The Snow Has Finally Revealed Itself...

After one of the drier Minnesota winters on record (little snow), we have just been hit with some major snowfall this weekend. It's now going on about 6 hours of nonstop snow as I type this and I've shoveled the front walkway a good three times thus far. We went to Redeemer this afternoon for the combined choir performance of Trinity and Zion's choirs (not sure what happened to Redeemer's choir) and it was an adventure getting back and forth in this thick snow. As we were leaving, Christina, her son, Mateo, and the boys all piled into the Weasel and when they weren't looking, I bent over to grab a big handful of snow to nail the back window of the car with to surprise the boys. As I recoiled my arm to let loose the nicely rounded snowball, I heard Jerry Wigness from just behind me shout, "Don't throw it!!!" followed by laughter, as he rolled his window back up. With all the snow on the cars, I didn't have a clue he was parked right next to us. I had all but given up hope for a genuine snowy winter until now. I figure we have enough now to make it to spring without another snow storm. The timing of the snow is perfect too, as the Sunday school classes K-5 will be going on a sled outing we planned for Armory Hill tomorrow after church. We had planned it about three weeks ago really having no idea if there'd be any snow and half expecting a mediocre experience, but with this nice new base of snow it should be a blast. Aaron got a new inflatable "Snow Wedge" from his birthday that he's going to break in.

We've managed to stay fairly busy this month even in the absence of all the basketball practices and such. The boys still have Kingdom kids every other Thurday and that's always a good way to spend a couple of hours after school. Both boys had their parent-teacher conferences recently and it was a very positive report for them with Daniel further outpacing his peers in his reading at next year's level a year early and Aaron has made up major ground in his standardized test results that frankly was astonishing from only a year ago. Mr. Schafer had surgery on his shoulder just a few short weeks ago and is already out of his sling. Aaron had an art unit where they made figures out of modeling clay and one kid from Trinity in Aaron's class made a rather artistic rendering of a guy with his arm in a sling and it was called, "Schafer in a sling..." I didn't realize it until just recently, but Aaron's class actually has both fourth and fifth graders in it at the same time. I new Mr. Schafer was a "multi-age" teacher, but I didn't exactly know they were in the same room; I thought he rotated from one classroom to another, so that's kind of nice for Aaron to socialize with the kids a year ahead of him and see a broader range of material.

Before I forget, Daniel was rather witty again tonight with a rather intelligent comeback, proving that cartoons do sometimes have some educational material in them. The boys were playing in the Redeemer youth room and Aaron told me Daniel's thumb was "bleeding." I went in and checked on him to find him crying his eyes out with his thumb wrapped in a paper towel. Of course I expected there was some kind of hemorrhage I was going to be dealing with, but I had him pull the paper towel away and found he had somehow pinched his thumb in the door and had some minor divots taken out of the skin on either side of the thumb's knuckle, but no blood to speak of. I of course used the standard humor to relieve the pain and agony of the moment, suggesting I may have to "amputate" his thumb. He asked, "What's amputate, Dad?" I responded, "It's just removing your finger is all. You don't need it anymore now, do you??" Daniel then answered with a serious look on his face, "I DO need it Dad! I need an OPPOSABLE thumb!" I was speechless for a moment as I digested his most appropriate vocabulary usage at the ripe old age of 7 (almost 8) and asked him where he learned such an advanced concept and he told me "Timmy Turner" who is the star character on the Fairly Oddparents cartoon. Have no fear, though... He's not getting it all from TV. I was cleaning up some papers he had brought home from school last week and there was one page that had black and white pictures or drawings of ancient fossils on it and he was being asked to name the various periods in prehistoric times, i.e. mesozoic, cretacious, etc. I don't recall learning any of that until late middle school if not early high school, so it would appear they are cramming a lot more information in their noggins at much earlier ages than they used to.

Man, It's Cold!!!

This is my kitchen window this weekend. Note the thermometer reading in the lower right-hand corner (yes, that's a minus sign in front of the number).

Mixed Emotions...

I imagine many of you have heard the joke about the "definition of mixed emotions," i.e. watching your brand new Mercedes rolling off a cliff with your mother-in-law behind the wheel (actually I kind of like my mother-in-law). Well, today was one of those kinds of moments. Aaron had his basketball game this afternoon and they were short of coaches, so the head coach drafted me to coach the "blue" team, which happened to be playing against Aaron's team. Here I've been reffing games Aaron wasn't playing in, not being able to watch him at all and the first week in several that I was able to watch him, I ended up coaching his opposition. So... Here I was hoping Aaron would win, but also hoping the team I coached would win. In the end, Aaron's team lost, but only by 4 points, far better than most of their previous contests. The final score was 24 to 20. I was just happy to see Aaron make some real improvements, this time getting a nice clean steal and making a 12-footer. He was all smiles as his coaches cheered him on.

Daniel did great this week too, though the Wolverines played to a 16-16 tie. They have one more game, I believe, and then a pizza party right after the game. Us coaches are going to chip in some money to get some trophies and/or medals for awards. I'm really looking forward to the next season when I'll hopefully know some more about the fundamentals of the game.

Today was a great day for Aaron for another reason. He took his Minnesota achievement tests for math and reading this week and usually he has someone help with reading the test questions to him and there is something like 50 odd questions to answer and by the time the resource person arrived, Aaron had already gone through some 40-plus questions and was almost finished. He scored substantially higher than previously too, so the resource teacher was extremly impressed, at least enough to stop me on my way to basketball practice to recount his performance. A great day all around for Aaron, both athletically and academically. We finished the day with a trip to Wally World where we picked out PJs/PJ bottoms for the boys to wear tomorrow for pajama day at school. It was only 1 degree today, though, so I don't exactly envy them wearing PJ pants out there. I think I'll drive them to school rather than have them stand out at the bus stop. At least the good news on the horizon is daylight saviings will be coming along earlier than previously, on March 11, so we will be able to fit more recreation time into the weekdays.