New music toy

If you look to the right, you'll notice that I found a new music toy. The website finetune.com lets me customize a music playlist with just about any song I want. They also provide the widget that I've pasted in at the right so that anyone visiting my website can listen to my playlist. Go ahead and give it a listen. I can't personally vouch for all of the songs because I made this list by picking a few songs from artists that I like and then I had the finetune algorithm fill in the rest of the songs based on similarity to those that I picked. You can also visit my finetune page to see additional playlists or you can sign up with finetune for free and make your own playlists.

Two Wins

Today was another game day and both boys won. Sul's team shut out the opposing team with a final score of two goals to zero. He made one good save in goal where he had to dive on the ball to gain control of it. Afterwards he punted the ball all the way to the other end of the field. He also had an assist on one of his teams goals, so he had a productive game.

Mads' team won by a score of 3 to 2. They were leading 3 to 0 for most of the game but their last pitcher hasn't had much experience and he let a couple runs in before he could stop them. The final play of the game was a big pop fly to right field. It was actually going foul but the boy out there caught it. He looked in his glove and realized that the ball was in it and then got really excited. The whole team ran together into a big pile. A much better day than last week. Each team now has a 1 win and 1 loss record.

Can has started walking on his cast. He and Mom are counting down the hours until his visit to the "broken-leg fix-it doctor" on Tuesday. Hopefully the cast will come off and stay off so that he can go back to running instead of hobbling.

Lifetime book reading list

Highly suggested reading by David Allen White and John Mark Reynolds from a recent Hugh Hewitt show. It is suggested that every college freshman and sophomore should read the books discussed in these transcripts.

Family Photos - Sul Posing

(taken 04/06/07)

Images - Bridge over Reedy Creek 2

Another view of the bridge over Reedy Creek (taken 04/06/07 at Umstead State park, NC).

Family Photos - Riding the Bent Tree

We found this funny bent tree on our hike through Umstead State Park. It looked like a good place to have the boys line up for a picture (taken 04/06/07).

Images - Bridge over Reedy Creek

We crossed over Reedy Creek on this bridge as we hiked through Umstead State Park (taken 04/06/07).

My ignoble debut as an assistant soccer coach

Saturday morning marked the start of baseball and soccer games for Mad and Sul, respectively. We were supposed to be at the baseball field at 8:15 for an 9:00 game. The coach is a pretty zealous and wanted plenty of time to warm up and go over strategy. I was on my own with all four boys for this game because Nae was busy running the Cary Road Race 10K, which she completed in just over 50 minutes (I told you that she is a wonder woman). I brought gameboys for the non-baseball playing boys, which seemed like a good way to keep them entertained except that they spent most of the time fighting over who got to play which games. The only toilets available at this field were porta-johns, so I had to force Dec, kicking and screaming, to stand in one long enough to complete his task. After I got to the field I realized that Can hadn't gone yet that morning, so I tried to get him to go in and he wouldn't release the death grip from my neck long enough for me to get his pants down past his cast. I tried to talk him into peeing on a tree but he didn't want to do that either. Fortunately, he has an iron bladder when he wants to hold it, so we didn't have any problems there. Oh, the baseball game. It wasn't a very good start to their season. Mads' team lost 4 to 1. There wasn't much action on the field for most of the game. Nobody could get a hit on either team because the pitchers were throwing too fast. They've instituted a new rule where each boy can only pitch 2 innings, so after four innings we had to resort to our third string pitchers and they walked a number of runs in before we could get out of the fifth inning. We managed to get one run in the sixth, but that just wasn't enough. We all survived, despite the fact that I was on my own.

In the afternoon we went to Sul's soccer game. I sort of wandered into being appointed as an assistant coach, since no other parents stepped up to help the only coach. I'm not sure that you can blame me for the 4-1 loss of this game, but I probably didn't help much either. Sul played two quarters in goal. He was scored on twice in the first one, but he had no help from the rest of his team and the goal is at least twice as big as the ones he was defending last year. He made several really good saves and even stopped one with his chin. After the game the ref said that the other team was the best he had seen all day. They had better ball handling skills than our team and they definitely out hustled our team in getting to the ball.

Dec doesn't start his T-ball games for a few weeks, but he had his first practice on Friday night. Although he is catches and throws the baseball right-handed, he has always swung the bat left handed. Nae said that when the coaches put him up by the T to hit the ball, they lined him up right handed and so he had a hard time swinging the bat correctly. We'll get them straightened out at the next practice.