End of a Great Summer...

August is drawing to a close and I find myself facing my 40th birthday (tomorrow), though I find that to be far less interesting than all the fun we've had this past summer with sports, a trip to the lake, more sports, lots of time of the boys playing with their friends, barbecue after barbecue, and a visit by mom and dad. The boys caught several fish with Dad when he was here and the resulting fish fry that evening was delicious...

Now that the leaves have started falling on the front lawn, I am beginning to prepare myself mentally for the oncoming fall and winter. I'm crossing my fingers for a long fall and a short mild winter. We had our share of severe late August weather on Sunday night. We ended up with three tornadoes that touched down between here and Grand Forks, one of which was just 18 miles north of us. There were 80-mph winds near Crookston, about an hour west of here. We just had a ton of lightning and thunder in our immediate area of Thief River.

For my birthday, I elected to buy myself one gift I've sort of held back on for some time due to the stuff I've gotten the boys and finally got myself a "grownup" game for the desktop computer that although the boys can play is really more exclusively "mine." The game is Microsoft's Flight Simulator X, which allows you to put yourself in the cockpit of some 30 different aircraft including a tricycle ultralight out of Friday Harbor, a Kenmore Air float plane out of the Seattle area, a Lear Jet out of the Thief River Falls Regional Airport, and a 747-400 jumbo jet (the Thief River runway is a tad short, though, for that one...). It has airports all the way from Vietnam to SeaTac with incredible graphics all the way down to a rain soaked flight tarmac in a thunderstorm. It even downloads "realtime" weather for your local area every 15 minutes so you can fly literally in the weather you see out the window. If I sound excited, it's probaby because it's my first genuine professional flight simulator game I've ever owned since the earliest versions of the program back in the 1980s and the difference between then and now is nothing short of breathtaking. I guess I'm also happy to have something I don't have to fight the kids to play (at least for now). And for $30, it's more than worth the splurge. Now if I can just find enough time to actually play it with all the work on my plate and everything else we have going on as school begins.

The Challenger open house is tonight, so we'll be heading out there to say howdy to the teachers we already know and love from Aaron's past years, Mr. Schafer and Mrs. McGeary. Aaron already scoured the house for the books he didn't return to Mr. Schafer last year and I'll be bringing back one of Daniel's books that eluded me for the better part of last Winter. Although the summer has been fun, I am looking forward to the boys learning some new stuff in school and continuing the regular lunch engagements with Aaron on Fridays, though I'm going to try to get more days in with Daniel this year, as he's growing so fast and he always has so much to say when I see him at school during the day.

Aaron is only about three and a half 500-shot days from achieving his goal of 10,000 basketball shots to earn his 10,000 Shot Club t-shirt, thanks largely to his Nana's help when she was here this month. He has shot well over half of the 10,000 total in August alone and will hopefully have it all done by the early part of next week. It has taken a lot of discipline and confidence in himself to get this far and I have no doubt he'll make it. He has really done well in improving his shots too, especially when he takes his time to set up each shot. He hasn't said anything yet about participating in fall flag football, but we'll do it if that's what he wants to do. Daniel still has another year before football opens to him so he has some time to think about it himself, but other than that, it looks like the boys will play basketball again this year.

It's about time to head out for the open house at school, so I'll sign off at this point. I at least wanted to get two blog posts done for the month so people that read this don't think we've fallen off the flat edge of Minnesota... Happy Labor Day to any and everyone reading this.