It: |
Douglas, upon viewing
the construction/destruction photos on the web site: "Boy, I'm glad we
don't live there."
Keith,
remarking upon the fact that the dust from the remodel has
prevaded the house, even the master bedroom closet: "I think I'll wear
my gray shoes." (They were black.)
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