Out for Summer…Out till Fall

Another school year has come and gone. Matt is headed for high school; Abby will have one more year of elementary before moving on to the junior high and Luke made it through his first year with flying colors. After a week of dry weather, we had another week of stormy weather. Even though this was a short work week due to the holiday, it was the longest damn short week! At work, if something could go wrong this week, it did go wrong…damn that Murphy…
On Monday, we enjoyed the day off, cleaning up around the house after our fun Memorial Day party – while recuperating from all the sunshine, water & spirits. Baili had spent the night with Abby and the two of them were the first ones in the pool the next day. Notice Lola’s blue and yellow – colored fur! Eventually all of the kids ended up in the pool for several hours before it started to rain. It kept on raining all the way in to Tuesday. We had an easy week, schedule-wise, as our only scheduled games were 2 for Lukey. I went in to work 2 hours early and left at 10 to get back to Greensburg in time to eat lunch with Luke, who had been hounding me all year to eat with him. So, on his 2nd to last day I finally managed to make it. Wouldn’t you know that we’d have four vendors in-house at the facility when I left town. I was very thankful for my people covering for me so I could be with the family. After eating with Luke, I stuck around to watch his awards ceremony, where he won the Perfect Attendance award. He looked so big up there. I sat next to Chrysti where we laughed at how cute they all (also winning awards were his friends Alex, Oakley & Jeslyn) looked up there as they were recognized. Next, it was off to the movie theater. I was asked to chaperone the 4th graders at the new Shrek 3 movie. I figured since I was in town with the afternoon off, I may as well spend some time with Abby as well. So I get in to the movie theater about 20 minutes in to the feature and just sat down with my soda & popcorn when Abby and her friend show up and start to walk by me. Before I could reach for my soda, which I had temporarily set on the floor, she pushes her way past me and steps right on it, sending soda everywhere! She went out and got napkins to wipe myself off and the staff came in and cleaned the floor. What I saw of the movie was excellent. I was able to sign Bu out afterwards and we went to Dairy Point for a cone. Abby had turtle tracks. I had cookie dough…I’m sure it was sugar free. We then went out to the park and went putt-putting. They finally did some renovations to the course, but Abby and I still sucked, with dual 20-over-par performances! 😛 After picking up the other two kids, I took Abby out to softball practice, where we had fun out in a grass field for a couple hours. It was so hot and humid that night. Matt had football practice after school that night, beginning weight training that will take him all through the summer.

On Wednesday, both Ann & I went in to work late. Ann went to the elementary school for Abby’s awards ceremony. She made out like a bandit; I was a little surprised she didn’t win the big award – citizen of the year. She is one of the tallest in her class. She took time to pose with her teacher, Mrs. Stark. She was recognized for: Hall of Fame Reader, Perfect Attendance, and A/B Honor Roll. Her report card was excellent, getting straight A’s! We were very proud when her national testing came back as well. She earned a pass on her English but had achieved the coveted pass-plus on both math and science. In addition, the testing showed that her reading level was that of a 7th grader and…get this…math comprehension was at a college freshman level!! :-0 We are so proud of her… While Ann was at the elementary school, I went to the junior high for Matt’s awards ceremony. He sat with his buddy Andrew. Matt earned three awards also. He got Top-10 Band, Top-10 Literature award and a very special one – the All-Sports Award! Only 5 males earned this award in his entire class. To earn this one, an athlete had to letter in at least six times in his career. As you might remember from our last entry, he earned double that amount, including academic honors. Matt also earned A/B honor roll, by getting all A’s with 2 B’s. We are so proud of all his achievements this year! It rained again that day, cancelling both Matt’s practice and Luke’s baseball game. ???

Thursday was the official last day of school. The kids were all thrilled to finally begin summer vacation. Luke brought home all his papers, including a cute little graduate and his journal which had a picture of he and couple friends on a slide. Matt had football practice after school. At the last moment, Matt decided to attend his band awards banquet. We ended up eating over at Mom’s house and didn’t participate in the pitch-in dinner. Matt was recognized twice that night – once for his three years of junior high band one for pep band. Luke liked seeing Gma’s work (we met in the high school cafeteria) and his picture up on her office wall. It began raining that afternoon, putting the kibosh on Abby’s softball practice that evening. We learned that Matt will not only have baseball and football, but also band practice throughout the summer and that he will be part of the 4th of July parade, as part of the marching band.

On Friday, Matt slept in while Luke & Bu went to Brandy’s house. Gma took Matt to both baseball and football practice. I got home late from work and immediately turned around and took Lukey out to his baseball game where we had pictures beforehand. We played the Reds again. We actually played all 6 innings, but we got smoked. We had several errors throughout the game in our infield. Luke started in left field and was moved up to pitcher about half way through the game. At the plate, he was 0-2 officially, but there was much more to it than just that… It was a very hot and humid evening again. Luke had several issues with his bat, of all things. Luke has never been one to throw his bat, but that night, he did it four separate times. In his first at-bat, he sacrificed a run in (or you could call it a ground out with an RBI, I suppose). In his second at-bat, he came up with the bases loaded and no outs. He hit a terrible pitch down in to the ground, where it died instantly. He didn’t even run initially, but eventually took off and actually reached first base safely – and got an RBI – but was called out. When I asked for clarification, I was told that he had thrown his bat and hit the catcher. We had a very long talk at the end of the inning and made sure that he understood how dangerous it was to throw a bat. He said he would do better and went back out to the field. In his third and final at-bat, he threw his bat two more times. Thankfully it wasn’t towards the catcher, but down the third base line. He said his hands were sweaty, so we had him throw some dirt on them and he was fine, hitting the ball and setting the bat down gently, getting edged at first base, but again getting an RBI on the play. When we got done with the game, we tried to go out to eat…but after finding waiting lines, we decided just to go home and have popcorn. We ended family night with a viewing of the new Alice in Wonderland movie. It was a very strange movie, but entertaining nonetheless. The two little ones were asleep about halfway through it…

On Saturday, Luke & I went over to Mom & Gigi’s house to mow before coming home to do yard work. We had a threat of thunderstorms all day and it was overcast the entire day, but it never did end up raining at all. The neighborhood had one of their big garage sales and Luke enjoyed going to visit Mr. & Mrs. Dodds next door to buy Star Wars figures a couple times and talk with his buddy, Mr. Dodds! Rob sent me some great pictures of his visit with Mom & Dad down in Treasure Island for week 19 festivities at the Sand Pebble. Rob & Sharon ended up buying a week 19 condo themselves! Rob also related a story about one of the pictures you’ll see of Dad & Dave. Apparently Rob wanted to cook the brats, but Dave insisted that he was fine and was cooking them himself. Well, you see that they got a little overdone! Later in the week, they presented him a plaque with one of those babies on it for his troubles! 😉 Ann & Abby went out shopping for the afternoon. When they got back, all the kids went swimming for a couple hours until dinner time. After dinner, Matt & Abby played Xbox while grumpy little Lukey Duke went to bed. On Sunday, we relaxed and cleaned up around the house, being bums all day long.

Here are a couple of videos from this week; clips include Memorial Day (the day after our party), all the kids awards ceremonies & Luke’s baseball game:

Next, let’s take a look at a short Waybac feature. Leading off this time, we have Gma (pronounced GEE’ maw) – which is what all the grandkids seem to be calling her…I even heard Ann & Gigi refer to her with this moniker – from her class picture in September of about ’54; Grandpaw Brown’s cool ride in May of ’68 – I believe this may have been taken out at Great Grandma Brown’s old farm house (which no longer exists) in Rossville; Grandmaw & Grandpaw’s living room on Christmas of ’68; and Vird & Belinda on their wedding day in about 1970 out in southern California.

Here we have Ann, Dee & Keith with two sets of grand parents (Owens & Morrison, I think?) in about 1975; Ann & Dee in their Main St. living room in their dance garb in or about 1980; Annie in her class picture in about ’81; Rob in what I think may be Disney World in ’82…I know I’ve seen this playground somewhere before, but I can’t quite seem to remember; and Rob again in approximately ’83 with Dad B at Grandmaw & Grandpaw’s house in Lafayette.

And wrapping up this week’s edition we have “Lil’ Winkie??? Bryan in May of ’94 (I think) at the Sand Pebble in Treasure Island, FL during the Week 19’s 6th Annual Spring Bash; and a couple of Robby’s graduation at Three Springs in December of ’97.

Well, that wraps it up for another edition of the Scheu Family Blog. Thanks as always for keeping up with us this time out and we’ll catch up with ya next time. Until then, have a good one.
Later, Scheu