The Green Green Grass of Home...

Everything looks so beautiful this spring with the grass all around returning to a lush green and the birds chirping again in the mornings. We had a quite active weekend around here with Dusty Grochow spending the night on Saturday after a day spent out at the park next to the old Washington Elementary then playing down at the Armory Hill park by the river. We played some baseball for the most part and shot a few hoops. Aaron hit quite a few line drives as I worked on my scalp sunburn (no hat). It's amazing how quickly Aaron has picked up the concept of "eye on the ball" and power hitting. We went out in the back yard yesterday while the other neighbor boys played on the trampoline and I threw a few pitches to Aaron with a SOFT ball and he at one point hit the ball all the way up to the top of our house's roof and also hit the neighbor's wall about 25 yards away near the eave of the roof, way above the 6 foot fence around the back yard. I think the boys were on and off the trampoline about 90 percent of the weekend when we weren't out playing ball, so it was a good prelude to this coming week's activities.

Yes, it's "turn off the tube" week here in TRF where all students are asked to "turn off the television" for an entire week, ending next Sunday. We talked a bit about it last night, things we can do other than turn on the TV and I think we'll be doing a fair amount of batting practice and throwing the football around along with the trampoline activity. I'm thinking we'll put some puzzles together and get some overdue reading done. They were reluctant at first about the concept, but realize there are other things they can do besides watching the box. I'm sure there will be some wailing and gnashing of teeth from time to time as we venture through a week without TV, but we'll all be better for it, I'm sure. If they make it through the whole week, they get rewards such as certificates for pizza, picture in the paper, etc.

I'll attach a few more pictures here of last weekend's activities and call it a day (in terms of blogging).