It was a long, hot and busy weekend. My uncle and cousin arrived at our place very late Thursday evening and left Sunday morning. We didn't get to spend a lot of time visiting, but we gave them a place to stay and they took care of Abby while the rest of us were at the ballpark. My cousin is only a couple of years older than Abby, so they were both pleased with the situation.
Friday and Saturday were extremely long days as both boys umped several games throughout each day for the Valley of Champions tournament. They also umped on Sunday but that was a "shorter" day though just as hot. They will be pleased with the money they earned and have plans to buy an
Xbox 360. As for me, all I got was a little bit of sunburn.
Sam's 15
th birthday was on Friday, although we really didn't have the time to do much of anything. As it was I had to hunt down a suitable cake at two different grocery stores Friday evening on our way home from the ballpark! The cake was good even if it did have blue roses on it, and Sam enjoyed his gifts. He received a pair of Toronto Maple Leafs work gloves, a new golf bag, and an 8x10 photo of Alexander
Ovechkin which says To Sam and is autographed. He loves it. I am jealous and wish my name was Sam.
I can't believe I have a 15 year old child! Aside from the physical aches and pains of aging, I still feel like I have barely finished my own teen years. Sam has also grown so much in the past year; it is amazing! It is difficult to believe that we were once concerned, because he wasn't growing much at all. Just over a year ago, Casey was slightly taller than Sam, but Sam has now surpassed
his brother by a significant margin. He has grown just over 8 inches in eleven months and is about two inches shorter than me now. I think he'll be taller than his mom by the end of the year!
Casey had his final two baby teeth pulled this morning as they were being stubborn and the permanent teeth were growing in over top. For all his bravado, Casey can be quite nervous about such procedures, but he did just fine. It took him quite a while to get settled for sleep last night. The thought of the needles made him very nervous. He's sucking on a
Popsicle now.
Last week during a routine clean and check-up, we learned that Sam is completely missing his top two 12 yr. molars! They never came in and they aren't hiding anywhere in his mouth, but he does have two upper wisdom teeth waiting for their time to erupt. I guess it is only natural then that Sam does not have any lower wisdom teeth. Everything balances out in the end!
Saturday night, Brent called Kane about meeting for coffee and a chat on Sunday afternoon. So, Kane met with him yesterday and things went well enough, I suppose. Brent didn't want to talk about what has happened over the past couple of weeks, except to say that Pat has certain times of the year that are more difficult than others. Huh? Sometimes I swear that Brent is as dense as slab of marble. What are we supposed to infer from his comment? Should we overlook her insults and hatred because it is July? How on earth does she get along with other people if she can't even maintain a basic level of decency with family? How many excuses can Brent make for her behaviour without even acknowledging the brutality of her actions or attempting in any way to apologize for it?
Come on! Lots of people have bad times...of the day, the week, the month, even the year! We've personally had a lot of those in the past year, but we're not lashing out at Brent and Pat the way they have to us. When Kane and the kids hit a deer in May, Pat lashed out at us in anger because she had bought a lot of food for them to eat while at her place but they never even made it to her house! She was mad at us, because my kids wanted to go home instead of to her house while I stayed at the hospital with Kane. She was mad at me for sending my kids home with one of my best friends of nearly 20 years instead of sending them with her, the psycho aunt that hasn't exactly been a stable figure in their lives for the past 10 years. She was mad at us for not thanking her enough for her help. I guess I didn't realize that we should have been entitled to lash out at Pat because we were going through a bad time...have to remember that for next time!
I'm not surprised. I expected as much as soon as I knew that Brent wanted to chat with Kane. I knew he didn't want to apologize. He is only interested in keeping Kane from getting too ruffled, because Brent and Pat have already alienated the other two brothers and who would Brent go golfing with if he completely alienated Kane, too. My feelings don't matter. But, he's wrong! This cannot be swept under the rug and "forgotten". We cannot pretend that it didn't happen, and Brent's desire to spend time with family just won't happen unless these things are dealt with properly.
I've been thinking a little about Pat and wondering about her social life. Of course, she is now in a new city and would be starting from scratch with the friend-making, but I wonder about her friends even from their previous residence. Pat talks a lot, all the time, non-stop, and yet I never hear her talk about her friends. She talks a lot about the parents of Payton's friends and schoolmates or neighbours but never about real friends of her own. Kind of makes me wonder...She doesn't seem to have a good relationship with her brother or father and, as I mentioned, Brent and Pat have destroyed their relationships with Brent's other two brothers. With Pat's words and actions toward us lately, I just can't see her carrying on a healthy relationship with anyone. Her expectations of others are so narrow and rigid, and her anger towards someone who fails to meet those expectations is volatile and unforgiving. I can't imagine a "friend" putting up with that for very long. I kind of feel sorry for Pat, because she is obviously a very troubled and lonely person, but I am not so much the fool that I want to be slapped around some more.
Well, I guess my pie crusts are sufficiently cooled by now to begin the task of making the filling. I have been wanting to make a cream pie for a long time now, but I don't have the energy to follow up on that urge. So, I'm taking the easy route and using frozen pie crusts and boxed mixes for a banana cream and a coconut cream pie. I am so lazy that I am going to combine the two mixes rather than cook two separate batches! What can I say?! It was a really long and draining weekend, today is my only real free day, and I am working the rest of the week. I suck at making pie dough from scratch anyway, but I still do want to make some cream pies from scratch one day.
I realized something today...that our summer so far has not flown by at the speed of light! We have become accustomed to spending the first half of the summer moving at a crazy pace: work, baseball practices, baseball games, baseball tournaments in town and out. By the time we hit August, we would be too burned out to do anything more than work and exist. Not this year!
We went to the beach last weekend. The sun was hot, the water cold, but we had a good time. Except for Sam who barely tolerated being dragged as far as the sand. He doesn't enjoy water and stayed full clad playing Sudoku on the beach. 
Kane put in a retractable screen door in the kitchen yesterday, and we're still getting used to the idea of the door being wide open unattended. The extra breeze through the kitchen is lovely, especially in the evening, and I love to listen to the whisper of the wind through the maple leaves. 
And July isn't quite over yet!
