It is mid-July. And that means that professional baseball season is officially well under way (and actually about half way finished). Ricky, as you may remember, has had a lifelong dream (or since he was 15 years old) to umpire professional baseball. He was an honor graduate from umpire school in January and received a job to work in rookie league baseball after his evaluation last March. This was an exciting but very bittersweet development. The two rookie ball leagues are in Florida and Arizona (where all the major league teams have spring training facilities).
In case you aren't up on geography, let me remind you that neither Florida nor Arizona are very close to Oregon, which stinks for me. Because Ricky is hanging out in Phoenix until the end of the summer or until he gets promoted. We have no idea when promotions will happen. Umpiring professional baseball is complicated. The umpires work their way up like the players, so when someone hangs his hat, gets fired, or gets hurt, then someone else takes his spot and all the guys under that get shuffled around. Then there's the slight complication of trying to be economical about promotions and keeping riders and drivers straight and keeping folks on their respective sides of the country without disrupting the order of promotions. I actually don't know how they effectively organize all this...but that's not something I have to know. Anyway, all that to say I am proud of my hubby for doing something that he's always wanted to do. I'm glad we were able to make the decision for him to do it, even if I do miss him lots.
The best part about Ricky umpiring professional baseball for me to this point is that I had a good excuse to go be lazy in Phoenix over the July 4th holiday weekend. It seems that Phoenix is not the #1 summer vacation destination, so we were able to stay in a really nice resort for a very reasonable price (with rooms that typically go for $600-1000 per night during the winter--and most of the people staying at the resort were Phoenix residents "staycationing" because of the cheap prices). The resort was well kept and had exceptional service. Ricky joked the whole time that I was living like a "leaguer's" wife. He is referring to the fact that MLB umpires make a lot of money and have excellent living accommodations. We had such a fun time. Ricky worked a baseball game all but one day that I was there, so I had plenty of time to sit at the pool and prepare for my class, relax, read for fun, and sunbathe.
We hit up an Arizona Diamondbacks vs. LA Dodgers game on his off day. They closed the roof, so we sat in the air conditioning. After the game, they opened the roof and shot fireworks. The game was not good (lots of errors and a very lopsided score), but the company was great, the seats were good (and free), and the fireworks were pretty.
Dinner at a yummy local restaurant. Latin food with a flare...including fresh corn tortillas, table side guacamole, and a famously wonderful pumpkin bread pudding.
Prepping to teach class is much more fun at the pool.
Sneaky wife. Ok, ok. So I'm not really a rule breaker. I just snuck in quickly to pose for this picture. Was there for like 10 seconds. Promise.
It was great to visit my husband and get to watch him work some professional baseball games. I'm not sure that Phoenix would've been on my short list of places to visit, so I'm glad I went. Now...let's cross our fingers and pray for a promotion to the NW League, so he'll be a little closer to home.
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