Baily the Guinea Pig

Our guinea pig Baily died yesterday as Em was with him. She noticed him breathing very heavily and he died before her eyes. Em is our lover of all animals and she's taking this pretty hard. On another sad note, my brother Dan's dog was put to sleep yesterday.

Grandpa's Visit to the Stylist

My Dad stopped by on Saturday afternoon to hang out for a few. During his visit, he was lucky enough to have Maddie give him a quick make-over, including curlers and brush (it looked like the guinea pig's brush to me, but I didn't have the heart to tell my Dad that). My sister Susan used to do this to him quite a bit when she was younger and I think he's grown to like it. Pay special attention to the mohawk on the right. It's a good look for my Dad.

Big Shooter

This is my nephew Drew's victory pose in front of his lucky tree. He led his team to victory on Saturday with three goals, giving them a 5-1 victory!

JV Gold Panthers vs. Fowlerville

It's a blast to watch Nate keep improving every week at football. He had his best week ever this week with a few big tackles, including the one pictured on the right as he's chasing down a guy heading towards the end-zone. Cathie's Dad was there to capture the moment on video. Cathie's Mom is over in Japan and not able to make the commute back for his games, so I wanted to put it online for her (and to brag about my son as I'm a very proud Dad). They lost the game by a touchdown and had one kid taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

Kevin, Sooze and the kids made it up for the game as well. Maddie and Em are proud of their brother, but only have so much tolerance for football. Coloring is a nice alternative. We had perfect weather for the game. Only three games left until the end of the season.

Paintball

We had a beautiful day for our 15th annual Crossroads Youth Group Paintball outing. What made it even better is that for the second year, Nate's been old enough to play as well with me. After doing this for so many years with other people's kids, it's so much fun being out there with Nate and doing this as a father-son activity. The best part for me is working with the fifth and sixth graders who play. They're all new enough and scared enough that they just need a little coaching and direction. We formed an unstoppable mob. Nate and I ended up with lots of welts, which Nate wears like badges of courage. We had a huge group, around 40, and did the event with two other youth groups in the area, giving us over 70 people total in our group.

Cathie was over at the Girards making Apple Cider, so I helped Nate pick out his clothes for paintball - trying to find some thick enough pants and shirt that might minimize the pain. Apparently I picked out his brand-new school shirt and only pair of dress pants. Nate was kind enough to try and take all the blame for me, but Cathie somehow re-directed it back to me. Oops.

My brother Jon is odd

Just like in US Weekly, Jon is asking you:

"Who wore it best?"

Is this animal cruelty or just the beginning of raising a kid just like Jon?

Stuck in Little Rock

Northwest finally cancelled our flight and we headed to downtown Little Rock to our hotel. It's a nice downtown and they've just gotten done celebrating the Little Rock Nine's fiftieth anniversary. We found this sign at the resturant where we ate.

Mud Bowl

Jason and I were trying to demonstrate how to play leap-frog in the mud as one of the games. Instead, it looks like I'm delivering some kind of odd choreographed dance with another man's head up my butt.

Bill Belanger's Shoes

I'm in Hot Springs with Bill and he was sporting an interesting foot wear choice.

Underwear

For 35 years of my life, the tag of my underwear has always been in the
back. My wife bought me new underwear with the tag in the front.
Apparently it's going to take me another 35 years to get used to this as
I've put them on backwards at first every time I've worn them over the
past 6 months.

Bad Dad?

I took Nate out of school early today to go and play Halo 3 with me. Probably not going to earn me the "Good Parent of the Year Award" unless kids are passing them out. We went over to the garage where there were a bunch of other high school kids from our youth group whose parents had done the same thing. Go figure.

Jail Bird

Cathie had to pick Emily up from school to take her to the doctor today. As they were leaving the school, Cathie remembered that she'd left something in the office. She ran inside to get it and came back to find Emily curled up on the floor of the van.

Cathie: "Emily, why are you laying on the floor?"
Emily: "Because I didn't want you to go to jail."
Cathie: "Go to jail?"
Emily: "Yeah. For leaving me in the van by myself."

Halo - the Review

Nigel got here about 12:30 with Halo 3. We hooked it up and played two player for a while. The graphics, textures and shading are amazing. The new features rock. Haven't played the story-mode yet.

Halo 3

I had originally pre-ordered Halo 3 from Amazon, assuming they'd ship it early so that I would receive the game on the day it was released, like they did with Harry Potter.

Instead, I met Jason and Nigel up at Game Stop, took advantage of Jason's Barnes and Nobles discount and pre-ordered it. Nigel's picking it up at midnight and dropping it off at my house. The countdown is on.

Em and Her Teacher

Emily's teacher happens to be a good friend of ours. We had her over for dinner tonight, as we have many times, but this is the first time she was here as Emily's teacher. It was the equivalent of having Barry Sanders come over and have dinner with me. She was pure celebrity. Remember back to what a big deal it was when you saw your teacher in a non-school setting. Em's teacher has known her since she was a baby and it's funny to see how quiet Em is in her class, even though she's known her forever.

As she was enjoying an adult beverage, Emily asked her, "Ms. X, while you're drinking, could you play Go-Fish with me." Later as she was eating, Em said quietly, "Wow Ms. X, you must have been really hungry."

Em and Baily

I came outside yesterday after watching the Lions get destroyed and I found Emily laying on the lawn in front of the house, with Baily the guinea pig on her back. No idea what she was doing, but the girl sure loves her animals.

How long is too long?

Very good article on the question How long do I wait to buy new technology?

Mudbowl 2007

We had an the perfect storm for this year's tenth annual Crossroads Mudbowl. We had perfect weather, a great team of guys that did the leg work and setup, a ton of kids and great mud. We played steal the bacon, link tag, four-corner crossing and caterpillar racing followed by a team painting contest.

I stayed pretty mud-free until the end when the 8th graders tag-teamed me and tried to take me down. Nate started off playing and was joined at the end by Cathie and Maddie. Nate brought his buddy Austin to play.

Cathie, Jess and Jen all got into it - and Maddie took multiple dunkings from Tiff and Jess both. The highlight was watching Jess and Tifff deliver regular beatings to each other in the pit.


Since I was out of town last week, they were kind enough to move it to this week so I could be a part of it. Our Pastor Joe explained in Church today that he had a very, very somber and important family event that he had to be at and could not make the Mud Bowl. I was never aware that your team NHL Fantasy Hockey Draft qualified as a somber family event.

You can see the rest of the pictures on our youth group's site here.

Panthers vs. Brighton Game

Nate's team lost to the Brighton Bulldogs 0-19. These guys were impressive, including the 6'3" sixth grader with a 50" vertical, as pictured on the left. These guys seemed to play dirty, including the giant #54 pictured in both of these shots. How many personal fouls can you see wrong with the picture on the right?

Nate's been getting a lot more playing time and I've been getting out on the field taking more and more pictures, including a couple like this one below where I almost got drilled.

The coach continues to do a great job with these boys, knowing how to motivate them and work on the fundamentals. Brighton traditionally has a very good team and the silver lining in this cloud was that they beat us by less than they'd beaten the other teas.

Nate

Nate and I were playing Madden '08 today. He was the Patriots and I was the Colts.

Nate: "Dad, why is that guy on the kick-off team named Gay?"
Me: "No idea."

Later on the kick-return when Nate was about to tackle me with the same player.

Nate: "Look Dad, I'm gay."
Me: "Wow."