Happy(?) St. Valentines' Day 2009

The family has been enjoying Grandma’s visit and enjoyed their day off from school. Grandma came in on Wednesday which was my daughter’s birthday and is here until Monday. The children have off from school today and on Monday so they get to spend extra time with Grandma. They spent the bulk of yesterday shopping for their birthday presents and as any Grandma does they did get what they wanted. I came home from work to see my daughter rollerblading around the house in her new roller blades and my son to be standing on his new skateboard. They were extremely happy with their gifts and I think my daughter went to sleep in her new rollerblades!!!

The weather has not been very good this week and I think there is a conspiracy against my son and his flag football games. Last week it rained and this week it rained again cancelling his game. This took care of the conflict between my daughter’s softball practice and my son’s flag football game. My daughter did have practice but it was very early this morning which didn’t make her very happy. She didn’t want to make her way to practice since it was earlier than she normally goes to school during the week. I talked her actually I directed her that she was going to practice and she did. This was the second time I had to direct her to go to practice as was the case on Thursday.

My daughter didn’t want to go but I pointed out to her that she would be fine and would actually have a good time at practice. After practice was over she said to me in a very shy way I did have a good time at practice and I am happy I went. This does mean a great deal to me because there is a balance I try to achieve in dealing with my children. I want them to make their own decisions because soon they will be of age when they will make their own decisions but there are times where I need to exert parent authority and it is so nice when they recognize this parental authority is in their best interest.

This morning I was up very early and we are dog sitting for a very good friend. It is great to have a dog and even though my wife is certainly not a dog person she was willing to help out this friend. I took the dog outside this morning and played a little fetch before my daughter was ready to go. We were off to the batting cages for my daughter’s softball practice. It is wonderful to be back in the swing of things and I saw a couple people I have met in the past few years at the batting cages. One is the owner of the batting cages who has developed into a very good friend. The other people were parents of boy on my son’s fall baseball team who had asked me if I were coaching again this season. I told them I am not coaching my son’s team but helping out with my daughter’s softball team.

My daughter’s softball team seems to have a plethora of coaches and my involvement will be minimal; however; I did get the partners at work to agree to sponsor the softball team which is great. At least I can volunteer my company as a sponsor and if the regular scorekeeper can’t make a game I am the back-up. I may not be involved as a coach like I was with my son’s team but watching my daughter is well worth anything. She has such heart and is such a competitor. She is quite the player in spite of her diminutive stature. She can hit the ball and has a great arm. She does need practice pitching and it appears she has the right coaches to guide her in this area. It should be a very interesting spring softball season.

The practice was over and we made our way home. Since the gym doesn’t open early enough on the weekends I had to postpone my workout until after the softball practice. I did get in a workout and made a decision to run the marathon at the end of April. I do need to see the softball and baseball schedule before ultimately committing but this is what I would like to do. I had a good workout but had to cut off the last few miles because I needed to help a friend with something this afternoon. This is a very dear friend who I continue to help over a very ironic situation. This friend internalizes everything and I do hope everything works out. While I was on my way to my friend’s house I had a conversation with my wife about what we were doing the rest of the day which so happens to be St. Valentines’ Day. We had an “interesting” discussion and later on during the day we did decide the best course of action. This was the best course of action for all parties and we had a very nice family Valentines’ Day dinner at the Souplantation.