Spring has sprung!

Yesterday (March 7) was the Speech meet that was being held up in Spokane Wa. Gavin did very well at his speech competition, scoring a 49/50 from both of his judges and earning a "Superior" rating. One of the coolest things of the day is that he was the only 1st grader in the Bible division that was asked to go up on the stage and "give his speech" again. There were about 400 people in the sanctuary when he spoke on stage. That makes it about 600 total this week, as the school had the speech meet students practice by giving their speeches at chapel this week for practice. Liberty Christian performed very well at the competition, as they do every year.

I (Russ) stayed home with Ethan on the day of the speech and was unable to attend. On the way to the school that morning, Ethan decided to get sick. He was in bad shape all day, and it wouldn't have been a very pretty to have him up there at the competition.
He's still not feeling very well today, and for some reason has decided not to walk around...feeling bad, and just wanting to be carried...poor guy.

Today the weather was awesome! Gavin was outside by 8:00 this morning riding his bike around, and we followed him outside shortly.

The boys had a blast on the playground, as the pictures show. It's too early in the season for the wasps to try and take over the swingset as they did last year. My neighbors just put up a new one from costco, and I've forwarned them that the wasps seem to love the cedar. This year I'm putting up about a hundred of the yellow jacket traps they have at Lowes...maybe that will help. By the end of the summer last year we gave them the swingset. Here is a pic of Ethan smiling. He didn't want to do anything but sit in the swing this morning. That was ok with me, as it left me free to push him and then tend to the other boys.

The "B" is talking very well for a three year old. Right now we're not planning on pre-school for him next year, but he'll start K-4 at Liberty two years from now when Micah is starting 1st grade. Then again, we may do the same thing we've done with Micah and use Ridgeview kindergarten as K-4 before sending him to Liberty. That has worked pretty well for Micah and he'll do well in Kindergarten next year at Liberty, which is full day. That reminds me, Gavin and Micah are both registered for next year. Yikes! $$$

March 10 is the first day we can register Gavin for "coach pitch" baseball. Micah will be doing T-ball this spring as well. Gavin is pretty excited, and has a pretty good arm, which is obviously didn't get from his dad. He and dad were "popping" the ball into the mitt from 20-30 feet away this morning in the yard. I figure he's caught more baseballs in practice than I did in my entire little league career 20 years ago. (I held down deep right field for the Big Sandy Tennessee "B" team). We never won a game in two years despite coach offering pizza if we could pull it out. We were thankful for the 5 run limit rule. I did manage to break my nose in deep right field, which gets back to Gavin catching more balls in his short career than I ever did.

The last picture of course is me, in my "warm weather" Volunteer uniform. In the fall I'll be found wearing my jersey.

And yes, I know we lost to Alabama this year.

Until next time...take it easy....my next project is running some ethernet wire from upstairs through the attic downstairs to our bedroom so I don't have to stretch an ethernet cable down from the TV room upstairs when I play Call of Duty 4 online....it's definately some west Tennessee engineering.