Let me tell you how great my little brother is...

My little brother may be the cutest kid alive....Scratch that. My little brother IS the cutest kid alive. Don't argue, I'm right about this. Although I've probably mentioned him before, I'll pretend that you have no idea who I'm talking about and introduce him. His name is Derek and he's a handsome, blonde-haired, blue-eyed 10 year old. Seriously, I think my mom saved up all the cute genes and gave them to him. How did I end up a hazel-eyed redhead covered in freckles and he gets a tan just by thinking about going outside. It's not fair I tell you!

Enough of being jealous of a 10 year old. On to this weekend. Just like his namesakes (Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez....and yes, I did name my brother when I was 14) he loves to play baseball. In fact, he even plays shortstop...gets me all verklempt I'm so proud! And he had a game this past Thursday. He's been a little scared of the ball when he goes up to bat ever since a boy on his team got his nose broken by a pitch. Hey, it would scare me too if I were him. But he did really well and paid attention to the pitches as they came across the plate. Here's a photo that I got of him up at bat. (Note to self: I really have to get in the habit of carrying around a camera instead of using the one on my iphone.)

Did I mention that I LOVE the fact that he's a lefty?! I think he got walked here, but a walk is as good as a hit, right? After the game, I told him that since he did so well playing that I would pick him up from school the next day. No greater words could be uttered to a kid his age.

Sidebar: I love my new job (so far.) I can't complain too much about it especially since they just spent $2,200 on a new computer for me. But let's face it, there will probably be a run-in with the sales guy I work with. Mainly because I get the feeling that he's entitled and thinks he shouldn't do certain aspects of his job that he should have been doing all along. But that's another post entirely. I'm getting off track. The reason I brought up that I love my job is because I can work extra hours M-Th and get to leave early on Friday. Great, right? So I left at 12:00 on Friday and went to pick Derek up EARLY!!

The smile on his face when he walked into the office to meet me was priceless. (I also ran into my 6th grade english teacher and surprisingly she remembered my name. It's surprising because that was back in 1995—I think—and I came in during the middle of the year. Good to see her though and she really hasn't aged at all.)

Let me also say that Derek is one of the sweetest kids you'll ever meet. I told him it was his day, we could do anything he wanted (right after I had lunch of course.) So, I asked him, "what do you want to do?"......Derek: "Well, what do YOU want to do?"....Me: "No, no, no...this is your decision. We can go to a museum, go see a movie...whatever.".....Derek: "Let's go see Grandma first."

So precious, I swear. Since I was starving and he's always hungry, we went to Pizza Villa to grab a bite to eat. When I went to take a picture of him, he looked angry, so I told him to smile. This is the expression I got:

Good enough I suppose. After taking in the greatness that is pizza crackers and a pizza, we went to visit Grandma at work. That's right, my grandma is 72 and still working. Ca-razy lady.

After visiting her, Derek decided that we should go to a museum. The Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh to be precise. Ok, fine by me. He picked this particular one because he had just learned about dinosaurs and wanted to see if they had any. This was right after he told me that a T-Rex has 6 inch teeth. (Random, but cute) We set our course and were Raleigh bound. As I drove, we played bowling on my phone. I say "we" played because Derek played for both of us and would tell me what I scored. I still think that it was suspicious that he always beat me.

Not sure what hit him in Goldsboro, but he wanted to see if they had any 3-D movies at the movie theater. Ummm....ok. Shrek in 3-D just happened to have a show in 30 minutes. After careful consideration, he chose the movie instead of the museum. After all, he said, the museum is gonna be there later. The movie might be gone.

Sidebar: Holy 3-D movie prices! Ridiculous. And we got popcorn and a drink because: 1. Derek is always hungry...2. He had a bad taste in his mouth? Mmmmk...sidebar over.

The movie was really cute and the 3-d effects were very well done, actually. I could tell because during one part Derek leaned over and said, "Woah...that was cool."

Anyway, to sum this whole thing up (it really wasn't supposed to be this long), I'm thinking of making this a Friday tradition. Can't really think of a better way of spending a Friday afternoon than with the world's cutest kid. Well, I'm off to work in my garden. Hope everyone had a great weekend :)