I took the boys today down to South Mountain Community College to see my (and their) cousin, Cullen, play baseball. I have to preface this post my saying that Cullen and his family are some of my favorite people in the world. Case in point - as the first game of their double header was coming to an end, my sweet Aunt Cathy was making lunch for the entire team (and anyone else with an appetite), alongside some other committed parents. Hospitality is a hallmark of their family.
Jared and Will adore Cullen. He always goes out of his way to be kind to them and play with them. Today, during his hour break between games he came out of the dugout to take the boys to the team's batting cages and worked with them on hitting and throwing the ball. I mean, seriously, how nice is that?
I'm pretty sure this practice is going to pay off this Friday night at our T-ball game at Brophy. I had to grab the camera to capture some of the cuteness ...
Will working on his stance ...
Making contact ...
Jared looks on, eager for his turn ...
Jared really gave it his all. You could tell
he really wanted to show off his skills! :-)
Joy.
Jared tossing the ball back with all his might.
Cullen is pretty neat. He was definitely larger than life to these boys in his uniform SMCC today. You should have seen the way Jared looked at him, it pretty much brought tears to my eyes because it was so sweet! Will was pretty enamored too and offered to share a grubby cheeto. Cullen played last year in Reno at UNR, taking this year back in Phoenix to regroup and decide where he really wanted to finish his degree. He's settled on LMU. We are definitely going to miss him next year when he moves to California to play at Loyola.
Our timing today was a little off, and we spent most of our time down at SMCC between games. Just as the second game was about to start we had to leave to drive home for swim lessons. Jared wanted to stay so badly to watch Cullen play. I couldn't find him when we started walking to the car and I actually began to panic a little bit until I looked across the field and saw him huddled behind a tree. He came right away when I called him, admitting that he was hiding from me because he didn't want to leave. I can definitely foresee some more time watching baseball this spring.
The Mahoney family is tight and it makes me hope for the same great sibling relationships to develop between our boys as Cullen had with his big brother, DJ. I've been thinking a a lot about DJ this month as March is both Tim and DJ's birthday month, their birthdays were 5 days apart. DJ would have been 29 on March 26th, Tim's will be 29 on the 31st. I have sweet memories of those brothers cuddled on the couch together (DJ was 9 years older than Cullen). Those sweet memories mingle with the bittersweet ache of missing who DJ was and what he meant to our family ... wishing he was on the sidelines cheering for Cullen with the rest of us and tossing the ball with Jared and Will too ...
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