Rockets

After you have been with a person for over half your life, it is hard to imagine that you find new reasons to fall in love with them all over again. But you do, again and again. I fall in love with my husband all over again each time I watch him father our children. He's a pretty terrific dad. He is hands on. He is loving. And he is fun.

We had a free summer weekend a few weeks ago. (A rarity indeed!) Chris made the spontaneous decision to take the boys to buy model rockets and build them. After the rockets were all built, launch was set for early the next morning.

Sleepy eyed and barely out of our pajamas, we trudged through a drizzly Sunday morning to the Whoville soccer field to the make shift launch pad.

The launch was a spectacular success:

I never, in a million years, would have conceived of a rainy morning spent exploding and chasing rockets. But it was perfect.

Just another reason to fall in love, all over again, with that sweet husband of mine.

Finding the Words

"Mom, when do I start kindergarten?" Brennan asks me, wide eyed. A question that he has repeated, almost daily, since the summer began.

"Two weeks!" I reply and then continue, "Are you excited for kindergarten?"

"Yes," but as soon as the "yes" escapes his mouth, he buries his head in his pillow and hides his eyes.

"B? Aren't you excited?" He shakes his head and says something I can't quite make out through the muffles.

"What B?"

"What if I am worried?" Brennan manages to get out from a mouth stuffed into a pillow.

"Worried? Are you worried?" I ask with concern.

Brennan nods his head yes, still avoiding my gaze.

"Why are you worried?"

Brennan sticks his head out for a brief second to reply, "That I don't know stuff. That I don't know how to read."

"But they will teach you how to read and Brennan," but before I can continue he shoves his head back into the pillow.

"I forget things and I mix things up and what will they do to me if I mix things up?" He asks with a muffled, scared, sweet voice.

My heart broke. Brennan is our jokester, our kind hearted boy who brings laughter and fun into each day. He is our snuggler, our lover, but I never knew, I never expected, that he was our worrier too.

It is one of those moments that you hope, you pray, that you say the right thing. That somewhere inside of me, I can find the words to bring him comfort and to keep him from his worries. I want him to see possibility. I want him to see opportunity. I do not want him to spend a day worried about the what-ifs or the I can'ts.

After a few moments, I had Brennan look at me and I reminded him of how proud I was of him. I reminded him of the time last week that his bike had broke. He asked me to fix his bike, but I told him I didn't know how to fix it so we would have to wait for Daddy to get home. He spent a half hour in the garage, by himself, and figured out how to fix that bike. The joy, the delight, the pride in his face when he stormed into the house to tell me he fixed his bike, without any help or guidance, was breathtaking.

I told him that is how I know he will be great in kindergarten, because above all, he is a hard worker. He takes the time and effort to figure something out and work hard until it is complete. And all success in kindergarten or anywhere else requires is hard work.

The memory of that day, the day he fixed his bike, brought a true smile to his face. I think it helped him. But my heart, it is still breaking a bit.

Age Smackdown

"Mom, when were you born?" Aidan asked as we snuggled on the couch.

"You mean what year was I born?" I asked.

"Yes. What year were you born?"

"I was born in 1972." I replied.

"1972? Wow!" Aidan exclaims with astonishment. "Did they, like, even have cars back then?"

Campout!

One of the items on our family "Summer Fun List" was camping out in the backyard. We finally had a free weekend to get camping crossed off our list. When Chris mentioned our camping plans to our friends' (and neighbors) the Watsons, they told us they wanted in! And so, the 2010 Backyard Camping Extravaganza was on.

Giant condo like tents, a backyard with a pool, hot tub, fire pit, sand box, trampoline and swing set. This was camping Whoville style.

After swimming and smores roasted on the fire pit, the kiddies were put to bed, snug in their sleeping bags. The Dads settled in with some adult beverages by the fire and the moms snuck home to sleep in their cushy warm beds.

I like Camping Whoville Style.

A Tennis Binge

My birthday present this year was a day of tennis. My first, ever, exposure to professional tennis up close and live, instead of on the tennis channel. Chris and I headed up to Toronto to see the quarter finals of the Rogers Cup. (Sort of like the US Open, only in Canada, eh?)

Chris purchased us gold level, fancy shmancy seats for the evening session matches, but at the last minute we decided we wanted to go up early and spend the day wandering the festivities to watch anything and everything. So, about twelve hours before we were going to leave we bought the cheap seats to the matinee session.

We arrived at the Rogers Cup at 10 am. It was like nirvana for a tennis player. All tennis, all the time. After seeing a few doubles matches and watching players warm up on courts, we headed to Centre Court to watch Nadal. Our economy level seats were one row up from the top. This picture gives you a good idea of where we sat.

The Nadal match had just started when a Rogers Cup official sat down next to us, smiled and asked us if we were enjoying ourselves. We smiled hesitantly and assured her we were. (I also convinced myself that we had someone offended someone, somewhere and we were about to get thrown out of the stadium. )

She smiled at us again and asked if we liked our seats. Huh. Sure, we said. The seats are fine. (Please don't kick us out. It's my birthday and all.)

She waited a beat and then asked with an even bigger grin, "Would you like even better seats?"

At our confused expressions, the official explained that she got to pick a few people out of the crowd, at random, to move up to the "Rogers Cup Fan Zone" in like the tenth row. Were we interested?

Hells yes, we were interested. And so we jogged down, down, and well, down to the sublime seats giggling all the way, feeling like that this could not possibly be happening to us. This is the sort of thing that happens to the people sitting in front of us, but us, never.

I could make out every expression on Nadal's sweet face. The seats were perfect. And I was, oh so happy.

After the Nadal match, we rushed over to the Grandstand, a smaller court at the Cup. There, we watched two doubles matches in the second row, so close I could hear the ball whizzing back and forth as it was hit at impossibly fast speeds.

The doubles was some of our favorite moments of the day. We saw the Bryan Brothers and Monfils (one of my personal favorites.) The ball and movement was so fast and the action so intense, it was just incredible.

After the two doubles matches, we hustled back to Centre Court for the Federer match. As we walked to our seats, a women dressed in a United Arab Emirates uniform stopped Chris, smiled and said, "Hi, I work for United Arab Emirates airline and I am randomly selecting ten people from the crowd to come out on Centre Court for a chance to win an all expenses paid trip to Dubai."

Yep. We really should have run out after the match and bought ourselves a lottery ticket. As it was, Chris looked at me aghast as I giggled uncontrollably.

And this is how my husband got himself the opportunity to walk through the players tunnel, see famous tennis players up close and stand next to Federer's wife. He also walked out onto Centre Court and had his handsome face up on the giant jumbotron.

It was a bit surreal.

(This is Chris lined up with the other contestants waiting to find out who won the trip to Dubai. I also took a picture of his face on the jumbotron, but unfortunately with the tricky night lighting, it didn't turn out.)

We didn't win the trip to Dubai, but we did take home a lovely parting gift, a nice duffel bag and a giant toy plane. And of course, one hell of a story.

At the end of the day, we saw almost all the top players play live. From Federer, Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, the Bryan Brothers, Monfils - it is all incredible and a perfect birthday present for the tennis fan.

Unpredictable Weather

The weather people are notoriously wrong about the weather. I would honestly like to see a percentage breakdown on the weather report's reliability. It can't be good.

This weekend, the weather man assured us, in a responsible and serious tone, that Saturday would be a beautiful, sunny day while Sunday it would rain cats and dogs.

It rained Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday morning, we woke up to a beautiful blue sunny sky. The weather was perfect, warm, but not too warm with a slight breeze brushing the trees.

After my Sunday morning tennis session, I told the boys we really needed to get to Wegmans to get our grocery shopping done. The cupboards and fridge were bare - and sorely needed restocking.

After their collective, boyish groans at the thought of a wasted sunny summer morning spent indoors shopping, I stopped and said this, "I will give you boys the choice of how we will spend our morning. We can either go to Wegmans and get our shopping done or we can go to the pool to swim and then eat lunch there."

It took them two seconds to pick the pool. I think I saw that one coming. And after spending most of the day judging cannonball competitions or catching a few quiet moments of poolside sun, I can't say I was disappointed with their choice.

The groceries can wait.