Opening Day: Mowing and Baseball

We are two weeks into spring and it has been cold. As much as I like cold weather I am ready for it to be over when the trees begin to put out their leaves, and several varieties have begun to do just that now. At any rate, both baseball and mowing season started for us today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUNT MAR! Aunt Mar celebrated her birthday a week ago last Monday (the 21st). We took her out to eat the night before, but the real party came the next day at lunch.

Aunt Mar worked for First National Bank in Springfield for about 25 years, retiring when I was in high school. Several of the ladies she used to work with decided it would be fun to get together and visit Aunt Mar, bringing lunch for everyone, on her birthday. So, when her big day came some 10-12 people converged on her house for lunch, including the former president of the bank. Everyone had a good time visiting together and they made Aunt Mar's birthday extra special. It was a great way to celebrate 96 years.

THE CLAY LADY. Our kids know the Clay Lady (http://www.theclaylady.com/). She's been to our church once or twice and she's been an annual guest at their school.

The Clay Lady is Danielle McDaniel, and every time she visits a group of kids she instructs them on how to make a project with clay. Once the project takes shape the kids get to paint it. Then she takes their projects back to her kiln, fires them, and returns them to the kids. We have several rabbits, pictures frames, and even a fish, as a result of her visits.

As of this year the Clay Lady no longer comes to you, you go to her. This resulted in a field trip for Nate. Vicki got to chaperone on this trip and they both came back talking about how neat it was to visit the Clay Lady's studio. The kids spent one hour making their project, and on the second hour they got a tour of her place. Nate was really impressed with the big oven where his project will be fired. The fact that the kiln reaches over 1000° and that the pieces inside take a full day to cool is impressive. Vicki said that the Clay Lady also rents space to other artists so all the kids got to tour their studios as well, which was very interesting.

APRIL FOOLS DAY. If you live in our community you learn to be very suspicious any time Kenny Swann calls you on April 1. It is his favorite day of the year, and we have all sorts of stories of the pranks he's pulled in the past. Indeed, this year he fooled several people once again. He called Mom and convinced her to go out to the garage and honk the horn on the car.

In my opinion Kenny was upstaged this year by my wife. As we were getting ready for school that morning Vicki pulled me aside and told me to call our home phone from my cell phone. When I did she pretended it was our school system's automated messaging system, and hanging up the phone she told Jenna that her school would be closed due to a water leak. This made Jenna's day, and within 30 seconds our happy girl had her unexpected day of freedom all planned out. Her euphoria turned to heartbreak when Vicki said, "April Fool!"

PLAY BALL! As I mentioned above, baseball season started for us today. Ben's coach had been trying to schedule some scrimmage games for the past couple of weeks but they kept getting rained out. Ben also missed a couple of practices due to being sick and the Cub Scout Blue and Gold banquet where he earned his Webelos badge. (Just one more year as a Webelo and then he crosses over to Boy Scouts, should he choose to continue in scouting.)

So, with no scrimmage games and lots of rain, the boys took to the field this afternoon. They wound up losing, by a lot, but they actually performed better than their score.

For Ben, it was almost like he'd never had a ten month break in playing ball. He got to play shortstop and made several good plays. He tagged one player out (which was almost a double play) and was instrumental in getting another runner out as he was sliding into home plate. Ben only got one chance at bat and walked, but wound up stealing second, third, and home for a run. Vicki and I were very proud of our son. Now there's only 23 more games to go...

Joe