The Braves

Riley had his first baseball practice for the season. He’s on the Braves this year. He was excited to find 2 familiar faces on his team. One was a boy who he played football with and another was a kid who’s in his class this year at school. Owen is beyond anxious to have his turn at practice and t-ball but we haven’t heard from a coach yet for him. If I don’t get a call this weekend, I think I’ll email the association and find out what is going on with his team.

It was cold last night at his practice. My fingers were numb by the time we left, but I don’t think the boys were cold at all. Owen even tried taking off his jacket a couple times saying he didn’t need it. I guess if I’d run in circles for the whole hour and a half I wouldn’t have needed mine either. They couldn’t get a field so they met at the batting cages and each had a couple turns hitting and then he had them line-up in the cages and field ground balls and throw them back to him.

The first thing the coach asked was if anyone had an issue practicing on Wednesdays and Sundays. I’m glad another Mom spoke up (pretty sternly) so I didn’t have to. Apparently all other days of the week are scheduled practice times (which we only have 4 scheduled times for the month of March) and on Wednesdays and Sundays all the fields are first come, first serve. Sunday afternoons wouldn’t be a problem for us, but Wednesday nights definitely would. I don’t want to pull the boys out of Awana’s for baseball. We’ll see what happens, I’m sure we’ll work out a balance one way or another.

Practice again tonight. We have a field for tonight’s practice, no batting cages. Hopefully it’ll be a tad bit warmer. Lance isn’t getting out of it tonight, we’ll all be cold together and then go find some dinner afterwards! There’s a new pizza place in Locust Grove we might have to try.

*** BREAKING NEWS ***
After emailing the association (and our neighbor) this morning, I found out Owen is on the Astros. How cool is that, Texas Heltons? I called home to tell him and he said he didn't like that team. He wanted to be on the Reds like he was last year, because that is his favorite color. I guess that is one way to pick your team, based on their team colors. He changed his mind a bit when we told him that the Astro's were his cousin Fletcher's home team.

Vacation Fun

Sorry for the delay in updating. I’ve been enjoying the week off with my kids. They are out of school all week. I had Monday as a holiday and took Tuesday and Wednesday off too. We had originally thought we might go to Parrott to camp and relax, but decided we’d relax more at home. We had a great week. We had a huge bon-fire most of the day Saturday as Lance burned lots of tree limbs and a couple of dead tree’s he’d chopped down.

We ended up at the school parking lot no less than 4 times for the boys to ride their bikes. If it’s possible I think Owen is now into riding his bike more than his brother. My car and Lance’s truck stayed out of the garage most of the week to accommodate their riding. Our gravel driveway doesn’t make for a great racetrack. They prefer the garage and then flying down the paved portion of the driveway and into the pasture. Lance is nearly done with his chicken-coop. That’s right, we’re hoping by early Spring we’ll have chickens. Lance wants them for the eggs, I think the kids are more looking forward to having them as pets. Owen has already named his – “Chicken Coop”. He said all week, “Chicken Coop is going to live in the chicken coop.” He cracks himself up.

Sunday afternoon Jacob and Ethan came over so Alice and Ronnie could go to a NASCAR party ({cough} redneck {cough} ). It was raining most of the time so the four boys stayed inside. Not as bad as it sounds, they played well together. We broke out the play-dough and they had fun ducking and hiding from bad-guys while armed with their nerf guns. Ethan kept calling me “Nanny.” I had to laugh but I really don’t mind. I liked having him all to myself. If his Mommy or his real Nanny is around, he never wants me but on Sunday he didn’t have many other choices (sorry Lance).

Tuesday the boys and I met Alice and her two at Pump-It-Up (an inflatable indoor playground). They all had fun doing that and then eating lunch afterwards. Ethan was still calling me Nanny, but that is OK. At least he let me hold him in Alice’s presence. I’ll take it.

Wednesday we took the boys to the Georgia Aquarium. We all enjoyed that. Lance and I had been, but not with the boys. There were lots of “Wows” and jaw-dropping moments to witness. There are several spots where the kids can crawl through a little tunnels and pop their head up in a plexi-glass bubble so it looks like they are in the aquarium or habitat with the animals. They especially loved doing that with the penguins. The beluga whales are mine and Lance’s favorites, they are really fun to watch. It seems like they are performing for you as they swim in front of the glass for you to watch. Riley said he liked the alligators, piranhas and the sea lions. Owen liked the sea lions and the whale sharks. It wasn’t a cheap afternoon (over $100 for the four of us to get in plus lunch!) but it was a lot of fun.

After the aquarium, we headed to Byron to meet Mom and Dad. Byron is a good half-way point for meeting between home and Parrott. They took the boys with them to Parrot for the rest of the week. I had to go back to work Thursday and Friday. It’s been raining since they’ve been there. Poor PawPaw and Nanny are stuck in a camper with my two wild boys. They did find a few breaks in the clouds yesterday to get some 4-wheeler riding done. Hopefully they’ll be more of that today and then Saturday it is supposed to be nice a sunny. I definitely enjoy the break when they are gone, but Lance and I both commented on how quiet and boring it is without them around. I started on our taxes last night (didn’t get much farther than installing Turbo Tax) and we watched Survivor and American Idol (flipping back and forth). We really know how to have an exciting, kid-free night – pizza, taxes, American Idol and Survivor.

I’m not sure what the plan is for tonight. Maybe we’ll treat ourselves to a date night – dinner and a movie sounds good.

Baseball and Bicycles

Our weekend was nice. We figured we better enjoy it because before we know it, baseball season will be in full swing and our Saturday’s will be spent at the ball field. I went down Saturday morning and signed both boys up for baseball. Owen will play in the same league he did last year with 3 and 4 year olds. Riley will move up to the 7/8 year old league since he’ll turn 7 in May and that is their cut-off. I hesitated about moving him up but then realized that since most of his fellow first graders will be moving up, that is where he should be. With a May birthday he is a few months younger than most of his friends but I think he’ll want to stay with them in baseball. The biggest change with this league is kid’s pitch. I think the kids throw 3 pitches and if they throw a strike then the coaches throw 3 pitches too….something like that. It’ll be interesting. Lance plans to start coaching Riley at home on his pitching since that is what he really wants to try. I wouldn’t be surprised though if it’s the 8 year olds that get that opportunity. Not the young-starting-the-season-as-a-6-year-old-but-almost-7-year-old on the team. We’ll see.

Friday we ate dinner at my Mom and Dad’s. Chili and hotdogs. It was good. No occasion. Mom and Dad are about to head out for a 2-week camping trip and wanted to see everyone before they left. I guess there’ll be more of these to come! They deserve it! My boys invited themselves to spend the night and of course Nanny and PawPaw said yes. Lance and I went home kid-free. Saturday morning I cleaned house – bathrooms, kitchen floor and hardwood floors. All were long overdue! Although not fun, it was so nice to be able to do it without any interruptions, no one running across my clean, wet floor and without the guilty conscience I always suffer for doing things like that rather than taking my kids to a park or doing something fun. I knew they were having a ball at Nanny and PawPaw’s. After I finally picked up the boys around 4pm or so, we stopped by Sam’s on the way home and picked up some steaks for dinner. We grilled out and watched The Game Plan on dvd for a family movie night. Cute movie. Riley had been dying to see it since it was in the theatre but we never made it. It’s a football movie and that is all he needed to know to make it a must-see in his book.

Sunday after church, we hung out at home. Lance did some yard work. Later Riley and I went to the school parking lot for a bike ride while Lance stayed home with a sleeping Owen. We finished the day with hamburgers on the grill and American Gladiator on t.v. Riley and Owen’s new favorite t.v. show. They have their own challenges during commercials taking turns being the competitor and the gladiator. I would never watch it if not for them, but it’s so much fun to watch with them. A new episode tonight, yeah!

Owen is running a fever today and coughing too. I pray it is short-lived and he doesn’t share with his brother, or anyone else. He’s moping around and not really acting like himself. This might explain the rare nap yesterday afternoon too. My poor O. Maybe Gladiator will cheer him up!

After I got home from work (and after some Motrin was at work in Owen), the boys were ready to head outside. Riley's latest obsession - his bike. He loves to ride it down our driveway and see how far he makes it into the pasture before he stops. He also learned the art of making donuts in the gravel. Even after a few crashes and some scraped up hands, he kept doing them. Dare devil! My little-not-so-dare-devilish-Owen also decided today that he was ready to try his bike. That's right, the one that he got for Christmas 2006 (thanks PawPaw and Nana!) and has never even wanted to sit on before (even with training wheels). Today he hopped on and was peddling himself all over the garage. No dare-devil stunts for him, but it was a very big deal that he decided to give it a try. I bet before the end of the summer, his training wheels will be gone too. Once on it, he was hooked and so proud of himself. He was begging me to take him to the park to ride but I told him we'd have to wait till another night. We'll have to go one day this week for sure.

5 minutes till American Gladiator. The boys are in their bean-bag chairs anxiously waiting. I better go join them.

Until next time….

Granny Lois

Today my grandmother would have been 91 years old. That is so hard to believe! She has been gone now for 16 years.

I like to imagine her soaking up all the glory that surrounds her in Heaven. I like to imagine she’s walking the streets of gold as she holds her son, Winston’s hand with my Grandfather Thearon, holding his other hand. As the song says, we can only imagine. But Granny Lois no longer has to imagine. She is experiencing it all first hand.

I remember when she died. I was a freshman at Georgia Tech. We had been to stay with her several weeks before, sure that she was going to Heaven then, but she’d pulled through. Weeks later when she died, my Dad came to tell me early in the morning as I was still in my bed. I had to call one of my professors to arrange taking an exam that I would miss due to the funeral.

My fondest memories of her are the holiday and weekend visits she and my Aunt Amelia would make to our house in Rex. Those memories I can clearly relate to a smell. I remember getting off the bus from school, running in our house and I could smell Este Lauder perfume. As a little girl I didn’t know the scent was from perfume, it was just the familiar smell that I knew meant Granny Lois and Aunt Amelia were visiting. To this day if I smell that scent at a mall cosmetics counter or on someone else in an elevator, my thoughts go back to those afternoons running in the house with excitement knowing that we had company.

I remember her sitting in a kitchen chair while Alice, Hannah (my cousin) and I dolled her up with make-up. She let us put on as much blue eye shadow as we wanted and went on and on about how beautiful we’d made her.

I remember lying in bed in Texas in Hannah’s room. She slept in Hannah’s bed and Hannah and I on cots. She always made us crack-up laughing at something. I remember her getting in bed one night looking up at the light above the bed and saying, “Goodness gracious, this must be a 1000 watt bulb!” That’s probably one of those ‘you had to be there moments’, but we laughed about that for a long time.

I remember my Dad putting on music in our living room over Christmas vacation and her trotting in the room, ‘cutting a rug.’ She loved to dance. She tried to teach me how to do the Charleston. She would hold up her skirt a little and dance away in her stocking feet.

I remember spending a week with her during the summers. We’d come out of the grocery store or hair salon and the black leather seats in her Chevy Impala would be so hot you couldn’t sit on them. She’d line the seats with Kleenex for us to sit on with our shorts.

I remember riding in that Impala with her, Hannah and Alice and us 3 girls acting scared to death because she was a maniac behind the wheel.

I remember she always had a candy dish in her apartment with Hershey’s Kisses. I think of her every time I have a Kiss.
I remember her red refrigerator.

I remember all her makeup and the fun we had making each other up as well as her.

I remember she bought me my first make-up kit for Christmas one year. Not sure my age, maybe 12. Of course it was an Este Lauder makeup kit.

I remember she loved to watch Wrestling on t.v. on Sunday afternoons.

I remember she loved to watch her ‘stories’ on t.v. during the day.

I remember that Chevy Impala was the only car she ever owned and my Grandfather bought it for her after they were married and he taught her to drive.

I remember her borrowing one of my yellow crayons to color in a scratch on her yellow Impala.

I remember she always called Hannah, “Missy”.

I remember going to the playground behind her apartment on Mercer’s campus and not being able to find her apartment when I was done playing. They were all identical and I couldn’t find hers. Some nice neighbors helped me.

We love you Granny Lois! How awesome it is to know that you are in His spectacular majesty. We rest in the peace of knowing that we will all be reunited again one day as you will no doubt great us at the gates and share with us all that you’ve enjoyed these last 16 years!

**** I know there are plenty of Helton’s who read this. If you are so inclined, leave your Granny Lois memories in the Comments section (Click on “Comments” at the end of this post). It will be fun to read what everybody writes. ****