Verdicts

Sam had his first baseball game the other day (there have been a lot of rain outs this season). The verdict from Sam- "Baseball is boring!" Since both Robert and I agree, it was hard to be encouraging. Rob tried his best and we will slug through the rest of the season- 3 hours twice a week. Sam says he is ready to try football, but Rob wants him to wait until he grows a little more. Our poor short boy. They took team pictures the other day- I brought my long lens and took them myself (because, hello $30 a kid is not cheap or worth it when you have three!) Anyway, he was the shortest one on the team, including the little girl. Rob gives me the "this is all your fault" finger pointing and I give it right back. There are no short genes in my family!

Our friend Jodi came and visited from Hawaii. We didn't get to spend much time with her. Mostly it was just on Saturday and even then, we all separated. She took Emma to her soccer game, while I took Joseph to his and Rob took Sam to his baseball game. We did get to do a dinner with adults that evening for one of the guy's birthday party. Here he is a couple weeks ago after the Saturday morning mountain bike ride. Can you guess what he got for his birthday?
The Verdict: Three in sports at once is almost impossible without good friends. We need our Scott and Jodi back! Also, if you can get your kid on a soccer team where they are the only Caucasian, including the coach who can only say, "you Ok, Joe?" then you know that your team is going to dominate!

On our Spring break trip we began and finished the book "The City of Ember." The kids loved it and we had to immediately find the next book: "The People of Sparks." We are currently reading it. The movie is coming soon from Netflix. We will let you know the Verdict then. I tend to not enjoy the movies as much as the books. I think the only movies I like as well were the Jane Austin books and the only ones I have enjoyed more are the Shakespeare ones like "Much Ado about Nothing." The Verdict for the book: Two thumbs up!
Another book we just finished was "The Mysterious Benedict Society." It is about a bunch of orphans and runaways that are recruited to help save the world. We really enjoyed the tests and questions they posed in the book. We would try to figure them out before we read how the children figured them out. The Verdict: Loved it. Two thumbs way up! The kids are very excited to read the follow up book.
I started this new thing to help the kids get to know their grandparents better since we don't live by any of them and probably never will while the kids are growing up. I sent out books with a question for them to answer. So much of our every day lives are never written down. I always wonder how women handled things like periods back in my grandparents day- did they stay home from school? Did they use rags back then- how do you do that? How about how they dealt with the Civil Rights Act- did they see any of these terrible things that you hear about? Anyway, our first question was about the TV. When they got their first TV, what they watched, what they did instead of watching TV- things like that. We have gotten one grandparent and both great grandparents books back and they have been a lot of fun to read. The Verdict: A little expensive to send back and forth, but I loved the responses and reading about my parents' and grandparents' childhood. Even my grandfather who has done a ton of history writing, had to write some more to answer the question. I definitely recommend it!