Bailey Basketball Camp

Bailey just finished up today a basketball camp at the local high school. This was a 3 hour a day, 5 day week camp. I think she learned a lot and had a good time.

Will and his new Tricycle

Gammy bought Will a new tricycle on her recent visit to Texas. After about 4 days of practice and encouragement, we have a success …

Cheer Camp for Caroline

Caroline just finished up cheer camp last week. It was held at a local church as part of the Upward program. She had a blast and mom, dad and gammy enjoyed seeing her end of camp presentation. Go Blue, Go white, let’s win today …

We Like Ice Cream

Especially Mint Chocolate Chip.

Big Boulder Removed

Just this past Sunday, I was taking a close, hard look at my yard. I have been wondering for a few years why this certain spot of grass was not growing well It just looked like it was struggling to flourish. i blew it off last year to poor sprinkler coverage. Well, after closer analysis this summer, I found the real culprit.

As I was poking around the struggling grass with a screwdriver, I noticed a solid thump about 3-4 inches below the ground. My interest peaked. So I prodded a little to each side to get some boundary to the discovery. After some time for thought, I began exploratory digging to identify the discovery. It didn’t take long to see that this was some type of rock. I immediately decided to best decision was to remove the item, as I was thinking this rock was keeping my grass roots from establishing themselves, hence the poor grass performance. I originally thought the “rock” was around a foot square, but after digging for over an hour and expanded my coverage in all directions, I found a large landscaping boulder. Yes, this massive, 200 lb., 3′ x 2′ rock was buried under my yard.

So with the help of my wife and some steel posts for leverage, I was able to remove the boulder from its resting place. I initially was thinking to have someone just come take this beast and be done with it. I didn’t think the weekly garbage people would be willing or able to pick this heavy object up from the curb, and I really didn’t want to try to move it the necessary 25 feet to make this happen. So plan B was to call the local landscaping companies to see if they would be interested in acquiring this neat little landscaping prop. Well, no one was interested as these items go for only 10 cents a pound on the open market!

So, through some very good advice from the local nursery owner, I decided to try to break up the boulder. The advice included buying a masonry blade for my circular saw. This was to be used to score the stone in preparation for a big hit from a borrowed sledge hammer. Yes, I emailed my entire cul-de-sac neighbors, asking them if they had a sledge hammer I could borrow. Luckily, one of them did and replied in less than an hour.

So with the tools in hand, including hearing, eye, and dust protection ready to go, the project proceeded. The scoring went very well, much easier than expected. Then the sledge hammer proceeded with not much more grief as it took about 4 swings to break the scored stone. After scoring and breaking about 4 total times, I was done with this phase of the project.

The best thing of this all was the idea I had of moving these much smaller broken stones into our various flower beds as accent pieces. My wife and I both love the outcome as seen in many of the pics below. Now that’s killing two birds with one stone – removing the undesireable 200 pound boulder from under my yard and making decorative flower bed accents out of the the rocky offspring.

Greg/Bailey Basketball Season is over

We had a great time with both our first experiences with coaching (me) and playing (Bailey). I’ve referreed a few years at a much higher level, but always wanted to try coaching. It’s fun, stimulating, and a great way to work on improving my patience.
We didn’t finish with a great record, but we saw nice individual improvements with all the players. And, we were the only team in the league with girls on the roster!

Check out the two photos below and the video.

Bailey – Basketball

Well, Bailey’s basketball season is underway. I’m the head coach this season. We’ve had 3 practices, and our first game is Monday. This is playing in the North Texas Basketball Association league.

After seeing her in action, it appears for the moment she has her mom’s tenacious defensive skills, and not her dad’s offensive prowess. We’ll keep working on the latter as the season is still young. Hope to have pictures up next week.

Hail Storm over Night

We were awaken at 3 am this morning with hail. Very scary and the largest I’ve ever experienced.

 

Caroline’s First Softball Game

Caroline batted leadoff for the Lightning in the team’s first game of the season. She went 3 for 3 – I think they all did. 
For her efforts, Caroline received player of the game from the Coach Jay.

Hair Cut Time for ALL 3 Kids

Andrea and Gammy took all 3 of our children to Sweet and Sassy for haircuts today. The girls have been asking for shorter hair for some time. They have tender scalps and brushing their long mops is not real pleasant – for them or their parents! Will was oblivious to the whole thing … What do you think of the results? By the way, the girls agreed to donate their cut pony tails to Locks of Love.