Additional happenings in June

While Isabella and I were away, Todd and Mercer held down the fort at home:

- Mercer was working at his sprayground job.  (He had a week off during his "wood bat tournament" week, however, he could have worked a few times when he had AM games or no games.  

- He played A LOT of baseball.in June. Each week, there has been a tournament. This team that he's playing with - we didn't love them in the fall for some management reasons... and for different reasons, we're not loving the team this spring either. 

Interestingly, however, he is getting to play sometimes for a team in the same franchise that is CLOSER to us (located in our county -- instead of all the way on the other side of Atlanta!).  

Not sure why he couldn't have played on that other franchise team this whole time.(I learned recently that they seem to have some management / coaching issues too.)  It would have been easier than driving across town for practices + there's better chemistry with Mercer / other players + us / parents on this other team that's practicing on our side of town!

He has only got to pitch a handful of times.  The coach seems to have his go-to people and M was not one of them this season.

He likes his all-yellow uniform (I wonder if it reminds him of the Savannah Bananas?)  It's the 1st time he's had a pin-striped uni.
  

He doesn't get to bat often either - even though he's playing in the outfield many innings.  (Not sure how that happens).  

He has gone in and has been a courtesy runner for the pitcher or the catcher some.

Oh well - he has 1 more month with this team then he's transferring to a different travel team starting August 1.  (We think they liked his pitching + the pitch he "invented" when they made him an offer after his tryout -- hopefully this new team will help him develop his pitching more!) 

Here's a funny photo that Todd sent me.  (well, not funny for the player that got hurt) - M was literally carrying a teammate off of the field after he hyperextended his leg.  The teammate is OK, thankfully.  

- He has also started his online driver's ed course this month.

So, he's been fairly busy.

We celebrated Todd 2x this month - before and after Isabella & I went on the "away" day camp trips to Serenbe & Rome.

Once we celebrated Todd for his birthday:

We took him to lunch at a local Greek restaurant.  After work that evening, we went to dinner & a movie (Spiderman - the 2nd Multiverse movie.  Like the 1st Multiverse movie, the artistry is SOOO GOOD.

We had cake at home. (Todd got his own little coconut cake, while the 3 of us shared a little chocolate cake). Mercer was trying to give him a special gift (a wet willie -- a finger in the ear) :/ 

Isabella and I got him books for his birthday (that we got from Serenbe -- there's not a lot of shops there!)... hers was a fill-in-blank book with things that she loved about her dad.  Mine was a book about Gaudi - complete works - and another book on labrynths.  Who knew I'd go through 3 in one month AND find a book on them!  (I told him he needs to design one into a church project soon!) 

For father's day - we ALL went to one of Mercer's EARLY baseball games.

We came home and had brunch (I made pastries) and then went out for Szechwan at a restaurant we all like for dinner later that evening.
 

Isabella continued to have her normal activities - gymnastics, music lessons, horse-riding lessons this month.  AND she also had swim practices almost every morning + meets 1x a week.  

(There were 5 meets, but we missed one the week we were at Serenbe.)   It was hard - like the previous 2 years - to get her to go to practices. She really dislikes the early morning practices in the (usually cold) pool.  It's also harder at the beginning of the season as the kids are building up strength to swim across the pool. 

She told me multiple times to NOT sign her up next year.  (That's what she said last year too, then begged me to sign up at the beginning of the summer!)

This week (end of June) - she started to change her tune:  "Maybe she would like to do swim team next year."   She made a couple of new friends + saw the good friend she made last year at swim.

At her final swim meet this week, se said the same thing to Todd.  (She likes the meets - they're crazy, but for the kids, they're fun).

I don't know that she improved that much over the course of the season.   (She may have shaved a bit of time off of each stroke - but she did move into doing harder strokes (butterfly / back-stroke / breath-stroke) more often than she did the easier free-style stroke.)

On her first couple of days without practice, she slept in 'til past 10 am!!  At the final event - swim team party - the coaches hand out awards (a trophy + the ribbons for the previous meet) but the fun part of hte party is to hear the coaches tell stories and give each kid a personalized "fish" award.  

Hers was called the Driving Detective -- and -- they told the story how one of coaches almost hit us from behind on the way to a swim meet!  (we didn't know it was the coach 'til the car that almost hit us turned into the same neighborhood... then onto the same street... then parked at the swim meet & Coach Daniel hops out!)  oof.  He was in a hurry b/c coaches are supposed to be there before the kids.  Ha!

Same photo just not zoomed in.  I don't know if (my student in the water behind Isabella) Frank, was photo-bombing?   

A couple of other random things that she did over the month of June (before  / after camps):

- Burning leaves seems to be one of her favorite things to do this summer when the sun comes out!  (It rained a lot in June!)

- She only got to go to 1 day of VBS at our church... she had a pediatrician visit during one of the days and we left to go to her medical camp for the last 3 days of VBS.  But - 1 day is better than no days! 

- And she enjoyed picking blueberries (which later went into Mercer's favorite blueberry-lemon pie).... especially when she discovered a nest with eggs in it in one of the bushes at our community garden!

Todd & I went to a play at the Center for Puppetry Arts called Avanti da Vinci.  It was "eh" unfortunately.  But - we got to go through the puppet museum, which he had not been to before.  So, that was cool.

Here's a better image from the promotional website on the show. 

(There was a tie to batman throughout the show - with this lighted image in the sky.)  - and it is rumored that Bob Kane - creator of character Batman - was inspired by Leonardo da Vinici when sketching & creating his winged character. 

I liked the way that they made this exhibit about Jim Henson (the muppets creator) look like a workshop.

And - this is not a puppet.  It is not cousin It.   

It's our girl!

A couple of things that happened in the news that captivated the world:

1 - a MIRACLE rescue of 4 children who were found in the depths of the Columbian jungle after the small plan they were on crashed on May 1st.  On board was their mother, the pilot and the co-pilot.  None of the adults survived, but the 4 children (ages 13 to 11 months old) DID survive the crash and DID survive 40 treacherous days & nights in the jungle. 

Rescuers found the crash site in mid-May (approximately 2 weeks after the plane went town) and were hopeful the children were alive after they found evidence of the children's things scattered close to the crash site + a child's footprint near the site.

It took rescuers approximately another 25 days before they found the children huddled together.  The children were from an indigenous tribe + it was reported that they knew how to live off the land / had some survival skills.  There were survival packages dropped from helicopters that had basic supplies + cassava flour that is repotted the children lived off of. 

The 13 year old girl is being heralded as a hero - keeping her siblings including a baby alive for 40 days and 40 nights in a dangerous jungle (with poisonous spiders, snakes and carnivorous jungle animals!

Reports say that the children were rushed to a nearby hospital for care and will recover (physically).  

A miracle, indeed! 

 

2 - a submersible vessel went into the ocean for a "sight-seeing" journey to the depths of the Titanic ocean liner.  Unfortunately, it imploded hours after descending into the ocean.  This was not known until days after the implosion - the coast guard had set up a search & rescue because there was only reported 48 hours worth of oxygen on board (although the logistics of rescue would be impossible at those depths)... but they did find pieces of wreckage days after the submersible took off.  

It may always be a mystery as to why the vessel - that had made previous trips to the depths of the Titanic - failed this time - killing the 5 passengers on board including the founder & president of the company who built the submersibles. 

In a BBC article from 2020, this is what was written about the trip(s): 

One company in Canada has started selling tickets for a submarine tour of the ship Titanic, for around £96,000 (125,000 US dollars).

But it's not a plain sailing tourist trip for those who want a seat on the sub.

They'll become 'citizen scientists' as part of a scientific research team taking part in a project called the Titanic Survey Expedition.

OceanGate, the company behind the project, hope that by carrying out lots of week-long trips over the course of several years, it will be possible to document the wreckage fully.

[As of 2020] The current plan is for six trips to be carried out between May to September each year, with nine so-called 'citizen scientists allowed on each expedition.  The eight-day trip [would] set sail from St. John's in Newfoundland, around 370 miles from the site, with each taking six to eight hours to reach the Titanic site, explore, and return to the surface ship.