4 feet 9 versus 6 feet 5? No problem!

Today was a good day as the choir started it off with performances of "Down To The River To Pray" and the new pastor continues to become acclimated to the congregation and our way of doing things. The present challenge is getting the congregation to move up to the front pews in the second service so those watching the TV broadcast don't have the impression that there's only the pastor and a row of acolytes attending the service. To that end, the choir filled up the back couple pews for a change. We were all saying there's several people, though, who have gone to Trinity for over 30 years who have always sat in the same pew, same spot, every single service, every single year and aren't likely to budge, which the new pastor agreed with stating, "Lutheran's are stubborn that way..." The pastor also cracked a joke in the service, "You hear about the Norwegian who loved his wife so much he almost told her?"

After services, we picked up the boys' friend, Austin, and we all headed out to Challenger for two hours of open gym. As for the title of this blog entry, we got a game of 3 on 3 going, which quickly turned to 4 on 4, than 5 on 5. I was on Aaron's and Daniel's team and the father of two of the kids on the other side was on their team so it was fairly evenly matched, though I was a good 5 inches taller than their dad. In any event, there was a boy on Aaron's team who stands probably around 4 feet 10 who guarded me like crazy. He boxed out on every shot and really did effectively prevent me from going for several rebounds. I called it "tenacious D..." He wasn't intimidated for a second by my height advantage and really was fun to play against. Aaron made several baskets and we ended up ahead, but eventually forgot the overall score. Daniel dribbled the ball a lot, but didn't really shoot much, so he just got some more basketball fundamentals practice in for his next game. I ended up running into the brother of a former classmate of mine, Craig's brother Kent Kainz. It was a fun afternoon of basketball followed by a relaxing evening of work. The snow started coming down again tonight and the wind was bitter cold today, so winter is far from over. I'll have to shovel the front walkway for the first time since probably before Christmas thanks to our new cold front. The boys only have basketball for a couple more weeks, though, so I won't be braving the cold for too much longer. Speaking of basketball, make sure you scroll down on this page to see the boys' team pictures...