Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Fishing

   When I'm not coaching soccer, mowing our huge yard, or putting Icy Hot on my sore back after hauling bricks, lately you can find me by one of the 4 ponds by our house baiting a fish hook. The boys just love fishing. When I say fishing, I mean they love reeling the fish in and then letting me do all the work before and after that occurs. James has finally figured out how to hold the fish by the mouth. Alex is still pretty certain the fish is out to get him and wants to bite him, so he's not too keen on much more than poking it with the tip of his index finger at this point. Honestly, I shouldn't complain. My kids are growing up fast, so I enjoy it a lot.

    This week, according to James, we're supposed to actually eat some of the fish we catch for dinner.  Seeing that 99% of the fish in these ponds seem to fit in the palm of my seven-year-olds hand, I'm assuming filleting these bad boys is going to be a job even the best sushi chef would shake his head at. I'm hoping there's at least one big fish sitting idly in the pond this week. Perhaps he's dumb enough to bite that worm dangling over his head and help me out a bit. Of course, I'll take all the credit for it. " Caught this beauty on my 3 ft Lightning Mcqueen Zebco." I'll be sure to post any pics that follow.

April Showers

   April signals the arrival of spring, which means 3 things for my family: enjoying the outdoors, sports, and my least favorite thing in the world...returning to our tornado shelter for safety. When I was a kid growing up in Kansas, I thought dangerous storms were so cool. I grew up thinking we lived in a pretty safe place weather-wise. I remember watching TV newscasts of hurricanes  in the south and earthquakes in the west and thinking, "Boy am I glad I don't live there."

   It took getting married, having kids, and moving away to realize that I actually grew up in an area with some pretty dangerous weather. I remember channel surfing one evening to stumble upon live coverage of the Joplin tornado touching down and feeling so scared. Imagine my excitement when my wife told me she wanted to accept a job offer and move us there! To put it simply, I think tornadoes are absolutely terrifying, and I never want to see one as long as I live. My wife, on the other hand, thinks they are amazing and wants to actually pay one of those tornado chasers to take her face to face with one. This is coming from a woman who screams and trembles with fear if a June Bug lands anywhere near her. I'm hoping that we won't have to head to the shelter much, if at all this April. Stay safe everybody!

Soccer game #2

   We won our first game! Well, we didn't really win. There's no scorekeeper and "everyone's a winner," right? But, in my mind, we definitely won the game 3-2. The boys played very hard and we took some good shots on goal. They were definitely pumped up after we got outplayed in our first match.
   After the match, the boys came running up to me. "We won, we won!" "Coach, did you see it?" I had to calm them down, as the other team was already lined up, ready to shake hands and do the feigned congratulatory "good game" chant in their best monotone voice. No one likes to "lose" and even though they're only seven, and there wasn't an official score, every kid keeps a running tally of the goals in their heads. We celebrated with a snack from the concession stand and called it a night.