What's It Like as a New Traveling Sports Family?

What is it like becoming a travel baseball mom, dad and family?  I know that tryouts, recruiting and invitations to play next year or even atarting Fall Ball for select travel baseball teams has begun already, so its probably time to share some of what it means to take the leap!  For those of you who have made the decision to join the rest of us crazy travel baseball families, here is a little bit of a preview.

This article made me smile and realize that virtually all of these points are true!  
titled Then I Became A Baseball Parent....here ya go
http://www.infosports.com/baseball/arch/3250.htm

Now, the couple of points I am forced to add to this list because they have proven themselves over the past three years:

Frequent flyer miles. Accumulation is now banked for baseball tournaments!  Not that we can't squeeze in a trip or two with the remaining miles, but it's mostly about how to get The Kid where he needs to go. Caution, shameless plug...we always use Sunsationalbeachvacations.com for our beach trips;)

Hotel loyalty program.  Ditto.  See the frequent flyer entry above.  We try to stay at the same chains as the husband and I do for our other jobs (you know, that thing we do to collect a paycheck instead of spending it).  Even if it's not the same class of hotel that we would have for business trips, ie JW Marriott, we try to stay at the same overall hotel company ie Courtyard By Marriott in order to get some additional perks or point accumulation.  It's not always possible to get all your stays in a comparable hotel since your group may oftentimes stay together at a hotel for a group rate discount.  We have mostly stayed at the hotels the team chooses however at times we elected to stay somewhere else. 

Siblings find and make friends with the other siblings and get to spend time with children outside of their school, church and neighborhood.  My younger kids used to be a little more shy about making friends.  Not any more!  I find I am more open to the kids hanging out at the field with other sibs.

My Garage looks less like a place to store cars and more like a Play It Again Sports store.

My calendar used to have plenty of open days with nothing written as commitments.  Now, it's all a jumbled mess of confirmation numbers, hotel names and practice locations.  

I reserve the right to come back to this entry MANY times!