Monday, February 25, 2008
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Yup, We're Still Here...
I don't know if I've ever gone this long without updating the blog before, but as it's been over a month since I've done so, you may wish to kick back, put your feet up, and relax for a while, as there's quite a bit to report on.
Basketball season has been the highlight of our existence since my last update, which of course is natural given we've spent every Monday and Thursday evening and Saturday morning since late fall in gyms at Challenger or Franklin working on our skills, the boys with playing and me with coaching. I learned as much if not more than the boys this season given how little experience I have with the sport and came away a lot more enthusiastic about next season than I already was. The boys played their final games on Thursday and yesterday with Aaron's team, the Spurs, placing 5th overall. Thief River has what they call "traveling teams" where a number of players are chosen to compete against other area/regional towns in basketball tournaments after the regular season ends for everyone else and the boys were hoping to be selected for them, as they hadn't been last year. The board of the basketball club held out on announcing this year's names, though, and instead of letting everyone know on Thursday evening, everybody had to wait and check their website themselves yesterday after the last championship game. The boys didn't make this year's traveling team, but they didn't spend much time moping about it, as they have baseball on the horizon and other activities to look forward to in its place. I can imagine they'll find plenty of things to do instead of the time they'd be spending with traveling team practice and games, but they'll of course give the traveling team another shot next year after some more work on their games/skills over the summer.
Aaron continues to play the string bass and enjoys the playing of it for fun, but of course would rather do without all the practicing. Now that we don't have basketball on our schedule, though, I'm considering getting him in to private lessons with the orchestra teacher at Kezar Music once a week to help with bowing technique, etc. I think he's learned quite a bit considering he's only been playing for a matter of a few short months. I think he's learning how to sing as a result of the greater exposure he's getting in orchestra to different pitches, rhythms, etc. Daniel still apparently has his mind set on playing the viola next fall in fourth grade, so that should be easier to tote around between practices.
In other news, most of you probably already heard about it, but recently our area was in the grip of a bitter cold snap with temperatures plummeting to the double digits below zero and wind chill "feels like" temperatures as low as 55 below. Despite the unpleasant temperature, though, we weathered it okay, as our van started up without any problems every morning and night even without being plugged in and the house stayed toasty warm the whole time. One thing different this year than last year is the pipes. Some of you may recall our pipes froze in the back bathroom around this time last year and we were without water for somewhere around a month while we waited for the pipes to thaw back there. Once they thawed, though, I had put foam insulating sleeves onto those pipes under the rear crawl space of the house, and this year when the temperatures dropped again, we didn't have the problem with freezing pipes at all. So it would appear I'm beginning to learn how to effectively deal with the consequences of a cold Minnesota winter on my own. The temperatures have bounced back above zero a little bit lately, but continue to go up and down quite a bit with as much as 40 degrees difference in highs and lows from one day to the next. It makes for a lot of indoor recesses for the boys.
There have been a lot of funny moments around here in recent weeks, some of which I've already passed on to friends and family, but will recount here in the event I haven't covered everybody. A couple or three weeks ago, Daniel hadn't done his homework and I had him do it in the van on the way to school, a task he tackled rather begrudgingly to start with, but he had it all done by the time I pulled up to the front entrance at school to drop him off. I asked him to show me the homework to prove he was finished and when I looked at it and handed it back to him, Daniel extended his hand to shake mine and said with a grin, "Pleasure doing business with you..." Another rather grown up thing he said came about a week ago when I was playing a rather retro video game at home and after much effort avoiding disaster with my little spaceship in the game, I ended up with my last ship destroyed and hollered at the TV screen. Daniel looks at me and says, "Come on, Dad, die with dignity!"
As one might expect with such funny sayings from Daniel, he continues to do quite well in his school work, particularly reading, and he delights his teacher, Mrs. McGeary, with his quick wit. Just last Friday when I picked him up at school, Mrs. McGeary called attention to Daniel's "beautiful" cursive handwriting, a skill he's just recently learned and has been working very hard on. She sounded as though his handwriting was the best she has ever seen. This morning at Sunday school, though, I saw a sample of what she was seeing, as Daniel asked me if he could write the first few books of the Bible on the chalk board. He wrote in cursive that was so formal, it almost reminded me of the middle 1800's school teacher's primer books with the perfect examples of what proper handwriting was to look like. Very impressive indeed.
Speaking of church this morning, we sat behind Joe and Jodi Drevlow and at one point Joe was holding both his youngest (other than the new baby) daughters, Bunny and Bralynne, in his arms, while Pastor John began the communion liturgy. Just after Pastor John started speaking, it was pretty quiet in the sanctuary as we all listened to the pastor when Bunny (about 4 years old) looks over Joe's shoulder from where she's perched in Joe's left arm at me and then looks back at her dad and says, "Jim's taller than you!" She said it twice and it was just so funny how matter of fact she said it. If course you had to be there to experience how cute she was, but I really had a good smile/chuckle with that one... After church, we're here lounging around waiting for the Super Bowl to start and one of the boys' friends, Blake, says to us, "I don't know how you guys do it, waking up early every single day of the week." I didn't realize it, but that is really what we've been doing for over two months now with basketball on Saturdays and choir/Sunday school on Sundays. I don't remember the last time we actually got to really sleep in. You can bet that's exactly what we'll be doing next Saturday, though, with our first Saturday free since October/November... Maybe I won't be so tired during the week now (until baseball season starts, that is).
I still have a few more pictures to download from my camera of basketball and will hopefully get some of them posted here on the blog for all to see soon. Gotta get back to work now, though.
Basketball season has been the highlight of our existence since my last update, which of course is natural given we've spent every Monday and Thursday evening and Saturday morning since late fall in gyms at Challenger or Franklin working on our skills, the boys with playing and me with coaching. I learned as much if not more than the boys this season given how little experience I have with the sport and came away a lot more enthusiastic about next season than I already was. The boys played their final games on Thursday and yesterday with Aaron's team, the Spurs, placing 5th overall. Thief River has what they call "traveling teams" where a number of players are chosen to compete against other area/regional towns in basketball tournaments after the regular season ends for everyone else and the boys were hoping to be selected for them, as they hadn't been last year. The board of the basketball club held out on announcing this year's names, though, and instead of letting everyone know on Thursday evening, everybody had to wait and check their website themselves yesterday after the last championship game. The boys didn't make this year's traveling team, but they didn't spend much time moping about it, as they have baseball on the horizon and other activities to look forward to in its place. I can imagine they'll find plenty of things to do instead of the time they'd be spending with traveling team practice and games, but they'll of course give the traveling team another shot next year after some more work on their games/skills over the summer.
Aaron continues to play the string bass and enjoys the playing of it for fun, but of course would rather do without all the practicing. Now that we don't have basketball on our schedule, though, I'm considering getting him in to private lessons with the orchestra teacher at Kezar Music once a week to help with bowing technique, etc. I think he's learned quite a bit considering he's only been playing for a matter of a few short months. I think he's learning how to sing as a result of the greater exposure he's getting in orchestra to different pitches, rhythms, etc. Daniel still apparently has his mind set on playing the viola next fall in fourth grade, so that should be easier to tote around between practices.
In other news, most of you probably already heard about it, but recently our area was in the grip of a bitter cold snap with temperatures plummeting to the double digits below zero and wind chill "feels like" temperatures as low as 55 below. Despite the unpleasant temperature, though, we weathered it okay, as our van started up without any problems every morning and night even without being plugged in and the house stayed toasty warm the whole time. One thing different this year than last year is the pipes. Some of you may recall our pipes froze in the back bathroom around this time last year and we were without water for somewhere around a month while we waited for the pipes to thaw back there. Once they thawed, though, I had put foam insulating sleeves onto those pipes under the rear crawl space of the house, and this year when the temperatures dropped again, we didn't have the problem with freezing pipes at all. So it would appear I'm beginning to learn how to effectively deal with the consequences of a cold Minnesota winter on my own. The temperatures have bounced back above zero a little bit lately, but continue to go up and down quite a bit with as much as 40 degrees difference in highs and lows from one day to the next. It makes for a lot of indoor recesses for the boys.
There have been a lot of funny moments around here in recent weeks, some of which I've already passed on to friends and family, but will recount here in the event I haven't covered everybody. A couple or three weeks ago, Daniel hadn't done his homework and I had him do it in the van on the way to school, a task he tackled rather begrudgingly to start with, but he had it all done by the time I pulled up to the front entrance at school to drop him off. I asked him to show me the homework to prove he was finished and when I looked at it and handed it back to him, Daniel extended his hand to shake mine and said with a grin, "Pleasure doing business with you..." Another rather grown up thing he said came about a week ago when I was playing a rather retro video game at home and after much effort avoiding disaster with my little spaceship in the game, I ended up with my last ship destroyed and hollered at the TV screen. Daniel looks at me and says, "Come on, Dad, die with dignity!"
As one might expect with such funny sayings from Daniel, he continues to do quite well in his school work, particularly reading, and he delights his teacher, Mrs. McGeary, with his quick wit. Just last Friday when I picked him up at school, Mrs. McGeary called attention to Daniel's "beautiful" cursive handwriting, a skill he's just recently learned and has been working very hard on. She sounded as though his handwriting was the best she has ever seen. This morning at Sunday school, though, I saw a sample of what she was seeing, as Daniel asked me if he could write the first few books of the Bible on the chalk board. He wrote in cursive that was so formal, it almost reminded me of the middle 1800's school teacher's primer books with the perfect examples of what proper handwriting was to look like. Very impressive indeed.
Speaking of church this morning, we sat behind Joe and Jodi Drevlow and at one point Joe was holding both his youngest (other than the new baby) daughters, Bunny and Bralynne, in his arms, while Pastor John began the communion liturgy. Just after Pastor John started speaking, it was pretty quiet in the sanctuary as we all listened to the pastor when Bunny (about 4 years old) looks over Joe's shoulder from where she's perched in Joe's left arm at me and then looks back at her dad and says, "Jim's taller than you!" She said it twice and it was just so funny how matter of fact she said it. If course you had to be there to experience how cute she was, but I really had a good smile/chuckle with that one... After church, we're here lounging around waiting for the Super Bowl to start and one of the boys' friends, Blake, says to us, "I don't know how you guys do it, waking up early every single day of the week." I didn't realize it, but that is really what we've been doing for over two months now with basketball on Saturdays and choir/Sunday school on Sundays. I don't remember the last time we actually got to really sleep in. You can bet that's exactly what we'll be doing next Saturday, though, with our first Saturday free since October/November... Maybe I won't be so tired during the week now (until baseball season starts, that is).
I still have a few more pictures to download from my camera of basketball and will hopefully get some of them posted here on the blog for all to see soon. Gotta get back to work now, though.
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