Flashback #1: The Diamondbacks

I feel like I've done several baseball posts in the past, but this year has been different than other years for Elijah.  This spring we have been immersed in little league but for E, one of only 3 10-year-olds on a team of 11-year-olds, it's been a whole new experience.            The kid works so hard but he admits, he doesn't LOVE baseball the way he does other sports.  This is his first year to spend a lot of his time in outfield, sometime on the bench, and a few times at 2nd base.  At the beginning, I was a bit miffed - doesn't his coach know he's a 1st baseman, that first is all he's ever played.  But after I watched a few games, I realized, the players coach chose for those important spots really deserved them and Elijah would have to learn to sit in the background a bit.  They won their first 4 games and as Elijah likes to say, "that's more games than my team won last year the whole season!"  He was pleased and didn't mind sitting out, or being in center field.  And for this mom who began the season frustrated, relaxed and actually enjoyed not having to worry that my son would have to make the big play or that he would be the one to miss the base out.  I just got to watch kids play baseball and cheer on Elijah when he was up to bat and tell him how fun it was to watch him play when it was all over.  It's been pretty free-ing.

And since I've waited until now to post about his team - we got the good news that they made it to the district tournament - by the skin of their teeth, but they made it and we start next week.  No matter the outcome of the tournament, this season will definitely go down as the least stressful, at least from the viewpoint as a fan in the stands.  I could go on and on about all the other stresses of our Spring -- but that's never fun to talk about.  So I'll end here.

Go Diamondbacks!!!

"Oh, Marilla. How much you miss!"

If anyone knows this line, then you're a kindred spirit (as Anne Shirley would say.) But this line from Anne of Green Gables keeps playing in mind every time I see my little blog sitting in my favorites bar completely untouched.  In the book/movie, Anne asks Marilla if she'd ever imagine life differently from what it is and when Marilla says no, Anne whose life is one big imaginative escape, can hardly believe it.

So I speak the line to myself -- Oh, readers (of this little family blog), how much you've missed, and how much I will miss if I don't start putting picture to screen and pen to paper.

You may remember I had the dilemma of defining Love in the Library - is it a place for quips, fine writing, deep questions and solutions, memoir-like storytelling --- the answer, no.  Because those things - they take time.  I will have to settle for pics and straight info just so I can overcome my fear that I will never, ever start writing again.  I'm frustrated that journaling has taken a back seat to everything else, but I kind of knew it would.  I knew when this started, that spending hours at Panera pounding out some Ward family moment would be short-lived.  I don't have the commitment - but I'm so glad for those who do because they inspire me.

With some guilt and some inspiration from other blogs I've read lately, I'm going to play a little catch up.  Short but sweet snippets, that's all, until I get my Anne-like imagination and typing fingers back.  Thanks for hanging on and checking in now and then.

What a symbolic picture to start my flashback series -- me climbing a mountain.  Okay, it's just a rock wall, but still - March, April and May have been a steep climb of kid activity, sickness, parent visits, friends with real problems that far outweigh ours, work and lots of discussions that went like this: "How in the world are we going to do this?!" and things like, "Are we ever going to eat at home?" and more things like, "When April is over, THEN I'll relax which was followed by, when May is over, THEN it'll all be good."  It's definitely been a climbing-barefooted-uphill-over-nobby-rocks kind of Spring.

But we've hung on -- and little by little, as time allows, I'm going to write it down.