Killing Time

I probably shouldn't title this post like I did, but let's face it--a lot of what we're doing right now is simply keeping us occupied while we wait for Disney in less than a month.  In fact, a month from now we'll already be back home (sigh).  I apologize that it's been so long between posts, but I've been composing one going over all my Disney overthinking and it's still not entirely done.  Clearly there's a lot to think about...again.  However, we have plenty to do at home before we go, be it Disney decisions, another reunion, camp, school shopping, work, or sports.  I know how this usually goes, though.  It feels like we're waiting forever and only have a couple exciting things to do in the meantime, but all of a sudden we're a week out and there isn't enough time to get it all done.  But here's what we've been up to in the meantime...

A couple weeks ago Carter went to his first soccer camp.  We accidentally missed all of the big college ones this summer--I just couldn't get my act together, for whatever reason--but there was still one left at the sports facility down the road where both boys first tried out soccer years ago.  I figured it was worth a shot, so we signed up the week prior and off he went!

It turned out he really liked it.  One of the kids from his soccer team last summer was there, which I think helped.  He seemed to settle in pretty quickly and generally had positive things to say at the end of every day.  He also had good feedback on his week-ending report card, which was probably not grading him on a super tough scale, but I think he probably needed the confidence boost.  It's a little different than, say, Jacob doing the basketball camp at UR and getting graded by actual college players who know what it takes.  The weather was a little iffy between rain and extreme heat so they spent more than half the week inside.  I think he preferred that most of the time, but it made for a few dirty days thanks to those black turf pebbles.  He liked it enough that we're doing another week next week.  I think it's good to get him out of the house and away from screens for at least a couple weeks of summer.  He's had plenty of lazy time so he can survive a couple weeks of early mornings and running around all day.  I took a picture of him on the last day, and it's pretty crazy to compare it to his last day of his micro soccer program at this same place, right before he turned five.

Ahhh, look at that little baby face!

The following Sunday was my family reunion at the beach.  I'm a bit more involved with this one now because I've taken over updating the family tree database and also created an organized email list so we can email people correctly rather than just forward (again) to a list used five years ago.  My uncle has been a huge help and my cousin is still the brains behind it all, setting up the reservation and handling some other logistics, so this is the least I can do.  The reunion is dying a bit.  We used to have a ton of people filling one of the shelters at camp, tables upon tables of dishes to pass and everyone at their own set of picnic tables with their KFC or subs or whatever their family's main course was.  We'd eat, sit through the boring family meeting while we digested, and then finally go down to the rocky beach where we'd rough up our feet, get seaweed in our bathing suit, and get the inevitable sunburn that made for a very uncomfortable ride home.  But it's tradition, and I love it.  Unfortunately, as families have grown and moved, earlier generations have passed on, and later generations are losing their close connections, things have gotten pretty slim.  There are a couple dozen hardcore attendees, and beyond that it gets a little sparse.  It's sad, but I'm not sure how you stop that drift if people won't come to firm up those connections.  I did just start a Facebook group for it moving forward, so maybe that will help remind people how fun the event can be, but it's a tall order at this point.  We may also lose the place where it's been held for almost all of the last 60ish years.  It closed for a bit around the pandemic so we skipped one year and did another year elsewhere, but it has now reopened and been rejuvenated, but the cost to rent a spot has gotten pricey and it just may not be worth it anymore.  On the bright side, my dad's family's other reunion, which used to be held in his cousin's backyard in East Aurora, has now shifted to camp because a lot of the cousins come in and rent cottages for the weekend.  So hopefully we'll have that for a few more years, at least.  But despite the challenges, Carter and I still had fun!  For starters, it was a perfect day!

It wasn't too hot, and the clouds were just enough to keep the sun from being oppressive.  The breeze was perfect.  Later on, the rain clouds came in from out on the lake just as we were wrapping up at the beach, but it never rained on us.  But before that we made a fabulous castle and moat, with Carter once again aiming to get the water to stay in the moat for more than a few seconds.

I always love being on that beach, despite the rocks.  I very much enjoyed walking along looking for fun rocks and beach glass.  We found some fun ones, and brought home a few more to line my flower beds.  This is a deceptive angle, but this is the full panorama.  In real life the shoreline in front of me is straight before it curves out just at the ends.  But it's lovely with the lake breeze and gentle lapping of the water.  If you look close in this picture, you can see the rain storms on the other side of the lake.

In the end, Carter was satisfied with our build!

We wrapped up and got changed before heading out.  I had a little plan for the way home--to stop at Darien Lake!  I mean, we have season passes and it wasn't a long detour along our route home, so why not?  We could stop in for as long as we wanted, ride what we could, and go home, all for free.  Of course, we got there and were met with a totally full parking lot because there was a country music festival that day.  That also meant that lines were a lot longer than we had faced so far.  We went to Ride of Steel, Predator, and Tantrum and were met with prohibitively long lines, so we skipped them.  We did see that Shipwreck Falls is once again doing the big splash it didn't do when we went with my family, so that's good to know.  Our favorite waterpark slide was still down, too, unfortunately.  Even though we weren't doing the waterpark, I was hoping it would be a good sign it would be back open for next time.  We finally found shorter lines at two rides we had talked about doing, the Haymaker and Silver Bullet.  I was a little worried about both because they spin.  I hadn't ridden them in over 20 years, so I wasn't sure, but I knew I had to try at some point this summer.  We did Haymaker first.  I felt pretty good about that one since I can survive the swings okay, and sure enough, it was good.  Carter really liked how it felt when you swooped up into the air, and I had forgotten how fun it was.  And it was a nice view!

Silver Bullet worried me a little more because it used to make me a little dizzy even when I was a teenager, and back then I could ride (almost) anything (darn you, Zipper).  But I knew it was a super fun ride, so I had to try it for Carter's sake.  

My favorite ride partner!

It actually went a lot better than I expected.  I felt fine while I was on it--aside from the weird jolts and subsequent wobbles of the cars, which I think probably happens when it stops lifting and starts descending again.  I don't remember that from when I was younger, so it may be age or whatever, but other than that being a bit unnerving, it was fun...and mercifully short.  I had a couple twinges of a headache after, but nothing like I expected could have happened.  So we'll call that a win!  

We didn't do much else because we didn't want to stay too late after an already long day.  We were also planning on hitting up the new Popeye's at the recently reopened Thruway rest area for a late dinner, so we had to keep that timing in mind.  We did get a front-row ride on Motocoaster, which is always a favorite, and when we went back to Ride of Steel the line was just peeking out of the station, so we decided that was fair.  We had a lovely almost-sunset ride.  We were further back this time (by design) because I know that it supposedly always feels faster and more intense when the back cars are getting pulled down the hill by the rest of the train.  I feel like we hadn't tested out that theory much this year, so why not...and sure enough, it felt so much more intense.  I loved it!  Front cars are great, too, but that was fun!

It was a short trip, but with the weather being exceptionally pleasant, it just made for a lovely evening.  I still wish we could have ridden more, but it was a fun use of our pass to just waltz in and waltz out.  It's going to be a tough call for next year if we do it again, but I did tell Carter he could opt to put that on his birthday or Christmas list if he really wanted to do it for another summer.  We headed out and had a bit of a harrowing Popeye's run--it was nearing closing time and they were starting to run out of stuff.  The manager was visibly frustrated, and a lot of people were waiting on chicken sandwiches that were apparently still cooking (probably because the tenders were absurdly expensive).  It took a solid 20+ minutes to get our food, but we were in such a good mood it didn't even matter.  It was Carter's first Popeye's chicken sandwich and he admitted it was pretty great!

Recently Carter has been showing an interest in baseball.  I don't know if it just started because the boys play a bunch of MLB The Show on Xbox, or because we went to Pittsburgh, but lately they've played a bunch in the yard and gone to the diamond a bit.  Jacob has also rekindled his love of baseball in the process, probably because basketball has been frustrating due to his injuries and it's been nice to just play a sport for fun for a change.  I think it's cool that the boys can finally bond over something, though I question why it had to take this long.  Jacob could have been teaching Carter stuff like this for years.  Jacob now regrets giving up baseball for lacrosse and asks us why we let him quit.  As if we had a choice at the time...ha.  He will never admit how into lacrosse he was, but he definitely chose travel lacrosse over baseball at the time.  Had we known we probably would have done things differently, because Jacob was way better at baseball compared to his peers than he was at lacrosse, but he was good at lacrosse and I suppose the attention from a travel program felt important.  He'd definitely have been able to play high school ball if he stuck with it.  In fact, even with barely playing in the last seven years or so, he went out and hit a home run last Sunday at a high school field while Carter and I were at the reunion.  He keeps talking about playing in high school (which would ironically be for Bishop Kearney where he went two schools ago, since they partner in some sports with his current school), but I don't know how that would work with spring travel basketball.  But anyway...

We had talked about Carter doing fall baseball and seeing how he stacked up, but he also wanted to play fall soccer.  I was a little worried that he'd be far behind seasoned players (especially with catching), and I felt like fall soccer was important this year because he'll have to play 13U in the spring and they only offer that age for the fall, so we figured it would be a good preview.  So, as a compromise, we found that our Little League has an August sandlot session.  It was only $60 for twice-a-week sessions throughout the month.  We'll have to miss the last two, but eight sessions isn't half bad.  If it went well, it would be a great starting point, and if it didn't, it was just a month.  At worst, we wouldn't be out much money if we decided it was a disaster worthy of quitting early.  Of course, then he had to get cleats (which in the end he probably didn't really need) and then we had to unearth the baseball pants (which fortunately fit him despite Jacob being done with them a bit younger than Carter is now), but luckily we had most of what he needed already.  

Sandlot is super casual - basically just a couple helpful dads herding squirrels.  It's about eight kids total on any given night right now, so they split up and take turns being in the field and batting.  Usually it's been 4-on-4, but they have thrown all the kids in the field and just switched out one at a time to be batter.  Two hours is long for disorganized baseball, especially when the kids pitch and/or are hesitant to swing.  Kid-pitch was probably the big reason we didn't mind Jacob quitting at the time (so many games called to darkness...in June!), and these kids aren't nearly as good as those kids.  It seems like a lot of parents did the same thing as us--gave their soccer kids a chance to try out baseball for a bit.  I don't think any of these kids have played organized baseball at all, or at least not recently.  It's pretty bad ball--batting is okay but catching and fielding are atrocious--but they're having fun and making it work.  It blows my mind that Carter is already older than Jacob was when he quit, because he seemed pretty big back then and now these kids seem pretty young.  I found this post from his last official season, although I think he played fall ball once after this.  I guess they were pretty little, but I suppose perspective changes after you have a true big kid!  

Overall, Carter did well.  He got hits in all but one of his at-bats, although they weren't doing the standard balls/strikes.  They essentially had a bunch of pitches or swings for something to happen--like 14 pitches or five swings, whichever came first.  He even pitched and didn't do half bad.  All in all it was better than I thought since he had so little experience going in, but it helped that no one could catch and everything was pretty casual.

Pitching!

I'm proud of him for trying something new.  I can't say I'm looking forward to cooking dinner super early twice a week and spending four hours per week of my remaining summer evenings sitting on bleachers watching iffy baseball, but it's fine.  I think next year he could skip fall soccer and do fall ball instead, and maybe we look for a baseball camp or two in addition to soccer camp next year.  

I have to say that it's such a different experience doing sports with a kid who's not looking to make it big.  He can try things out, do what's fun, and just enjoy it with no pressure.  I think if Carter can stick with one sport long enough to play modified, or even high school, that would be fun.  I think music might be a better fit for him in the long run since he did seem to take to it well, but I like the thought of having a well-rounded kid over these next few years!

Anyway, it's on to another week and being only three weeks out from our trip.  Work and sports will keep us busy this week, then my next reunion is next weekend, and I have a concert (yay!) in Buffalo with Mary (double yay!) the following Monday.  Craig has his college league national championship early that week (thankfully just Utica and not California this year), so things could get a little crazy then for a few days.  And I'm still trying to figure out if there's any window of time where Carter and I could get away to ride crazy coasters.  Disney's are fun, but he's ready for some doozies and has been waiting patiently!  I have been frontloading a ton of my work just in case, but either way it's going to be tough.  Sounds like plenty to fill three weeks right there, don't you think?