Something Old, Something New

When we were in FL last week, we went to a minor league baseball game on our oldest son's birthday. For 14 years we've been the parents of at least one boy and I believe this is the first time we went to a minor league game...and I highly recommend it. The ballfield we went to is named after Jackie Robinson. In 1946 Jackie Robinson was on a minor league team playing an exhibition game and Daytona was the only city in the area that allowed him to play on their minor league field. The next year he broke the color barrier and played on the Majors for the Brooklyn Dodgers. There is a museum with historical info all around the park. This ball park was built in 1914 and the press box you see in the background here behind my middle son is 50 years old.
If you have a chance to see a Minor League baseball game (Bull Durham anyone?) this summer, do it! It felt like small town fun. More enjoyable than the big expensive places. Seriously. I have visited this town with this ball park for almost 25 years and have somehow missed thissmall town American past time. Do it this summer. There were girls on the field doing tricycle riding contests and plenty of girls in the stands too.

One worker's job was to round up different kids or adults for various entertaining contests. I saw him scouting us out and pointed to my oldest son saying, "It's his birthday". My son was led away and a few minutes later he was on the field with another boy. The contest was to eat a Moe's burrito the fastest for a gift card. Ooops--he just had a big cheeseburger for dinner before we arrived. The other kid won.

It was a gorgeous, breezy night and the park is on a river, the scoreboard was manual and the parking is free. Here is am, one happy mom.
Toward the end there was one man in the stands who was hilarious, trying to get the opposing team at bat or the opposing pitcher all razzled with his loud commentary. Here are my three guys. I guess they are getting older. They had a great time, no one fussed at each other, and none of them asked for a single thing like popcorn or a drink. All the music and antics had them pretty occupied.

Every day we went to the beach. That is not new. Even though we live four hours from the nearest beach, these guys have been in the ocean or pool since they were babies. In fact, they never sit down. They are in the water the whole time. And the more waves the better.I am pretty shy of cool water, plus I was reading books or listening to music. Or getting more sunblock on them when I had the chance.
Middle son always likes to get buried and so I complied. He even asked me to put Cheese Nips on his back to see if birds would feed off of him. They did not.
We worked our way down the Atlantic Coast (Hubs is one of six kids and his three brothers all live in different towns on the coast, and I love all the women they married, and I got lots of girl time). The destination was the beach every day, although one day we went out on boats in West Palm Beach and basically had a 4 hour long "tailgating party" in the water. It can get wild--there is even a boat that delivers pizza and there is an area with younger people and potentially a wild time. Some boats had stripper poles. (No strippers, just the poles). Not near us though. Although my middle son spent a lot of time sitting on the edge of the boat in one direction for a long, long time. I asked what he was looking at and he said, "the fish."
(This is not my photo--I got this from Google images of Peanut Island in West Palm Beach. There were no women dressed like this there. Everyone wore teeny tiny bikinis. I was out of place in my tankini).

Toward the end of the afternoon my SIL made a drink of Malibu rum and Coke for the two of us. I had the drinks on a boogie board for just a minute and suddenly my niece was swimming by and kicking water in them. I let out a blood-curdling scream. A huge ray had swam by a few minutes prior. But I wasn’t screaming about the ray—I was screaming about the ocean getting into the drinks.

One beach I love is Juno Beach-- has nice showers. My youngest son got his back burned toward the beginning of the vacation and a few days later it peeled. Water from the shower formed under bubbles of skin on his back--that was a new experience.


Walking to a pier with a big cousin to buy a slushie was a first too.
(Bongo drum boy is in the background)

I stayed behind to play the role of the surfer girlfriend.
Been doing that for a long time......even before kids........

You know what they say-- you are a couple before kids and you will be a couple after the kids leave the nest. I look forward to being a surfer's girlfriend for a long, long time.