David Garrard and Me

While playing basketball last night I had a picture taken of me with the quarterback of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Not the best resolution since it was my camera phone. He was very gracious when I asked for a picture. I think this was about the fourth time he was out there playing with us since the season ended.

CRM Volunteer Appreciation Dinner and Chick-Fil-A is coming...

On Monday night our family had the privilege of attending a volunteer appreciation dinner at the City Rescue Mission, www.crmjax.org. The kids attended as well since they had a big role in helping with the "Shoeboxes of Love." Ashlyn and Ethan asked friends who attended their birthday party last year to bring filled shoeboxes for donation instead of presents for them. We were provided a wonderful 3-course meal and also learned more about CRM's mission and needs. Ashlyn accepted a certificate of appreciation for our family and represented us in the group picture with a bunch of other adults. Because of this, she is claiming the certificate is hers and will go on her wall!

As an aside, a general manager from the closest Chick-Fil-A to us (which is 10 miles away) was at the dinner. I told him they need to built one in Mandarin (our area of Jacksonville). His response was there should be one there by the end of 2009. The general vicinity he gave is around I-295 and San Jose Blvd which would be less then 3 miles away. Yeah!...I think.

Up to date with January postings

I'm striving to get my blog up to date. I've had some posts saved but not published and then I am getting other posts added. I decided to work from most recent to older posts. So here in one fell swoop is January up to date with the later months of 2008 to follow...at some point. And yes posts have been updated to keep this blog somewhat chronologically sound.

Ashlyn's Softball Evaluation

Ashlyn had softball tryouts/evaluations on Saturday. She is playing in the 8U softball pitching machine league. There were a number of girls out there. Her league will have 2-3 teams and will play other teams throughout the area. For the evaluations the girls fielded grounders and threw to first from between SS/3B, hit using the pitching machine and had a timed run from home to 1st base. We received an e-mail last night and Ashlyn will be on a team with 2 other girls in her class at school and a girl from the team she played on last year. There were 14 girls listed on her team which seems like a lot to me but we will see. No team name has been selected yet but Ashlyn will miss the first practice on Thursday because her basketball team is going to the Jacksonville University women's basketball game (normally she has practice on Thursday).

Basketball Goodbye

I said goodbye to one of my basketball playing friends this morning. Robert Prince gets a special acknowledgment because he was the assistant wide receivers coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. He was hired a couple weeks ago as the new wide receivers coach for the Seattle Seahawks. He worked with Jim Mora, Jr. in Atlanta and San Francisco. Plus he brought a lot of his Jaguars shirts to let us have. I acquired a nice black, dry fit "Polo" style shirt.

Hopefully it's like this next Friday...

...and many Fridays to come since I will not be working. Looking out my office window at a beautiful, clear day.

Inauguration Day

I had to use some PTO either this pay period or next so I took today off to make it a 4-day weekend. Got a few things organized around the house and also watched some CNN coverage of the inauguration activities. I don't recall ever watching an inauguration before. Got to see all the former presidents emerging from the Capitol and then the Obama family. The Mall was definitely packed.

I DVR'd the inauguration in case Ashlyn wanted to see it. During the election cycle she was very interested in what was going on...especially for her age I thought. When she came home though I found out they watched it at school. She said 1/2 watched it in the cafeteria and the rest in their classrooms. She was in the cafeteria.

Historical day for the US, and I think history will be kinder to Bush as opposed to current sentiment.

Substitute Teacher

I was the substitute teacher for our Family Group bible study this morning. We are reading the book The Fine Line this quarter.

New Basketball Night

Our Saturday morning basketball is on hold during the Upwards (kids) season but we are now playing Saturday nights at 8:45 pm. Hopefully the numbers are not out of control like they have been recently. There have been 27-28 people once or twice. And we had 18 yesterday morning which was very high.

New Work Schedule

Just found out our office is going back to 4 10-hour days a week. I will work Monday through Thursday. I like the 3 day weekends, especially during the summer, but I will miss out on playing basketball on Monday and Wednesday mornings.

Attic Storage

Our office was closed on Friday so I spent that day and Saturday adding 160 sq ft of decking in the attic. I had to install floor support for just about every 2'x4' section of plywood so it took a lot more work. We now have plenty of storage space. We needed some extra space to keep the crib and my old desk. Ashlyn uses part of the crib as a headboard and Gina's dad built us a 10 ft x 7 ft desk/wall unit.

Plus now I can keep more of the kids toys in the attic as they outgrow them for their own kids one day...hopefully. I have been able to let them play with some of my toys (and books) from childhood and it has been pretty cool (for me) to see them enjoy playing with them.

Getting back to normal

Ethan finally seems to be getting back to himself today. He went back to school after missing the first 3 days this week. Hopefully we can start seeing some positive effects of removing his tonsils and adenoids and getting ear tubes again.

Ashlyn's first basketball practice

Ashlyn had her first practice this morning at 9:30. We missed last Saturday since we were out of town and her first game is tomorrow. Ashlyn played in 2006 but didn't play last year.

When we arrived I thought the rim looked high combined with the girls not being able to reach the rim when shooting. I asked one of the other dads if they play on a 10' goal and he said no. He said it was 8 1/2..which is what they play on. I went to the rim and jumped to see what I could reach. It was actually about 9'8". They got it straight and it was much easier for the girls to make baskets.

To finish practice, we played a game of the kids versus parents. I had to hold back a lot!:-)

Games will be at 1 PM on Sundays and practice every Thursday at 6:30 PM.

Happy New Year!

I had not planned to stay up but we are supposed to give Ethan his pain medication every 4 hours so it got to that point to not go to sleep. We didn't get home from the hospital until around 4:30 pm. It has been a long day and Ethan is not feeling well. I think his first comment when they wheeled him into recovery was yelling and screaming "I want my tonsils back in!"

I was watching some motorcycle and truck stunt attempts on ESPN from Las Vegas. And flipped over to see the ball drop in NYC at midnight. And thought to myself why do they still put Dick Clark on the air. I understand his name was associated with the event for a long time but to me it is sad watching him.

We woke Ethan up as instructed to give him his medicine but after many attempts, he refused to take it and went back to sleep. That was not worth the effort...wow. He refused quite madly I might add.