The Anderson family is embarking on another travel hockey season. Actually, we are 17 games into the new season.

I’ve just been too busy to write about it.

This year we are a little more prepared than last. My wife, Julie, and I have been in training since August, about the time our son, Thomas, started tryouts for this hockey season.

Julie and I have been trying to eat right. We’ve been exercising together three times per week. And trying to cut back on fast food, a travel family’s staple.

More importantly, we’ve been trying to say “no” to our boys when they want something that they really don’t need. “We can’t go here or do that,” we say, “we’ve got ice fees and baseball camps to pay for.”

That means more to them than saying, “We can’t go here or do that because we have to pay the mortgage.”

Let me recap some from where we left off last hockey season. The boys had a bad case of goalie envy and both wound up playing catcher for their baseball teams last summer.

Catcher’s gear is expensive, but only about the combined total of a good pair of skates. Thomas wanted fresh catcher’s gear so badly that during a spring garage sale he turned into quite a salesman and raised enough money to pay for his entire kit.

Eric, 14, whose first-love is baseball, extended his season into the fall and has taken part in some baseball camps. Now, he’s trying out for the school basketball team.

Eric isn’t playing hockey this season, but that doesn’t stop him from checking me into a wall or the glass at the rink whenever the mood strikes. He isn’t a peewee anymore; he’s 5-10, 180. He can do a lot of damage as his football-playing friends say.

Thomas, the 10-year-old, is again playing on the Kansas City Stars Squirt A team out of the Pepsi Midwest Ice Center in Overland Park. That’s home, but over the course of the 60-game season, he’ll be playing in Nashville, Des Moines, Dallas, Chicago and St. Louis. We’ve already been to Chicago once, and to Arkansas and Fremont, Neb.

As the season goes on, I encourage you to share your stories as I discuss a number of aspects of youth travel sports life.

Expect to see stories about the coach-parent-athlete relationship, harnessing a young athlete’s ego, balancing a sports and family budget, unruly parents, road-trip dining and having fun at the old ballpark.