cooperstown, new yorkk!! dreams parkkkkk!!

oh my god, so yesterday i got back from cooperstown, new york. can i say...best week EVER?!?!?!?! oh, my god. it was so much fun. and sure we were there for the baseball (the week revolved around the boys, duh) but i had so much fun. see, there are four boys on the team with sisters my age--hello, so much fun!--and then there's also a handful of littler girls the same age.


everyone there was so awesome. i mean, the families are great. we had two houses on the same property, right next to each other (separated only by a muddy expanse that i fell in, hahaaha!), and there was also a pond that was this weird blue colorr--can you say fake?--and a big field for the boys to play baseball in. one night we had a huge dads-against-boys wiffeball game. these boys do NOT stop playing baseballl. ever. even though the season is now over, today pat and his friends were still outside playing home run derby.


i'm gonna break the week down day by day and even then it'll probly be all messed up... hahah.


oh. let me explain what cooperstown is. cooperstown, new york is supposedly where baseball was born, so this guy had a dream that every boy should get a chance to play baseball where the game was born, so the baseball hall of fame is there and cooperstown dreams park is a huge tournament with 98 teams that battle it out for the title of top seed. the town is separate from the park, but both are very nice. the town is gorgeous. the park has free internet, too, so i brought my laptop one day and downloaded two new songs from itunes. best of me by the starting line and up and go by the starting line. and then there's like barracks where the boys sleep (thank GOD they weren't always in our houses) and a gift shop and some of the games are on webcam, which is SO AWESOME. aunt shell was watching from home and when pat got out on a really REALLY horrible call, so she called like a minute later saying how horrible of a call it was because there was a minute delay.


so that's what cooperstown is. haha.


last friday


mom and i drove down a little later than everyone else, because mom had to work until 12. our car was designated as the "everyone's extra crap" car. we had a cooler, our wagon, the food, our stuff on the roof, and omg so much stuff. haha. so anyway, i was the co-pilot and i kind of got us lost (long story) so we turned around to ask these people at a gas station how long we were supposed to be on this one road. and then i lost the mapquest directions. and then i found different directions in mom's glove box.


then we called one of the mothers that was already there and we're like, "so how is it?" and she told us that apparently we were NOT taking advantage of friday-night check in as planned and the boys were staying with us that night.


head count? 39. probably more. mom and i tallied it up in the car and just the people sleeping there friday night equaled 39. divided across two houses. eight bedrooms. four bathrooms. two living rooms. two kitchens. TEN BOYS. five girls. AGGGGGH.




so all the other girls decided to sleep in the other house, but i decided to sleep in the house with my mom and pat and the kids that were staying in our house. i was kicked out of my bed to make room for a coach. not that i cared. i mean, i was just sleeping on the floor. nothing big. =p but i didn't care. i hung out with the boys in our house until mom made me go to bed. when all the boys aren't around and it's only a portion of them, most of them are really cool. even the one that i thought was the worst on the team. ahahahaha.





saturday





all the boys woke up at like seven and one of the dads bought donuts that were really good--like homemade. the boys had to check into the barracks saturday morning, so they got up kinda early and all got dressed. i was the only "big girl" who wanted to go to the barracks. confession? the barracks looked like shacks. barns. long lumps of number-labeled barns whose inside walls were lined with rickety bunk beds covered in plastic, mud-ridden sheets. i found a crusty booger on one of the sheets--i was helping out, wiping down the beds and looking at the pins the boys got while they were out pin-trading. i was a good sister. except pat kept bossing me around and telling me to do his pins for him and i didn't feel like it, so i said no and he got grumpy. but all in all it was fun. the other boys are nicer to me than pat is. haha.




then we hung out at the house for a while minus the boys...and then we went to the opening ceremony. i actually went early with a handful of the mothers and we spread out towels and sweatshirts and stuff across three rows so we would have room for everyone. even then, when everyone got there we had to squeeze. we're a very supportive team. =]


the founder of cooperstown dreams park certainly likes to hear himself talk. he talked. and talked. and talked. agggh. it was sweet--i mean, he told nice, inspiring stories about people in iraq and kids who couldn't play baseball and i appreciated it--but i really wanted to see our team come out! there's a procession of athletes, but first there was a big kick-line on the field with some of the mothers, and some of the fathers did the YMCA, and there were skydivers and stuff, and they interviewed all these kids who had been there already (they all fessed up and said the food sucked ahahaha), and then FINALLY there was the procession of athletes. we all ran to find our team and we were laughing and taking pictures and being goofy. it was so fun.



then we had the skills competitions--roadrunner, some throwing thing, home run derby, and round the horn. we didn't win, but for roadrunner we came SO close. the kid who did that competition for us was almost in the final round. but not quite. haha.



sunday



first day of games! the first game was at ten or eleven--i can't remember--and we all wore our team shirts to show support for the boys. i'm such a good sister. =] i don't even remember all that much about it except that i remember a fly ball coming our way and screaming and jumping out of the way and screaming. and when the team won its first game we all clapped and cheered and took pictures. like i said, we're such a supportive team. =]



monday


there was an 8:30 game monday, and i wasn't sure whether i wanted to go or not. i was like, yes, i do. then steph was like, no, you don't. stay here with me and sleep late. and i was like AGGGGGH i don't know what to do. so i stayed home. (it was a webcam game btw. haha) and i'm so MAD i stayed home. pat got a home run. AND he pitched. my brother DOES NOT pitch. tyler and i were even talking about it last week. tyler got a home run off pat the last time pat pitched in rec. so we were REALLY surprised when he pitched. and i wasn't there. i swear i almost cried. ahahaha. they won that game by a lot. it was webcam, so aunt shell was texting me telling me she wanted to hear me scream (except i wasn't there), and i was texting her and she told me the score (like 10-0 in the first) and i was jumping up and down in an empty house. i was happy. =]



i think they won the other game too. i think. ahahaha. all the games blurred together, tbh. but i do remember they had another game in the afternoon and then they came back to our house to sleep over again, because they had a full day between games. we were gonna go to the hall of fame that night but we decided it would be too much work and the boys would be tired (ALWAYS all about the boys. always) so we went the next morning to the hall of fame.



so that day when they all came back to the house we had a huge barbecue and everyone was there--even the families that weren't staying at our house. EVERYONE came back and had a huge barbecue. i love having all these people over, seriously i do, but it got overwhelming fast. so there was this fence near the driveway and the deck of the empty house, and i sat on it and i was talking to my friends for a while before people started coming back to our house. some of the boys came back and joe shoved his phone in my face and he's like, "are you crying or somethin?" and i was like, "i'm not crying, joe, chill," and for the rest of the night he was bugging me about what was wrong. nothing was wrong. i was just seriously tired and i didn't feel good.



so then later when all the boys in our house were going to sleep i came out of our room to go to the bathroom and joe started bugging me again. he's like, "what's wrooooong?" and pat was just laughing at me i think. haha. and i'm like, "i'm not gonna tell you even if there is something wrong, which there's NOT." i found out later that when they were all going to sleep that night they were talking about me. which is great. just great. agggh. i still want to know what they were talking about.

oh and pat was talking in his sleep and he just woke up and randomly goes "wishy wishy wishy" and joe was so tired he pushed pat's head back down on the pillow. i don't know why but this makes me crack up. =]



tuesday



hall of fame dayy! we all woke up really really early to get to the hall of fame before it opened because apparently it gets packed really quickly. it was kind of boring, tbh. i mean, the boys loved it, i guess because they play baseball and what baseball-loving kid isn't gonna adore the hall of fame? my favorite part was the "women in baseball" exhibit and the abbott and costello "who's on first" skit. i love that. haha. and then we got pat a custom-made bat and we all went to lunch at dimaggio's (cool place, free internet, expensive food).

then they had two games that afternoon and i truly forget which was which and whether we won or not. seriously...i can't remember, like, at all. haha. tuesday was pretty uneventful except for the hall of fame--and i started reading my story FINALLY. i love it so much. i'm proud of it. =] lol

wednesday

wednesday was the day it hit me that we only had two more days and that it might even be the last day they all played together as a team if they didn't make it to the championship game. aww. i got a little sad.

there was a ten o'clock game....forget whether they won or not. ahahaha. but then our play-off game was at four, so mom and i went to lunch after the game and then, since i was already with her, she decided to take me along to cocktail hour at this swanky hotel in otesago (otesago? something like that, ahahaaha) with all the parents. There was no room on the patio for all of us, so we sat on the second-story terrace on these gorgeous white wooden rocking chairs with blue-and-white striped cushions...it was totally a movie-worthy moment. i took notes on all the things the parents said. we kind of felt like we didn't belong at this hotel, because we were all dressed for baseball games--i was wearing plaid shorts and a gray tank top and flip-flops--and i turned to mom and whispered, "i feel out of place. do any of these people even own a pair of flip-flops?" but it was fun.

then we had the playoffs. oh, my god. so nerve-wracking. single-elimination. our last game was at six o'clock but started late and ended at almost nine. pat was last up in the last inning. two outs. two strikes. and then a pitch that was at his ankles. and....the ump called it a strike.

poor pat. that always seems to happen to him. i felt so horrible about it! he was the last out on a horrible call. so after the game we all lined up to give the team high-fives, but the coaches wanted to talk to the team first in the outfield. i guess when pat was out there on the field he found a frog...which he dumped in my hair after they all filed out. and i gave him a hug. and then mom asked him what he named his frog. what did he name it? "bad call." ahh, i love that kid. =]

so the boys stayed at our house that night. they didn't wanna stick around and i couldn't really blame them. everyone was so hyper--i don't know why!--and i was so tired i pretty much just went in my room and passed out.. yeah, i'm such a party animal. =P

thursday

thursday...thursday was supposed to be busy. they all went go-carting at this fun place near our house but i wasn't feeling good so i just holed up in my sweatshirt (it was raining) and watched until we decided to go into town. i got me and mar t-shirts that say "my brother hit a homerun in cooperstown" (yaaaaay pat!!!!!) and i got this amazing gelati. j'adore gelatis. yummm.

then we all had lunch back out the house...they played more wiffeball i think (of course), and then at 5 or something there was the closing ceremony where they gave out the rings. it was sweet. mom cried. we cheered the loudest for our team, i think. we love them so much. =] and we were proud. ahaahaa. the rings were really nice. huge. but nice. with a big red stone and all. soooo pretty.

after that there were fireworks. jake, the only little brother (he's four) sat on my lap on one of the walkways and watched silently. he was so perfect throughout the whole thing! then there was the championship game. mom didn't stay for that and neither did any of the older girls so it was just me, the coaches, and the team. one of the coaches saw that i had the same phone as him and he asked me to show him how to get to the cooperstown website on his phone so they could leave the game early and still watch online. then he and his family left, so the only seat available was next to this really tall kid on the team (he's really tall...like six-one or something, i'm five-three) and all the boys were teasing me next morning that i liked him and i don't. it was the only seat left. ahahaha.

so we watched and it was pretty cool, the second-seed team beat the first-seed team and when they came around to give everyone high fives, they looked soooooo happy. it kinda made me wish that we were in the championship game. but i think the team still had an amazing time anyway. ya know? =]

thursday night some families left, but we gave out awards to the boys that were still there. the team awards. ommgggg, how funny. all the parents had already come up with some of the categories (nicest, best hair, most showers, messiest, biggest eater of barracks food, blah blah blah) but then we let the boys formulate their own categories. that was SO funny. and they got to vote. then they told us what went on in the barracks and how they woke people up and they told us about the showers. dom reenacted what he sings in the shower. i almost spewed popcorn all over everyone, i was laughing so hard. and we read the notes we took all week--again, i almost peed my pants laughing. i love these people! i wanna go on vacation with them next year too. i think we should. =]

friday

we had to be outta there by ten o'clock friday morning. we all woke up, blah blah blah. i was lucky i kept all my stuff folded cuz i almost couldn't fit everything into my bag. and then i lost my phone charger--turned out one of the other kids on the team took it. we had amazing breakfast of chocolate-chip muffins and then we were basically just packing up the car. at like nine-thirty, pat and mikey were throwing a wiffleball bat across the pond, back and forth--until pat didn't reach the other side and the bat was stuck in the pond. so he and mikey were chucking rocks at the bat, trying to get it over to the other side, until like three minutes before we had to go when they finally got it. and then they started doing it again but thank god, it didn't fall in again.

so the ride home, we followed a caravan of the parents that were heading home. then we stopped at a mcdonalds on the way home and it was finally goodbye. =[ aww. i was almost crying. our vacation was soooooo awesome.

so then later on friday--because our car was still the "everyone's extra crap car"--one of the coaches came over to pick up his wagon. and his sons ended up sleeping over. we were watching world's most amazing videos on spike and some of those videos are just scary, duuuude. some of them made me kinda nauseous.

vacation. over. all here. =] and i'm forgetting stuff too. like i got a pair of really cute sweats at the gift shop that say "live the dream" on the butt--it's cooperstown's, like, slogo or whatever. haha. and when we were on our way up, we saw a HOBO walking along the side of the road! seriously, a hobo! ahahaaha.

so that's it. awww. i loved it. awesome vacation. im gonna miss everyone so so much!!!!!! (and sorry for the late post. took me a while to write it. like....two days. ahahaaha.)

xoxo,
caiti