Memorial Day weekend was a pretty good, if low-key, start to summer. This year we weren’t camping, or doing a garage sale, or anything, so we could just relax a bit. During the week, Monday was the Lincoln’s Got Talent show, in which Beth was a judge again this year. Mostly singing, some instruments, a few gymnastics, a cool light show, the whip and nae-nae while wearing giant teacher heads, and a kindergartner telling jokes. Tuesday, the softball team played the other last-place, winless team. We played them close, but they broke a tie in the last inning with an enormous, gigantic walk-off home run to straightaway center field, hit off me. So now last place is ours alone. The weekend really began last Thursday, with the elementary school graduation for Missy and Natalie. That ceremony does go on and on and on….but Missy was asked to introduce her class as they came in to the gym, which was awesome, and she received the citizenship and reading awards for her class as well as the “art heart” award for the entire 6th grade. Natalie won the most improved award for her class too. In the evening, the middle school did their end of year awards, which wasn’t as big a deal but Alex got two awards, one for high honor roll and one for reading. On Friday I heard something I rarely do from Beth: it was a fun field day. School’s over, now next year all 3 of the kids will be in middle school. Everyone slept late Saturday (except me, I did a 12+ mile bike ride/geocache run around town) and I started work on fixing one of the really beat up screens in the camper, since we’ve decided to keep it rather than sell it. I’m kinda making it up as I go, but the plan is: Cut the old screen out along the stitches to the canvas; lay the old screen atop a length of new (rolled-up fiberglass replacement screen), cut around the old screen leaving 1.5 inches around the perimeter of the old screen, fold and glue the 1.5 inches over to make a hem, glue and clamp the top edge back over the old seams, and work down gluing the new screen in. We’ll see how well it works. If it works I’ll post an instructable type video on YouTube. Sunday we all went to Nappanee to go to Rocket Science and do some geocaching, but they were closed so Dairy Queen filled in. The geocaches, all within the town, were fiendishly well hid. We found one of three. Monday was the Tracy Yeager Memorial 5k which I ran, finishing 118th overall with a time of 26:00 flat. Slow. It was unusually warm for Memorial Day, and I was hoping to get the pool set up, but the pool place was out of the hose filter I need so hopefully I’ll do that early next week.

It was a rough week in patches. Natalie went to cheer tryouts Monday through Wednesday after school, but ultimately she did not make the squad and her best friend did. And her friend was a real shit about it. Tuesday we played the best team in the league and got to play a whole 4 innings with them before the mercy rule was applied; if the last out had fallen into right field instead of being a diving, shoestring catch, we would have scored another run and played another inning, but it was not to be. I gave up a couple towering homers, and otherwise they hit the ball pretty hard all night. I did catch a couple hard comebackers, including one that came like a rocket and it really blew away the batter that I caught it. Thursday was the 6th grade Chicago trip to the Museum of Science & Industry, which for some reason just seems to get smaller every time I go to it. Anyway, the group of girls I had to keep an eye on included Missy and her friend Abby, plus the cheerleader friend of Natalie’s and two of her friends. We stopped at a travel plaza on the tollway for packed lunch just before getting to Illinois then headed on to MSI, and spent all afternoon there. We didn’t pay extra to see anything but did go see the U-505, the mirror maze (the biggest hit, again), and everything else. We were going to eat dinner at the museum but they closed earlier than we thought, so we stopped at the same travel plaza going home and ate at the Hardee’s, which was totally unprepared for a crowd our size and it took over an hour to get everyone served. By the time we got our food we were in full scarf mode. We got home about an hour and a half late. Friday night, while Missy was at a sleepover at Hampton Inn with her friend Abby O, Natalie had been invited to go roller skating by some of her friends, including the cheerleader…Beth and I were not enthusiastic about leaving her with the crowd that hangs out there, but we let her go until 10:30 instead of their closing time of 2:00 am. But around 9:00 she called us in tears, the cheerleader had been a real shit to her again, lots of name calling, and someone there dumped a drink on her. I ran out to get her out of there as fast as I could. The rest of the weekend was damage control. Her older half-sister had a baby shower on Saturday, which she wasn’t sure about going to, but Beth went with her so she would go. She and Beth made a tied-together baby blanket for her which really impressed her. Her dad was there too, which almost made her leave up front. But it was all ok. Another rough crowd though.

Tuesday evening was the DARE graduation. This year we made sure to be on time, even quite a bit early, and I skipped softball for it. Which didn’t matter because it rained most of the day, including a pounding storm during the program, so the game was rained out. Anyway, we left home early and picked up subs on the way to the venue, and arrived early enough that I wondered if we had the right date or place. The OCC wasn’t even open yet so we ate on the steps as we waited. The heavy traffic arrived soon enough. While we were waiting, I managed to drop my phone on the concrete and the glass shattered. Seems like that has happened to me before (see 8/12/12). Once again they had Retro Bill speaking, and a lip-sync battle between the DARE officers, and a laser light show to boot. And Missy won one of the self-esteem awards. Today the kids went right to SOS after church to visit the K-9 training unit, which they loved, and it gave Beth and me some kid-free time which is a rarity these days.

This weekend was pretty much all about the lawn and garden. I've bought a few truckloads of dirt and have been spreading it out in the bare spots in the backyard, especially where the tree came down last year, and planted grass and covered it with straw. I've never had much luck growing grass in the backyard, we'll see where it goes. Beth bought her annual load of flowers this weekend and we got them all in the ground. Natalie was a big help there, she loved it. Also this weekend was Mother's Day, which seemed like it should be something of a big deal this year. The kids all got Beth packages of coffees for her Keurig, and I got her a glassblowing class on Groupon. She was pretty excited about that. After church Sunday we went out to lunch at the sushi place in town.
Saturday we took the kids (and us) to see the new "Captain America: Civil War" movie, which we've all been looking forward to for some time. It was pretty awesome and I liked it a lot, but I do have some notes. It was too long, and it just seemed to me like it would have made more sense if the Captain America and Iron Man positions were reversed in the whole government oversight thing. And Tony overreacted. But still, pretty awesome movie.
Softball continues to lose....we've been calling ourselves the happy losers because it has been remarked on how we all seem to be having so much fun playing, even though we haven't threatened to win yet. I pitched again, and again they weren't swinging at the pitches. The other team got way out in front of us, but we had a late rally and the final was 13-11. I walked many. Had a couple good hits. We'll get one sooner or later.

Today was the annual Help a Neighbor Day with our church. This year Alex and I helped out with the cleanup crew at Our Father's House. Somehow, over the years the alleyways all around their building have turned into dumps, more or less; I suppose that anything that was donated but was basically junk or didn't sell was just moved outside and left there. The building itself is surrounded by other abandoned buildings, and all of the spaces around the building were just piled with stuff. Piled high. They said to get rid of it all. We filled dumpsters and dumpsters with stuff. Anything you can imagine that had been left out in the weather for so long that trees were growing in the piles. We separated recyclable scrap metal as best we could, but multiple dumpsters got filled with stuff that was basically trash. We were supposed to paint the building too, but it's been too wet lately. Good thing too, because we wouldn't have been able to get crews in close to the building until the alleys had been cleaned up. It was all the same in the other alleys where other crews were working. Overall there must have been 50 or more people working there. Beth and the girls did laundry love, paying for people to get their clothes washed in a local laundromat. We also paid for people behind us in line at Burger King. Twice. Good day overall, lots of work done. We're going to have a crew paint in a few weeks.
The softball team lost again Tuesday, 7-3 this time. Again, I was the pitcher. I only gave up 7 runs but I felt like I didn't do as well as last week. Walked several. I'm still having trouble finding the strike zone. But it looks like it's me pitching, Brooklynn (who was at the game but not dressed for playing) said she's quitting the team because she's not good enough. LOL. As if she didn't just see me pitch. I had a couple good hits though.
Thursday was the Heartline banquet at the church. Beth and I had tickets (a teacher gave her two free ones) so we went. It most prominently featured a keynote speaker, the star of some movie called "October Baby," that told her whoooole life story.
Yesterday Alex was nice enough to go see the "Ratchet and Clank" movie without adult supervision. He and his friend Riley went to see it. It's nice when you can just drop the kids off and pick them up again and not see a movie that looks awful to you.
Also this weekend I rented that lawn roller. I bought a couple truckloads of dirt and have used it to fill in the low and bare patches in the back yard, so I needed something to pack it down a bit. Liuckily it rained some during the weekend so I got things pretty well smoothed out, hopefully the moles don't come back (they will).