Tic-Tac, Sir?

Daniel said something pretty funny the other night that I thought would make a good opening to this "catch-up" blog entry of sorts. He was talking to Aaron and they were discussing numbers of words and in the middle of the conversation, I burped and announced to Daniel, "That's ONE word." Daniel looks up at me and says, "Two words, Dad...BREATH MINT!"

Well, since my last update, Daniel had his birthday party at the Seven Clans water park as planned and had a lot of fun with his buddies. I had 15 passes to give out and used all but one of them up. It was well worth the money for all the fun the boys had. Since then, the rest of the snow has gone and the grass has already begun to green up. I picked up a "new" used bike for Daniel at K-Mart for $25. Besides being rusted from last year's thunderstorm season, his old bike was rather on the small size given his growth spurt. I got him a 20-inch BMX-style with yellow paint and red flame decals. For Aaron, I picked up a new 24-inch 7-speed Mongoose mountain bike with dual shock suspension. This time around, bikes are being brought in to the porch at night so they don't end up with so much wear and tear from the monsoon season. The boys have been out on their bikes practically every day since the snow first melted and are spending less and less time indoors (a good thing).

To help spur along a more "active" summer this year, we picked up some tennis racquets last weekend and headed out to the tennis court in town. Daniel took to it pretty quickly, hitting at least a couple of volleys over the net with me. Aaron liked practicing against the wall on the edge of the court, but managed to hit a few over the cyclone fence and across the street (as did yours truly). We spent about an hour there on Easter Sunday, then returned on Monday as they also had that day off from school for Spring Break.

The boys finally got their yearbooks from last year for Challenger. They had to rebuild the whole thing from scratch and for a while there, the school didn't think they'd have a yearbook at all, so it was a pleasant surprise when the boys brought one home. They've gotten one every year since kindergarten, so it's nice not to have any "holes" in the succession of yearbooks.

The boys had their pictures taken for spring pictures and unfortunately I never got any warning beforehand, so yesterday Aaron dropped his pictures on his lap and I noted his hair was rather out of place and wasn't exactly prepared that day, but the more I look at the picture, the more I like it. It's not an "artificial" posed picture, but more of a candid shot, so I'm actually pretty happy with it. Daniel's picture was even better. We worked with him all winter to stop licking his lips in the cold windy weather to no avail and he ended up with a bright pink ring around his upper and lower lips, kinda looking like a pufferfish. It was mostly gone by the time pictures were taken, but he remains with a slight remnant of it in the pictures. Now that summer is here, though, he's not licking his lips near as much so the damage can finally heal in time for next winter...

The boys and I made an impromptu visit to the store last night and got hopefully our last item for summer recreation - a 12-foot trampoline with enclosure for the back yard. I spent two days so far figuring out how to put the blasted thing together. There's no less than 80 separate springs to put on and over 30 pole pieces to match up perfectly for it to function normally. I managed to get the entire frame together by myself this afternoon and then the pad to jump on by the time the boys got home from school. Now I'm just working on the safety enclosure, which I hope to complete by tomorrow night so they can start using the tramp this weekend. It's clearly a hit amongst both the boys and their buddies. I figure it will keep them quite occupied and entertained the remainder of the summer and their cousins will have something to jump on now when they come to town. I'll post a pic of it here.

In other activities, we have our combined choir performance coming up soon in early May with the choirs of Zion and Redeemer Lutheran. We'll be singing three songs as we did last year with Diane Johnson and Ruth Stenson directing the other two. We also have to sing the first service after the new pastor arrives, so it should make for a lot of singing in a short amount of time.

As for news around town, the Hardees I witnessed open back in 9th grade and ate at more than a few times as a freshman in 1981 has finally closed its doors for good. It had been losing money for quite a while to McDonald's and other restaurants as Hardees is clearly on the wrong side of town. It's good for us, though, as their food was way to fattening anyway. Wal-Mart has also put their sign up on the new store in town, so it looks like their grand opening is just around the corner. I'm thinking it'll be interesting if the lines through checkout get any faster at K-Mart after Wal-Mart's opening.

Anywho, I think we're going to go see the Drevlow kids' recital with Marcia Knuttila tomorrow night at Our Savior's Lutheran. It will be the first recital I've gone to since playing for Ms. K. myself.

I'm starting to yawn something fierce now, so I better sign off for now. Hope everyone is having a great spring and looking forward to a relaxing summer. Take care everybody!