.: bistan.net :.

I temporarily removed the previous post (Why I Hate T-ball) until I had the chance to add this one. I was a little harsh on the coaches and other parents.  Not all of them are like I described.  Many of them are very nice and giving people, unlike me.  After all, they are putting in several hours a week to make the experience for my child.  They should be commended for that.

I was just mad about having to fundraise for the little league organization because I don’t like asking people for money and I don’t like being asked for money.  I was also mad about the fact that we still haven’t received a schedule and the games start in 2 days.  I also exagerated some Lizella stereotypes to add humor to the post. Again, there is nothing wrong with the coaches or other parents.  They are just different than me.

I’m not making this apology post out of fear that one of them has read or will read my blog.  That’s very doubtful.  I just felt I needed to right a wrong.

Hopefully the next post will be more positive (and therefore not about t-ball). It’s also been a good while since I’ve included pictures and/or video.  Let’s see if I can change that.

About a month ago, I blogged about Tristan trying out for t-ball.  Let’s just say that the whole experience has been less than fun.  Here is why:

T-ball should be a learning experience for kids who are interested in trying out a team sport or learning the game of baseball.  Unfortunately, it is not.

When it is 40 degrees outside and the wind in blowing 30 miles an hour, practices should be cancelled. Unfortunately, they are not.

There is no praise for the kids.  No “Good Job, Tristan”.  Nothing.  Just screaming non-stop at kids who don’t even understand the game.  One kid ran off of the field when told to “Run home”.  Tristan walked around in circles when told to play shortshop because he was never told where or what that was.  No explanations, just expectations.

The “coach” coaches a “kid-pitch” team as well, so he’s at the field at least twice as much as we are.  That’s how much these folks love little league.  For me, it’s just one of the “balls” that I juggle.

Speaking of balls, Kimberlie and I are the oddballs at practices. To fit in better with the other t-ball parents, I would need to do at least a few of the following:

• Get a blue-collar job.  So blue-collar that it would borderline red-neck.
• Trade my CR-V for something that consumes much more gas and has much bigger wheels.
• Get a trophy-wife who is a stay-at-home-mom or who works a dead-end job.
• Give up grocery shopping. Apparently all necessary food can be found in the woods.
• Preserve the unetible portions of said food and display them in my home.
• Grow facial hair and a beer-belly and get lots of tattoos.
• Start smoking and communicate using more colorful language.

I’ve discovered that little league system has been designed to nickle-and-dime you.  We paid $110.00 for registration, thinking that would be it.  It included the hat, shirt, and socks and I was to provide the pants, cleats, etc.  No problem.  Then they decided that they needed an additional $5.00 to have the letter put on the back of the shirt.  If every kid is required to pay that, why not just include it in the registration fees?

Yesterday, we were handed ten BBQ plate tickets and told that if we didn’t sell them all, our name would go on a list for everyone at the ball park to see. What???  If it truly costs $150.00 per kid to run the ballpark (for the entire 3 months of the year that it is operational), then charge us $150.00 up front.  Or give us an option to pay more instead of sell BBQ plates.

I told Kimberlie we should consider quitting now and we would only be out $35.00.  We paid $115.00 but we could then sell the $80.00 worth of BBQ plates and pocket the cash. She wouldn’t go for it.

Thankfully, I never had dreams of retiring early thanks to a professional-baseball-playing-son.

Two weeks ago, we signed Tristan up for t-ball.  Then we bought him a glove and a ball.  Basically, we dropped $130 on baseball, but my child can’t throw, can’t catch, and can’t hit.  It really was stepping out for me to sign Tristan up for something like this.  I hate committments, so I’m not looking forward to sitting at practice or the ball field several nights a week.  But I also thought it might be good for him to be part of a team.

Yesterday was tryout day. We were concerned that we wouldn’t know anyone, but we ended up knowing four others:

Tristan’s best friend from his old day care (who he hardly sees anymore)
Tristan’s best friend from his current day care (who no longer goes there)
A classmate from Tristan’s preschool
A classmate from Tristan’s current kindergarten class

And to make it even better, we know (or have met) their parents as well.  Let’s just hope he ends up with one or more of them on his team!

Here we go again. I blog about how I resolve to blog more. Then I make about 3 blog posts. Then you don’t hear from me for a few weeks. Then I make an excuse about why I haven’t been blogging and then I resolve to blog more.

I guess that means this is the excuse post. Let’s see . . . I’m swamped at work, swamped with class, and swamped in my personal life.

Work: I won’t bore you with the work stuff.  I doubt you care about Windows 7 imaging and Drupal modules anyway.

School: It was stupid to commit to doing this masters degree in the first place. My first masters degree didn’t get me anywhere, yet I sign up for another one. My classes this semester are Object Oriented Programming II and Advanced Graphic Design. “Advanced Graphic Design” is what Mercer calls a video game programming class when they want employers to pay for it.  Since my language of choice for the program is C#, I’m developing a game in XNA Game Studio 3.1.  I have a project in OOP2 due next week on secure code and wikis and a project in the game class due the following week on 2D game programming.  My game is pretty sweet and when I compile it, I’ll publish it here and you can download and play it too!

Running: My heel is still freaking killing me.  I can barely walk when I get out of bed in the mornings. I only ran 7 miles this week, but I need to knock out at least 5 tomorrow to exceed 70 miles for the month.

Personal life: We signed Tristan up for T-ball.  That should be interesting. I’m not particularly looking to spend 3 nights a week at a ballpark, but we want to get him involved in something.  Kimberlie is now up to 60 – 70 hour weeks so I have the kids by myself in the evenings for a while.  She works with two other Occupational Therapists.  One is in Africa for a month and the other just went out of maternity leave.  And then on Monday, as if we didn’t have enough going on, her mother died.  After this week, we are both certainly looking forward to a new week.

Pictured above is the Star Student from Mrs. Hiland’s kindergarten class at Heard Elementary School. Finally!

I’m so proud, that I’m completely overlooking the fact that there are 20 students in the class and it is week 19 of school.  And I’m overlooking the fact that the teacher likes me right now because I did photos of all of the kids during Cookie Day.  And I’m overlooking the fact that this is a short week of school (and even shorter for Tristan).

No family blog is complete without a photo of the kids with Santa, so here we go.

I’m not exactly sure how the birth of Christ translates into Santa or Black Friday Sales or the Jonas Brothers or messy cookie-making kids, but it sure is fun, so we’ll take it!

Today was Christmas Cookie Day at Tristan’s kindergarten.  Kimberlie and I, along with other parents helped about 120 kindergarteners make cookies.  Just imagine the biggest possible mess and multiply it by 100.  Kimberlie was covered in flour and had to return home and change before going to work.  I was a little more careful, since I had the fancy camera and all.

Enjoy the pictures.

This weekend, we celebrated Tristan’s 6th birthday with a final trip to the Disney theme parks (for a long time).

I can’t believe I have a SIX year old!

Each Wednesday, Tristan brings home a folder from school.  It contains things like school work, behavior charts, PTA notices, notes from school, etc.  This past Wednesday, the folder included a request to “Help Light Someone’s Christmas”.  Basically, it’s the same concept as the Salvation Army’s angel tree: you sign up to purchase a gift for a specific amount and send the gift to the school.

Now we typically help various organizations, from giving in church to volunteering in various things, to sending canned goods to feed people who apparently only eat at Thanksgiving, to making donations, etc. Even with all of that, we have never received joy from giving.  In fact, we hate giving.  It’s like a chore.  We do it though for various reasons — whether political or religious or otherwise.  But because I love Heard Elementary School, I wanted to sign up immediately. 

Kimberlie tried to throttle me back.  We’re already room parents for Tristan’s class.  We donate classroom supplies and send paper money and sell wrapping paper and buy BBQ tickets and support the PTA, so I understood her concern. But being room parents, we’ve met all of Tristan’s classmates.  If there is someone in Tristan’s class, school, or our community who needs a token gift to improve their holiday season, I want to help.  I filled out the form and committed to purchasing a gift at the $15.00 level and returned the form. 

The next day, Kimberlie was picking up the kids from day care when Tristan handed her a paper light bulb.  It said “Jacket for a 6 year old girl, size 6/7″.  Her eyes teared up.  We don’t live in a wealthy community, but it is the suburbs and I never imagined that someone nearby might not even have a jacket.  We thought we were going to be purchasing a token gift for a child who might not have as many toys on Christmas morning as our kids, but instead, we were purchasing a necessity that in our household would never be considered a gift.  And so we were off — to find the perfect jacket!

Being the bargain-hunter than I am, we ended up with a $40.00 Old Navy jacket.  All of their outerwear was 50% off plus I used a 30% Stuff-n-Save discount to end up spending $14.00.  It could possibly end up being the nicest garment the unknown little girl owns.  Tristan’s birthday is coming up later this week and we actually enjoyed shopping for this unknown child more than we enjoyed shopping for our own child.  The jacket has already warmed our hearts — for the first time since I can remember, we feel good about giving.

Let’s hope the little girl can stay warm until Christmas!

About six months ago, I came across pictures of a fad I had not heard about: Duct-tape prom dresses.  I was intriqued to say the least!  I wish I had a prom to go to!  Fast forward until now . . .  We knew that we were going to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party at the Magic Kingdom and we needed costumes.  Mackenzie has a Cinderella dress and Kimberlie and I could easily wing it, but what about Tristan?

Would it be possible to make a duct-tape costume?  Could I pull it off? Will the weather be mild enough to dress my son up in nothing but duct-tape?  I decided to go for it.  But what kind of costume?  Of course it had to be Disney-related, relatively easy to construct, and they had to have the colors available in duct-tape.  As I looked at all of our pictures with Disney characters from over the past year, I came across this one of me and Pinocchio.

I’m certainly no seamstress, but somehow I made it work. After all, it’s tape, so if you screw up, you just cut out the mistake and tape it back together!

It went really well. Everyone at the party typically dresses up as the popular characters: pirates, princesses, pooh, etc. Nobody else considered Pinocchio. One of the cast members told us that he sees about 50,000 costumes a night and it was the first Pinocchio he had seen. Others were amazed when they discovered that it was constructed of solely duct-tape.  Tristan thrived on all of the attention he received.  Many told us that if there had been a costume contest, he would have one it.  Wow!  Of course, it wasn’t comfortable walking around in duct-tape so he was walking a little funny — like a puppet — which is exactly what Pinocchio is.  Pottying proved difficult, but he could always hold it until the next day — when he became a real boy again!

By the way, it took 5 rolls of duct tape and about seven hours to put it all together.  I will certainly do it again in the future!