Travel Baseball

Took us to Kentucky a few days after Mason was cleared from resting his broken thumb. To say this team is awful would be kindly stated. But there are a handful of kind kids on the team, and Mason enjoyed his time being silly with those players at the hotel—mainly printing off pictures of Hooters Girls from the lobby computer and sliding the copies under teammates’ doors. 

{The team played at the Y’alls stadium—a minor league team of sorts. Very similar to the Joliet Slammers stadium that Mason has played at several times this season.}

Our schedule allowed for us to spend some time in Cincinnati and even catch a Cubs at Reds game! The stadium was so great. Tons of local food vendors, walls filled with tappers of local craft beer, and all kinds of kid-friendly activities around the stadium. Would definitely recommend! 

{Caleb and I enjoyed our date night while Mason hung with teammates in a different part of the stadium. At one point we spotted them in the very top row of the mostly empty upper deck. Must have stuck out to the camera crew, too, because they made it on the Jumbotron!}

We even had time to go back to Cincinnati the next day to walk along the river and over an insanely old bridge that takes you back to Kentucky. A fun afternoon spent with us three!  

{Standing in a windy Kentucky look back at Cincinnati with the pedestrian/car bridge in the background.}

{Can’t hardly see him; he blends in so good.}

{These gardens were my favorite part of the Riverwalk. And now I am old.}

And then back to our baseball games… when we expected that we would lose and go home so we checked out of our hotel a day early only to win—purely by accident as skill plays no role in our games—and then had to check back in for another night. 

The boys picked Hooters to celebrate their victory, and I do believe that Mason snapped at least one picture with each waitress in the restaurant. A teenage boy dream, I am sure… 

{A group picture with our waitress—letting it all hang out…}

We ended up with an extra hour of time before our final game, so we checked out this spectacle of a grocery store called Jungle Jim’s. My mom told us about it, insisting we make the stop. It was like nothing I have ever seen before! You could absolutely spend an entire day walking through the aisles and not get through everything. We hurried through and walked away with some local beer and some funny photos. 

{Including this one. There is a row of port-a-potties lining the front interior of the store leading you to believe those are the bathrooms, but when you open up the door to the potty, you walk through into a huge bathroom. It was crazy. Google it!}

May Bits

 The pieces of our May puzzle in no particular order. 

{Our laundry room is one step closer to being done!}

{Mason broke his thumb while catching in a baseball game and is out of sports for 4 weeks. Secretly thrilled he broke his thumb to justify the wincing and whining that went along with it. And also thrilled we get a break from this dreadful baseball season.}

{My flowers are popping! The smell of the irises brings me back to grade school when I would bring a hand-picked bouquet of these beauties to my teachers.}

{More flowers! As if I didn’t buy enough during the annual garden trip with my mom over Mother’s Day…}

{Mason’s volleyball team pulled off a second place finish to the season in a nail-biter.} 

{As fast as cheer season wrapped up, the next season began. Camryn is now a level 2 flyer on Moonlight. Can’t wait to watch this girl soar!}

{Some of her gal pals at the season reveal. This could have probably happened via email, but nothing in cheer happens without unnecessary amounts of racket.}

{The cicadas are coming! The cicadas are coming!}

Summer Vacay Ready!

I look forward to the last day of school as much as I look forward to the first day of school. Cheers to no homework for the next few months! 

Camryn walked to elementary school for the last time with a group of her buddies. 

I caught up with her after school to grab her things before she headed off to a co-ed (gasp!) pool party. She was feeling all the feels with a side of tears. We will certainly miss our favorite teachers, but I just know she is going to love, love, love middle school! 

Mason Promoted to High School!

This lucky duck cut school short a week before his siblings with a promotion ceremony at the high school on Monday. Weather was a little rocky during the school day, so administration pulled the plug on an outdoor ceremony and we instead crammed into the gym with overflow viewing in the auditorium. It was a tight squeeze!

{Mason wouldn’t look my way, but he was all smiles for a friend. Glad someone got a picture of this guy!}

{Happy family. And half of Camryn’s head.}

{We were able to smuggle my mom in to the gym for the live view!}

{These two buddies from the beginning were wearing the same Hollister shirt—completely unplanned!}

{Perhaps the best part of the ceremony was this award Mason earned. The staff voted him as Male Athlete of the Year. It was a surprise to him, but I had the inside scoop so I was able to record the moment. He may not always be the top athlete on the team, but he absolutely is the best teammate and friend. So proud of this honor!}

On to high school he goes! 

Solar Storm

We had the opportunity to view the Northern Lights in our backyard during a rare solar storm that happened upon us over the weekend. 

The boys snapped these photos, completely un-edited. 

While we could sort of see the colors with our bare eye, looking through our phones increased the intensity of the storm. Amazing! 

The Summit

I can’t be the only one who gets caught in a loop of T. Swift every time the year-end cheer competition extravaganza is mentioned. “Karma takes all my friends to the Summit…” If you weren’t singing it before, you are now. You’re welcome. 

{Camryn is the flyer all the way to the left.}

Camryn competed in the Disney World racket known professionally as The Summit at the beginning of May. And while we knew that her team’s typical competition scores could not mathematically compete against the 60+ elite teams in her division, Trop1cs ended their season with their best performance to date and came in 9th in their group. It wasn’t enough to advance to the final round (4/10 of a point short of qualifying. So close!); however, that may have been the best worst-case scenario as that left us with a few days of Florida vacation where Camryn had time to stunt with friends in the pool and on land for literally the whole day and gave us an opportunity to spend a day at Magic Kingdom without the restrictions of Day 2 competition. Win-win!

{Camryn wanted to sit with her friend on the plane, which left me with exactly zero parental responsibilities on the flight. Hooray!}

My mom was my travel buddy on this trip, which was way better than forcing myself to fit in with the loud and attention-craving group that are the cheer moms. It was great!

{So proud of our athlete!}

{This is what stage makeup looks like after a shower. Yikes!}

{Wandering around a very hot Disney Springs.}

We spent our last day in Florida at Magic Kingdom. My mom had never been there for a rope drop. Or for a Syfert Disney experience. At one point I had to remind her that if she was having fun, she wasn’t doing Disney right… 

{The park was pretty crowded!}

{But not so busy that we didn’t make it on Space Mountain twice. And all of the other rides once.}

{Big Thunder Mountain—known by us as the runaway train—is always fun. We hopped on this train right as the park opened. No wait!}

{7 Dwarves was broken down for most of the morning, but as we were walking past it after getting off the Peter Pan ride, we happened to see that they were running test cars. We hopped in line and were the first to ride. High fives for being in the right place at the right time!}

{We were lucky to get a virtual queue for the newest ride, Tron. You were strapped into a motorcycle of sorts and zipped across the tracks. We all did it. And two-out-of-three of us would do it again…}

{I do love the magic of Disney!}