This week begins what I like to think of as Summer’s Final Stretch, the reason being that the kids’ swim season officially ended this past Saturday so they now have no official reason to rise at any particular time.  Until then they were required to be at swim practice every morning at 9:45 so they had to rise by 9:00 at the latest.  Now, they’re sleeping ’til noon, but unfortunately for them this state of affairs will only last two weeks.

Quick aside: I miss the days I could sleep that late.  Bladders over 40 years old don’t allow it.

The kids were with our church’s youth group at mission camp at Laurel Ridge all last week so they missed the week of practices leading up to the league championships which were held Friday night and Saturday morning.  Instead they spent their week painting buildings, manning weed whackers, laying flagstones and doing various and sundry other good deeds.  They returned on Friday afternoon at 1:00 and I treated them to lunch at Cicciones since we didn’t have a whole lot of food in the fridge (more on why later).

After lunch the kids rested up and then we headed over to Clemmons West pool at 4:00 for championship warm ups.  Michael and most of his buddies were alternates in the 15-18 group; we have some real hardcore swimmers at that level so it’s no slight on Michael or his buddies and they’ll get their chances next year.  Erin swam three events and Justin swam five.  Both of them won some ribbons so it was a pretty good night.  After the meet a bunch of us from the team made our way over to Mi Pueblo for a late dinner and we stumbled home about 12:00.

Another quick aside: I should never eat refried beans after 8:00 p.m. Ever.

The younger kids’ (under 10) championship heats are held on Saturday morning and luckily for us none of our kids are in that age group any more so we got to sleep in a little.  That left the end of year party and awards ceremony at the pool on Saturday night.  We got there at 6:00 and I found out that a couple of friends were going to go to the races at Bowman Gray at 7:30 and I got the okay from Celeste to join them.  Sweet reprieve!  Alas, it wasn’t to be.  The awards ran longer than expected and I would have had to leave before our kids’ age groups awards, including championship ribbons, were given out.  I didn’t want to miss it since this is the first year we’ve been able to make the awards banquet and I wanted to see them get theirs. 

So I backed out and didn’t get my chance to experience ladies night at Bowman Gray, which I’ve been informed provides the largest assemblage of tattooed boobs in America, with the possible exception of a Jimmy Swaggart revival. Tragic, I know. Instead, Celeste and I hung out at the pool to help with chaperoning the teenagers who’d been allowed to swim until midnight.  Apparently in years past they’ve had an all-night lock-in which to me is unthinkable punishment for any adult who has to be involved.  Saner heads prevailed this year.

This summer also featured Michael’s first year of football workouts.  Every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday he had morning workouts from 9-12 and they were a beast.  Between swimming and football he’s gotten in the best shape of his life.  This week the coaches are taking vacation and then next week they start regular practices.  Michael will be missing that week (with the coach’s permission) since we’re taking our family vacation, so he’ll have a two week break when all is said and done.  I don’t think he yet realizes that he’s going to be doing some Dad-led workouts so that he doesn’t lose too much ground before he starts practices upon his return.

And of course practices for Erin’s soccer team will begin in earnest when we return (actually they start the week we’re gone) and since I’m also a coach on the team we’ll be pretty much hip deep in soccer related stuff from then until December.  The first tournament is the weekend after we get back so it gets crazy fast.

Thus we’ve reached the swan song for Summer ’08.  Each year the summer seems to pass faster, and each year I feel even more nostalgic for the seemingly never ending summers of my early childhood.  Then I remember that the kids will be back in school soon and the constant requests for chauffeuring services will finally come to an end.  Sweet!

Oh, and as for why we had no food to feed the kids upon their return from camp, let’s just say that Celeste and I didn’t waste our first week ever of having all three kids at camp at the same time.  We dined out every chance we could and we even took the opportunity to hit a wine tasting at Wine Merchants Gourmet on Wednesday night.  This was our first glimpse of the future when the kids will be flying the nest, and while I’m sure we’ll have a terrible time dealing with empty nest syndrome with that time comes I think we’ll also find many ways to enjoy our time as a couple with kids who call us when they’re short on cash.

The youngest had some baby teeth that just didn’t want to come out and the adult teeth were coming in under them.  We found this out when we took him in to get his braces and they said they couldn’t do it until his baby teeth were out, so we scheduled an appointment at Kingery & Kingery to have those stubborn baby teeth forcibly evicted from his mouth.  You can see the result to the left (hope you didn’t just eat).

The weird part was seeing the adult teeth in the holes left after the baby teeth were removed, and also seeing how long the roots on the baby teeth were.  I shudder to think what would have happened if we hadn’t had the teeth removed.

Sadly for Justin he’s old enough that the idea that he would be remunerated by some tooth fairy for his ordeal never entered his head, nor the heads of the tooth fairies themselves.  The way this tooth fairy looks at it those funds have been banked for the orthodontist, who I believe has been able to finance a boat from the braces my three kids have endured (are enduring).

As I wrote last week we started our camp season off this year by dropping our oldest off at App State for their forensic science camp.  We picked him up on Saturday and learned that he was one of 6 boys out of 23 total attendees.  In other words there was almost a 3-1 girl to boy ratio.  We also learned that he is inordinately honest and blunt when he’s sleep-deprived because before he passed out on the drive home he told us that he’d stayed up to all hours the last two nights of the camp, and that he and some of his new friends had "played a game called 10 fingers and another nasty game you don’t want me to tell you about."  Celeste is now convinced that he is eternally changed by the camp experience and that he lost his innocence while cavorting in the mountains.  She also implored me to talk to him and inform him that he is in no way to share his newfound games with his siblings or neighborhood friends.  Personally I think there’s lots of trouble in the neighborhood that we just haven’t heard about, and that if we deprived our kids of sleep for two days we’d find out all about it.   I’m not suggesting we do that because if we do Celeste will never let the kids leave the house again, and if there’s anything I fear more than teenage mischief it’s being stuck in the house with them on a full time basis.

Making matters more stressful this weekend was our daughter’s revisiting that teenage daughter zone known as "TheWorldRevolvesAroundMe-Ville" and the equally distressing tin ear she has to her parents’ displeasure.  The boys seem able to recognize the signs that they’re ticking their parents off and will back off of making "Can I …" requests.  Not our daughter.  Just moments after being rather harshly rebuked for making a presumptive request via cell phone at 12:30 p.m. for a ride home from a sleepover at precisely 1 p.m. on Sunday, and being told that said ride wasn’t going to happen because she was within easy walking distance of home and her family was at that moment waiting to be served their post-church lunch at IHOP, she promptly called back to see if we’d bring her bathing suit to her at the pool after we got home from lunch, that way she wouldn’t have to walk home and walk to the pool.  Unfortunately she hadn’t seemed to pick up on the harsh part of the rebuke, a talent unique to her in our gaggle of kids, so the doubly harsh rebuke she got induced a bout of pouting felt by her father sitting in the greasy spoon five miles away.  I don’t react well to pouting so I was ready to ground her for months, but I’d already hung up so I let it go.

To provide some context we had a little mother-daughter encounter on Saturday when the younger of the two asked the older if she had any more razor refills because she needed to shave her legs before the big weekend.  Mother informed daughter that all the refills were gone because someone had used most of the six pack.  Daughter replied that she’d only used one, to which mother replied, "Well I’ve only used one so I wonder who used the rest?"  Daughter, instead of backing off, gives that ever so annoying teenage shrug and says, "I dunno."  This happens on a recurring basis in our house as the daughter seems to think that her Mom’s store of female related stuff is her own personal RiteAid.  If she wants to set a bomb off in Mom’s head that’s how she does it, but tragically she doesn’t intend to do it, she just does it and then stares gape-mouthed at us as we chew her out.  The girl was on thin ice from that point on.

Thankfully our daughter stayed at another friend’s house last night and that friend’s Mom dropped them both off at camp this morning.  That created a natural cease fire in the house and the resident Mom has already graduated from offpissedness to worried-and-missing-her mode.  Dad’s just as befuddled as he always is.

I truly don’t know how we’re going to survive the next 10 years.

Well, summer camp season officially dawned for us this morning.  Celeste and I got up at 5:00 to roust our oldest child Michael from bed so we could drive him to Appalachian State University for a four day camp that focuses on forensic science.  Essentially it’s a "CSI" camp, and after seeing the agenda I’m highly jealous that I don’t get to spend four days at App State studying fingerprints, DNA extraction, arson, etc.

Actually, there’s another very good reason I’m jealous of Michael.  You see when I went to camp it was pretty much all guys.  I went to Wes Unseld’s basketball camp for a week when I was 12 and it was all guys.  I went to Camp Minnehaha in the mountains of West Virginia for a month one summer in my early teen years and it was all guys.  So we’re pulling away from the dorm that Michael’s staying in and what do we see but a boatload of cheerleaders crossing the street on their way to the big athletic field house that happens to be next door to Michael’s dorm.  Michael’s camp coincides with a cheerleader camp!  The boy is 15?!  I’m thinking that DNA extraction might be the last thing he’s thinking about studying.

On the flip side, he’s staying in a dorm room that if I’m any judge is about 25 years old.  No AC, although up in the mountains I don’t think it will be that big a deal, but it still has that old dorm smell.  Think high school football player’s locker at the end of the season and add a touch of river mud and you’ll be close.

Next week our middle child, Erin, leaves for a week long camp that is exactly five minutes from our house.  Not sure if that actually counts as "going to camp" but she’ll be out from under our roof so I guess it should.  Then in the third week of July all three kids will be heading to Laurel Ridge with our church youth group for mission camp.  Who do you think is having a party that week?

Last night we drove on down to Davidson County where my Grandmother, known to all as GG, is now living in an assisted living facility.  My Aunts put on a surprise party for her to celebrate her 89th birthday and I think she was tickled pink. 

She’s in great health at 89 as evidenced by the fact that she blew all those candles out in one breath.  Losing a great percentage of her eyesight a couple of years back has caused her to change her lifestyle as you might expect, but she soldiers on.  Every year for at least the last 15 she’s thanked everyone for celebrating her "last" birthday with her.  She comes from a long line of women who live longer than Methuselah so we figure we’re going to have her around for at least another 15 years.

Ever since she moved into her current digs GG has complained about the food, but I’ve been informed by my Aunts that despite those complaints she’s managed to put on about 15 pounds (which is a good thing, btw).  She also claims homesickness.  Sounds just like a college freshman doesn’t it?  She really is young at heart.

Happy Birthday GG! 

My kid sister Leslie got herself married this past Memorial Day weekend to a fine young man named Ian James.  They had an outdoor wedding on Saturday during a picture-perfect evening on the grounds of Stepne Manor in Chestertown, MD. 

The bride and groom were definitely happy and ready to get on with their lives. Ian’s also a twin so there were lots of jokes about them having twins at a minimum and more likely quadruplets.  The wedding was a small, family affair so unlike many other weddings I’ve been to everyone from both sides of the aisle had ample opportunity to meet each other.

I actually have two kid sisters, twins don’t you know, who managed to
balance out the family’s "attractive meter" after three older brothers
skewed it to the "un" side of the dial.  They both looked lovely on
Saturday.

I think Dad is relieved that he got this one out of the way since this is the first daughter he’s married off, thus this is the first one he was on the hook for.  Now he just has to wait for the call from Vanessa, but I don’t think he’s in a rush.

In other words I think Dad can wait a while for his next dance.

So our youngest son, Justin, turned 12 this weekend.  Hard to believe, but in one year all of our kids will be teenagers.  If you’d asked me last year if I felt old enough to have three teenagers I’d have said "no way."  Well, having just two has aged me exponentially and I have a feeling that having a third is going to push the turbo button on the energy sapping, gray hair producing process known as parenting teenagers.

Of course that means I’m really starting to relish the waning moments of true childhood.  Justin and his buddies still do the silly, juvenile things that boys are known for.  Well, okay, we males never truly outgrow doing silly, juvenile things but at least it’s still appropriate for him.  That means it was annoying, yet acceptable, that he and his two friends decided to reenact much of Iron Man after we left the theater on Saturday.  Luckily they only came close to knocking over an AARP member four or five times while we waited in line at Kernel Kustard.  It also means that it was totally understandable that after several hours of hanging out with those kids I was ready to retreat to a cave with a case of beer, not to be heard from for at least 24 hours. 

Unfortunately in the next couple of years we’ll be past the age of innocence and we’ll be hip deep in teen angst on three different levels.  Think about it.  In three years we’ll have an 18 year old son, a 17 year old daughter and a 15 year old son.  Our garage will be full of Clearasil, my psyche will be bruised from all the accusations of being a total dork who just doesn’t "get it" and our bank account will hold only a whiff of the money it used to contain.  Oh, and we’ll be on the precipice of having three kids with drivers licenses, not to mention the impending drama of sending kids off to college at which point I’m pretty sure I’ll be shuttling Celeste to daily therapy sessions (she hates it when I do these "picture the future" things).  Good night, I need a beer just thinking about it.

So let’s just say that running around with a few pre-teen boys, no matter how out of control they may seem, is actually something I cherish.  And to be honest I’m going to miss having the "boy" Justin around.  He’s a unique, wonderful kid and I’m positive he’s going to be an amazing young man, but I’d like to keep the kid around a little longer if I can.  I know it’s impossible, but one can wish.

Happy birthday J.

We, my family, were eating in a sports bar/restaurant a couple of days ago and something tickled our funny bones and we ended up laughing hysterically for a few minutes.  In the midst of our mirth I noticed people at surrounding tables staring at us.  Staring like you stare at someone with a large growth in the middle of their forehead.  I wondered if we were being too loud and then thought "How can you be too loud in a sports bar?"  No, there were definitely people being as loud as we were so that wasn’t the issue.  Then I wondered, "Is it really so rare to see people laughing, hard, in a public place?" Unfortunately the answer was yes.

I consider it one of the great fortunes of my life that we have teenagers and yet we still have our moments of absolute joy and between those there’s lots of "regular" laughter.  I’m knocking on wood as I type this.