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.

Dream of what the western world used to be

Another good post by Victor Davis Hanson on his dream that the western world of old still lived on today.

And then I woke up, remembering that the West of old lives only in dreams. Yes, the new religion of the post-Westerner is neither the Enlightenment nor Christianity, but the gospel of the Path of Least Resistance — one that must lead inevitably to gratification rather than sacrifice.

Family Photos - Sul Dyeing

Sul dyeing Easter eggs. (taken 04/06/07)

Michael Yon reporting from Iraq

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this site before, but Michael Yon is a citizen journalist who is posting some interesting first hand pieces on happenings in Iraq. His latest post tells about his experience tagging along with some British soldiers.

Its nice to hear from guys like Yon, since we're never going to get any unspun information on Iraq from the main stream media. I can practically quote what I hear every night on the local WRAL newscast here in NC. "Today was another violent day in Iraq. X (insert the daily number) of soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Bahgdad and Y (insert the daily number) of civilians were killed as a suicide bomber detonated an explosion in a crowded marketplace."

I know that bad things are happening, but I'm also equally sure that there is good being done. Good news is news too. Why not report it too?

Lileks on Hugh on Romney

Lileks' bleat starts a bit slow today. It sounds like he's suffering fromt he same sort of spring cold that I've got, runny nose, etc. Then he gets into a review of Hugh Hewitt's latest book "A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney." His review of the book leads to a few statements about Romney and Mormons that I found interesting. For instance:

"Romney’s religion isn’t the main reason his campaign isn’t out front by 10 points. There’s something else at work; could be the YouTube flip-flop problem. But I think I know what it might be. He’s in a hard position: he’s too good to be true, but he’s truly that good."

Lileks mentions that he recently had a pair of Latter-day Saint missionaries knock on his door, and although he wasn't interested in their message, he adds this comment about their desire to offer service if he needed any help.

"If at that moment I had some sort of domestic emergency that required me to leave the house but also required someone to stay at the house – I don’t know, to watch a scientific experiment or take a cake out the oven (a cake – for the Pope!) – I would have trusted both of them to hold down the fort until I returned, and I know I would have found both of them sitting in the living room when I returned, with nothing in the house out of place or moved to a pocket.

Surely how one lives one’s life is as important as the things the curious things they believe, no?"

Say what you want about our beliefs. Hey, I know that it takes a lot of faith to believe and live as we do, and if you don't have it then you can't be expected to understand or accept the many non-emperical aspects of our religion. But, you can't argue with the fact that we, as a whole, are a good and wholesome people. I don't say that with pride, it just naturally follows from living how we're taught to live, and very many Mormons do.

I haven't yet read the book myself. I haven't decided if I will or not. I don't think I can learn anything about Romney's religion and the fact that he was a Stake President tells me an awful lot about him personally. I could buy the book to loan to friends, but most of the people I work with are so far to the left that Romney isn't on their radar screen and most of my non-Mormon friends are not interested enough in Politics to read a whole book.

A warmer climate could prove to be beneficial

I haven't blogged on global warming for a while, so here is a good article by Dr. Richard S. Lindzen (Professor of Meteorology at MIT) summarizing some of the common misinterpretations of global warming data and addressing other fallacies of global warming alarmism.

The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.

Many of the most alarming studies rely on long-range predictions using inherently untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately forecast the weather a week from now.

Family Photos - Nae in the Forest

Nae in the Forest (taken 04/06/07 at Umstead Park, NC).

Images - Wildflower

Wildflower (taken 04/06/07 at Umstead State Park, NC).

Images - Reedy Creek

I captured this image of Reedy Creek on our hike at Umstead State Park, NC (taken 04/06/07)

Family Photos - Dyeing Easter Eggs

Can and his brothers had fun dyeing Easter eggs last Saturday. The trick was getting him to put the egg in the dye gently enough so that it didn't break or splash all over the place.

A soldier's eye view of Iraq

I would much rather trust the word of a soldier who is on the ground in Iraq than the main stream media, which has proven itself untrustworthy time-and-again. (Thanks to Hugh for bringing us the positive news and not just the bad)

Easter Morning

The morning Easter egg hunt at our house. Sorry for the poor quality and lack of sound. Our video camera is broken so I had to use the video function on the digital camera and I forgot to turn on the audio setting. Can was a little slow with the broken leg but seemed to manage just fine.

Family Photos - Happy Easter

The boys look very nice in their new Easter outfits. It was a little tricky getting them to all hold still long enough to take this picture, since they were all hopped up (pun intended) on chocolate.