-
baseball time
First a tiny bit of business:
***FLASH SALE!!*** To celebrate “opening day” of bsquared photography’s communion season tomorrow, I’m having a sale on 8×10’s today only. Normally $35, now only $25 till midnight tonight. Get in touch here below in comments or shoot me an email at bethbeyrer at yahoo dot com with your order. And wish me luck for this weekend’s madness!
Baseball season. Again. And although it is technically baseball season, the weather is sure saying otherwise. Its freaking freezing at games and practices. Gloves, hats & blankets cold. Which makes it oh so pleasant being outside watching. One game wasn’t totally freezing (well, not till the sun went down) so I took a few pictures before I fled to the car and put the heat on 90 degrees.
Some teammates. Jack L.
Jack N.
Tommy.
Took these on the way to the (very heated) car. It looks deceiving. Like it could be warm. Its all lies. LIES I tell you.
-
timmy & jack & james, oh my. {aka baseball, basketball & football}
Timmy is so lucky to have some awesomely good friends who both live pretty nearby. Over the break, we took a walk to Jack’s house and ended up walking back to our house with him. On the way back, we ran into James’ mom and she said he was free too so he walked back home with us too. They spent a few hours in the backyard (outside!!! freaking finally!!!) playing lots of baseball, basketball and football.
And James- he’s a trip this kid. He actually wanted me to take a few pix of him and to be on the blog. Ummmm…no one really ever asks me to take their pictures anymore around here, you know I jumped at the chance!!!
James’ sport is football. The kid is built kinda like a brick wall. One time Timmy was trying to take him down and was hanging off of him while James just kept walking like it wasn’t even happening. Hysterical!
And he didn’t get tackled here either. 
On to a few innings of baseball.
Then it was time to try to tackle James again.
Just playing. No punches were thrown. 
And a nice black & white for his mom & dad.
-
“the making of” the beyrer family christmas card 2013
Since I’m blogging from vacation, I realized I don’t have the actual card or file with me but I do have all the pictures we used on the card plus a few more.
Last year we were supposed to do our christmas card shoot at Ducks Stadium, but Sandy hit and that was cancelled (along with everything else in life)so this year I “upgraded” to Citifield. You all know how much my family (other than me, of course) loves baseball, so I figured a baseball themed shoot & card was the way to go.
Booking a shoot at Citifield was quite expensive (but I figured I wasn’t paying for the photographer so it kinda evened out) and there was a completely RIDICULOUS number of rules as to where you could and couldn’t go. Mostly where you couldn’t go. We had what was basically a babysitter with us the whole time, to make sure we didn’t walk on a single blade of grass. Cmon. The season was so over by the time we did the shoot and its not like we were wearing cleats or like I was using a tripod. Couldn’t even go out to the pitchers mound. Seemed kinda like a ripoff to me.
Grandpa Jack’s brick. 
We were allowed in the dugout. Both home and visitors. But you couldn’t sit or stand on top of the dugout because it might ruin the sticker on the top. Really? This is an outdoor stadium with rain and snow that falls on the dugout, right? 
You could get close to the grass but not ON the grass. Silly. 
I know the boys are a little orange in this picture but the sun was reflecting off the warning track dirt and I couldn’t get rid of the whole color cast. 
We were hoping for a David Wright or Matt Harvey sighting but no such luck. 
We did meet Alex the announcer though. He does all the inside the park announcements. He was very nice.
The press room was pretty cool.
And the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. Thats pretty much it. 
So all in all, while cool it was definitely a little disappointing especially considering the price tag to shoot there. I would be much more understanding of the rules if it was during the season, but they would have had 6 months to remove our footprints from the grass. -
the 36th annual beyrer family fishing trip (meaning softball game. of course.)
Right after we got home from our California & Arizona adventures, we went to the annual Pt. Lookout family reunion. Which is still called the fishing trip. But there is no fishing, only softball. You understand completely now, right?
Most of the whole motley crew that was there. From the left, back row: baby Matthew, held by his grandma Maureen, Laura, Sean, Chris, Kevin, holding Gabby, Bobby, Tim, Inez, Dick, John, Grandpa Jack & me. front row: Timmy, Brendan (kneeling), Quinn, Joe, Danny, Aidan, Sean, Patrick & Jack.
Some of the game mixed in with some of the scenes at the field. 
Inez was laughing cause her godson (Patrick) is soooo much taller than her now.
Think its pretty funny how 3 out of the 4 Beyrers pictured have their hands on their hips. 
Yeah, you don’t juggle. 
Some of the cousins. A few were missing but the ones that were there were pretty cute.
Thanks Uncle Dick and Aunt Cathy for another year of fun! -
summer baseball trip- arizona (sedona, grand canyon, phoenix & diamondbacks)
On the morning of 8/11 we took the long, long drive from Anaheim to Sedona, Arizona. 8+ hours of cacti, desert and much more greenery than I had ever expected. (this is going to be a long post, so get comfy)
Dust devil- had no idea what this was and had to google it from the road. Auntie Em, Auntie Em! Saw a bunch of them between CA and AZ. 
I didn’t get a picture of the Agua Fria sign that was by the “river” on the right side, but only the national monument sign. But kind of ironic, no? There was certainly NO agua, and there was definitely NO fria- it was 113 degrees. 
Made it to Sedona. Gorgeous!!
Its a truly beautiful place but so not for us. With John’s back we can’t do any hiking (not that we’re much for the hiking anyway) and can’t do the Jeep tours. And it’s all artsy and stuff. Definitely not Beyrer territory. But it does make for good pictures.We were booked into the Best Western and John upgraded us to a townhouse which was great. There was a babbling brook running thru the backyard below the mountains. (that was probably actually agua fria, but we didn’t go down. I have no idea what’s poison ivy or poison oak and if snakes live around there. So not a nature girl!) The best part for me was the washer/dryer in the townhouse and I caught up on all our laundry. We were going on 2 weeks with only one laundry stop before this!
View from the hotel. 
Patrick.
Jack.
Me!
Sunset. Perfect timing!
John.
Thanks for the pictures, Patrick!
No one will ever say my kids aren’t classy. And you can just barely see the outline of the mountains in the dark. 
Best skies, too.
We grabbed some dinner at the Cowboy Club in Sedona. And ice cream for dessert. It wasn’t carvel, but still good!
Hey there Tex. Or for you fellow Walking Dead fans…”Stay in the house, Carl!!!”
The next morning we left Sedona and drove the 2.5+hrs to the Grand Canyon (south rim) to go check that out. It was so much greener and prettier than I thought it would be. 
Reminded me of the mountain in Close Encounters a little.
As we were arriving I asked if there was a drive thru Grand Canyon. Apparently, there is not. But we did get out of the car to go check it out for literally 20 minutes. 
It was really pretty, but I’m kinda convinced that the whole thing is painted and is an optical illusion. It just doesn’t look real!
Top of the world, ma! The elevation on the trip was 7,000+ plus as opposed to like 15 feet in rvc. Definitely took some getting used to. 
Sky like Andy’s room wallpaper.
And then after our abbreviated Clark Griswald-esque visit to the Grand Canyon for 20 minutes, it was back on the road for the almost 4hr drive to go to Phoenix. They had a game to catch!
The thing I noticed most on the trip was the light being so different than home. It was a lighter light. Or something. Cleaner maybe? I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was but it was beautiful. And the skies are way bluer. 
As we arrived in Phoenix from the lovely 77 degrees at the Grand Canyon, it was 113. And then at 8pm, it was 101. Wtf? My first thing I said to my friend Debbie (who I haven’t spoken on the phone with in at least 12 years and now lives in Phoenix) before even saying hello, was “how the hell do you even live here??” It was like hell with that heat. You could feel the heat baking out of the pavement at night after the sun was down. The water in the pool was like pee. You can’t touch the car doors without leaving a layer of skin on the handle. I was not digging that at all.The boys enjoyed the Diamondback’s game which is air conditioned. I put the air on in the room at 60. Oh, and John said I should have gone cause they had sushi. Yeah, NOooooooo.
We spent our last day with my high school friend Debbie and her husband Fritz who welcomed us into their home for the day (refugees that we were) with a/c. Lots of laughs and catching up and even an early dinner out. We got to the airport (the Phoenix INTERNATIONAL airport, mind you) at 9:15pm. There was no one there. There was no one anywhere. Its like a ghost town. They told us that all the restaurants are closed “at this late hour”. Wtf- late hour? Its 9pm!! (Can you even imagine that happening at JFK?) We walked thru security with absolutely no line. So bizarre. Took the redeye home (not a fan) and small world sat next to someone from RVC who now lives in Arizona. What are the odds there? She is the cousin of a few of my clients and we have a few mutual friends- of course we are now Facebook friends (*waving*- Hi Cathy!!) None of us really slept on the flight so we were all really wrecked for the next two days.It was an awesome trip (except for the baseball for me) and I’m so glad we made it. It was a little iffy with Patrick still puking the night before our early morning flight out. I really loved it out west, but can’t be happier living in NY (ok, ask me again in January when I’m miserably freezing).