Luke’s Notebook

This afternoon, John and I drove over to Children’s Hospital in downtown St. Louis in order to cover a videotaped deposition of a neurologist. The depo lasted a little while, and we ended up being there in the office for a good two-and-a-half hours.

A couple of years ago, I made several trips to Children’s, as that was during the time where our cousin Jenny was initially diagnoses with leukemia and began the treatment over at Children’s. Mom and I would go over on different days to help out, spend some time with her, and oftentimes I would accompany Mom as more of a chauffeur, as a few of the visits were very early in the morning. By the way, I don’t really mention Jenny much these days, but she is doing wonderful. She looks great and seems to be your typical 11-year-old girl. Thank God for the healing that she’s experienced so far!

After our deposition, John and I left Children’s and walked across the street to meet up with Jude at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, where Paul was taking a deposition of his own. Jude had accompanied him because the two of them were planning to go to the Cardinals game later in the day.

This evening, I had a good chat with a friend of mine. Thank God for providing friends and family for us.

Note to self: Chill out. You’re not that important. Relax. Be more of a team player.

This is part-test, part-blog entry. I just moved the website to a new server, so I want to make sure all the database stuff is working right. If you can read this, then my blog is working.

I have to leave in a few minutes, but let me give a real short recap of yesterday. Ashley hung around with us at home for a few hours, and then it was finally time to bid farewell to her and let her start the journey back to Michigan. Over the weekend, we also had a handful of out-of-town friends — Jason from Ohio, along with Brandy, Bobby Jo, and Josh from Minnesota. It sounds like everybody has safely made it back to their respective homes, and we are very thankful for all of the hard work they did in helping us prepare for the Classic, set up for the Classic, run the Classic, then tear down the Classic.

So… Ashley, Jason, Brandy, Bobby Jo, Brandy — and anybody else who may read this who was part of our volunteer crew — thank you so much!

Tracy has just pulled out of our driveway. That’s the end of that chapter. Wow.

Well, this weekend has been incredible! Let me focus on the Softball Classic for now.

Friday afternoon and evening, we worked hard on wrapping up some things for the Classic. With the help of friends Ashley, Bobby Jo, Brandy, and Josh, we packaged and wrapped up some 3,000 fresh-baked cookies from Ryan’s Steakhouse. It was quite a task, but the end result looked really good! And I think we all had a pretty good time wrapping those up.

After loading up the cookies and about everything else we needed to take along to the park, we went to bed. After about three hours of sleep for most of us and zero for a few, we got up around 5:00 Saturday morning. As we stepped outside, it started to drizzle, and by the time we pulled out of the driveway we had a pretty steady rain falling over the area.

As we were setting up at Laderman for the first few hours, a steady rain was falling, and the forecast was calling for rain all day and even into Sunday. Things weren’t looking very promising! I had whipped my laptop out a few different times during that period, and we all huddle around to take a look at the latest happenings on the weather radar.

Mom, Dad, and a few of us were very seriously talking about calling the event because the rain was picking up and pretty much every weather forecast was predicting continuous rain all throughout the day.

Well, the rain started to let up around 10:00 or so, and the sun eventually broke out early in the afternoon. We heard reports that the weather forecast had changed dramatically, and it was supposed to turn into a clear afternoon. What a relief! Now, if only the rain would hold out, we should be okay. The sun shining should dry out the park enough by 4:00 in the afternoon, when the Classic was set to kick off.

4:00 rolled around, and before we knew it we were well into the Softball Classic and we hadn’t been met with another drop of rain! Around 4:30 or so, the Home Run Madness Derby kicked off. Jude and I made last-minute decisions to join the derby. I ended up doing pretty good, as I had nine home runs in the first round and four in the second. I ended up with 13, which was good enough to tie for second place. The winner had a total of 17 homers.

Around 5:00 or 5:30, Adam Wainwright arrived at Laderman Park. Shortly thereafter, Jeff Suppan joined the crowd. They were sitting in the Autograph Zone, mingling with fans and signing autographs. After the first round of the Derby, Dad had a chance to talk with them in front of the crowd, and they each shared their faith, what God has done in their lives, and how they strive to live for Him.

It was really neat to hear what they had to say. Adam and Jeff also answered some questions from the crowd, and they also were persuaded to take a few swings of their own on the softball diamond and had a spontaneous home run derby of their own! That was one of the highlights of the whole evening, I think.

Shortly after the second round of the Home Run Madness Derby, we started preparing for Game One of the double-header between our team, the Safe At Home All-Stars, and the Media All-Stars, led by FSN Midwest’s Joel Goldberg, Fox 2’s Andy Banker, KFNS’ Bob Ramsey, and a lot of other media personalities.

We played two games against the Media All-Stars, and both games were extremely tight. We managed to eek out a come-from-behind win in the first game, as Jude hit a walk-off single. The second game was won by the Media All-Stars, and that ended in dramatic fashion as well, as Michael Harr of Little Caesar’s in Belleville hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the seventh. There was some exciting softball!

The event ended around 9:00 in the evening, and we spent the next three hours tearing down, cleaning up, packing up, rearranging things at the park. Finally, near the stroke of midnight, I walked up to the light box at Laderman Park and turned the keys, shutting the lights off of both diamonds, officially bringing to a close the Eighth Annual Safe At Home Softball Classic.

We are still in the process of putting things back together and kind of “recovering” from the Classic, but wow! What a great evening it was! I just thank God for the beautiful day it turned out to be, despite the scares in the morning. We had a great crowd, a bunch of terrific volunteers, and we were fortunate enough to be joined by Adam Wainwright and Jeff Suppan, who kindly agreed to come to the park. John Rodriguez was also going to attend, but he was sent down to the minor leagues a couple of weeks ago so he was unable to make it. That was a real bummer, but perhaps we’ll get to see him again!

So that about does it. The Classic is in the books, and what a wild ride it was.

Wow! Man. What a day. Oh, my. What. A. Day.

Thank You, God!!!

Well, it’s time to go set up for the Softball Classic. Although it isn’t raining at the moment, the weather forecasts are very troubling. Between you and me, I don’t think the Classic will go forward today. But this is no time to give up. It’s not raining now, and there is certainly no guarantee it will rain later on. God, let Your will be done.

Tomorrow is the big day.

Q. Luke, are you tired?

A. *snore*

*yawn*

That pretty well sums up the general feeling around here. It’s been a long day. I’m so sleepy, but I wanted to try to stay true to updating this blog. Here’s what happened, real quick:

At 7:00 in the morning, we met up at Laderman Park with two crew members from Fox 2 News. They were there with their large satellite van, and they wired Dad up for him to be able to talk live with John Pertzborn and Margie Ellisor, the anchors. They chatted about the upcoming Softball Classic, and the cameraman was filming the family in the background as we were practicing softball on the diamond.

*yawn*

When we got back home, I started working on a long doctor deposition. I managed to scope 30 or 40 pages before getting interrupted by something else. Even throughout this time, I was hopping from thing to thing, as we continued to prepare stuff for the Classic.

Around 3:00 in the afternoon, the TLC crew returned to our house and also reporter and photographer from the Belleville News-Democrat came over to do a story about the feature that TLC is doing on the family.

Around 6:00, Paul and I left the house, carrying a bunch of different games and pieces of hardware for the Classic. We dropped them off at Laderman Park, and we also met up with Ashley, who had made a very long drive down from Michigan. We all chatted there for a bit as Paul and I unloaded the truck, and then we all drove out to Citizen’s Park, where our team had our 7:30 playoff game.

The game was kind of disappointing, as we lost 9-0 against the Bombers and thus got knocked out of the playoffs. It sure would have been nice to have performed better with the TLC crew taping, but I guess this is a great example of a situation where we can be proud of the “other” victories — encouraging each other, keeping a positive attitude, not arguing with the umpire (;-)) — things like that.

After the game, the whole family went out to The White Cottage in Belleville for some ice cream. We celebrated a season well-played, in which we finished with a 12-6 record and owned second place. We also received a really nice trophy for that, so we sure didn’t leave the park empty-handed.

Anyway, after all of that, everyone (the crew included) came back to the house and covered some more stuff that was going on around here. One thing that has been so amazing to me is just how friendly these guys are, how easy it is to get along with them. Every last guy — Tracy, the producer; Derek, the associate producer/utility man; Mike, the cameraman; Iain, the audio engineer. All four of them are very easy to talk with, and they seem to all be eager to share some of their insight or knowledge from their respective professions. It’s been really neat! They’re a bunch of fun guys.

Well, I really should get to sleep. This short entry has turned into a really long one, and I’m very tired. Another fun day, though. Thank God!

Wow, I just realized that my last three entries are password-protected. It’s been an exciting time, that’s for sure! The Softball Classic is mere days away, and this week has already been such a whirlwind of fun and excitement. We’ve managed to accomplish quite a bit, too!

You know, maybe I’ll be able to devise a way to password protect certain parts of an entry. Because right now, it is an all-or-nothing situation, so if there’s anything in any post that I don’t want available to the whole world, then I think of password-protecting the entire thing. The downside to this, of course, is a lot of normal stuff (such as recaps, expounding on different things) are contained in the protected posts, because they really can’t stand alone as their own entry. So… that might be another project for me to do, but it will just have to wait until after the Classic and after this TLC thing. But to get to the point — things have been pretty fun lately! Very busy, but very fun.