Random haven't posted in a while post

Blog is better when I write more regularly. I am getting older and forget things. But even a collection of stuff that happened recently that I'm already starting to forget is better than nothing. Right? Right?

On Thursday I chaperoned Kate's class field trip to the Bruce Museum. It was a last-minute favor for someone who couldn't go, and it was a day that worked for me. I told Kate I'd be doing it on Wednesday night and her face lit up and she said "Yay!" That was nice.

Most of it was pretty easy; not like a field trip to the zoo or a play in New York City where there were scores of people milling around and I had to do headcounts every 2 minutes. The Bruce Museum is this quaint little spot in Greenwich that I've been to a few times, always on class trips with the kids (I think I went with one of their preschool classes way back when). It's filled with interesting information that I suppose nobody spends much time thinking about in this Internet age. But the class sat dutifully listening to information about Native Americans and what they ate and where they lived and it was kind of cool.

At various points we got in little groups and answered questions on worksheets together. Kate and her friends volunteered answers, I wrote them down. Then we did a tour of a "small scale" exhibit where artists had made miniature landscapes. Then we went into a little classroom where the kids made mini landscapes on paper with markers and little figures. This was where the chaperones did the most, tearing off pieces of tape and helping with folding and the like. We finished the projects, Kate was very proud of hers. I hugged her goodbye and she went back to her school until I picked her up an hour later.

On Saturday afternoon we had a family portrait taken. It was the first time in a few years we'd had that done and considering the effort that went in to it (mostly Emily) it's not surprising. Everyone had to get their haircut and styled. (Yes everyone! No jokes please.) Clothes had to be purchased, tried on, modeled and replaced. People had to shave (me). Nose hairs had to be trimmed (uh, could be anyone). The weather was nice and we went to nearby Crawford Park to meet the photographer, who snapped a hundred pictures and I'm confident we'll get one or two good ones. I'm sure when I see the ones of the kids I will cry, in a good way, and do the same years into the future.

Last Sunday morning was Jack's last Fall Travel baseball game. I write a lot about Jack's baseball team so I didn't feel it was required to write much about this one. But all day afterward I felt the fact that it was something ending. He turns 12 next year (gah!) and so next Fall he'll be considered too old for Little League. Maybe he'll play baseball (and it is a maybe; he'll need to try out and make a team, probably with a lot of older players, and it's more expensive, and whatever the case he'll have different teammates and different coaches -- not including me. It will all be different. So us getting up on a Sunday morning and going off to an October baseball game and me making out the lineup and being in the dugout watching him joke around with his friends and pitch and get a big hit or not (He did all those things)...those Fall days have come and they were awesome. And now they're gone, living on only in our ever hazy memories.

And this blog, like everything else. I'll try to write more often.