No More School!!!

It's Friday and the last day of school at Challenger. Hurray! The neighbor boys that are home schooled and have been done with their schooling for over a week have been counting the days until Aaron and Daniel get out of school so they can have somebody to play with during the day. I'll be heading out to Challenger at noon for one final school lunch with Aaron.

It's been an eventful few weeks since the last blog entry. Too many things to remember, so I'll touch on the highlights.

We made it through a rather hot spell last weekend with temperatures into the mid 90s. The central air conditioning wasn't working, so I had the ceiling fan plus a floor fan running downstairs and three fans running in my bedroom and just barely taking the edge off the heat. It was about 45 percent humidity, so that was better than Florida heat, I guess. We've had a straight week now of about 78-degree temps, so a lot more comfortable lately.

This past week we've had the opportunity to visit with Fern Williams' daughter, Debbie, and her children Matt (14) and Jessie (8). We fired up the grill the other night and had hamburgers and beer brats with the Murphys on the corner at Fern's house. Debbie had to leave for Arizona yesterday morning. That was a busy night for us (Wednesday) as I got the boys signed up at the last minute for T-ball/Little League through the Parks & Recreation Dept. at the Ralph Arena. They had "clinics" for baseball that night with Daniel's running from 4 to 5:10 and Aaron's from 6:40 to 8:00, so we had to eat between 5:10 and 6:40. That day sure filled up rather quickly. The baseball is being played out at the college fields. I think there were perhaps a half dozen less kids in Aaron's program than Daniel's, but both teems had close to 20 kids. They had five coaches, so plenty of individual attention. Both boys have made great strides in physical ability with thorwing and catching and it was obvious they both had the times of their lives out there on the field. Aaron had a huge grin on his face as he ran the bases in one of the drills. We'll be heading out to Wal-Mart tonight to pick up some baseball accessories, i.e. the special pants Aaron's been dying to get, cleat shoes, etc. and then to Universal Screen Print to order the custom shirts and hats before team pictures.

Come next week, Aaron will be attending Safety Camp sponsored by the Pennington County Sheriff's Department and Thief River Falls Police Department where he'll be learning all about safety in sports, around the house, and around town culminating in a ride on the Canadian Pacific Railroad to Plummer, Minnesota and back where he'll learn about railroad safety. The camp is open to 2nd and 3rd graders only, so this is the only chance Aaron has to go. Daniel will be able to go both years if he wants.

The Parks & Recreation Dept. has a number of other summer activties I hope to get the boys involved in which include a trip to Fargo-Moorhead to watch a semi-pro hockey game between Fargo-Moorhead and Winnipeg, Manitoba in mid-July plus trips to the Pioneer Village in town and some wildlife sightseeing trips. THere's also a trip where they bring a sack lunch and their fishing poles and head to the dock here in town for a day of learning how to fish. Somewhere in between,we hope to fit in some swimming lessons at the Franklin Pool.

Hopefully between all of the above I'll get a chance to keep this blog relatively updated. I apologize in advance if I don't... :o)