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Y is for yea!

As in yea the baby sitter is coming over and I have a date with my wife. Maybe not the romantic date that a 38 year old man and an almost 40 year old woman would normally choose, but a high school football game can be fun. And we only have to stay through half time so there is the option to do something else if we choose.

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Well it seems my alphabet has grown another T so

T is for The Talk.

Whew! Two down two to go. It seems I have managed to miss another one of The Talks. Is that fortunate or what. Miss one more and I can say I have a streak. Then once you have a streak the karma gets even better. So the odds are in my favor of having a very lovely most incredibly amazing wonderfully loving exceedingly great wife who takes care of all the talks.

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N is for nets.

As in Nothing but Nets. This is a campaign to raise money to purchase and ship Long Lasting Insecticide-treated Nets to Africa to fight malaria.

Each day approximately 3000 people in Africa die from Malaria. The vast majority of the cases come from one type of mosquito that is only out between 11 pm and 4 am. By sleeping under these nets the death rate from malaria is cut by approximately 90 percent. For ten dollars a net can be purchased and sent to Africa. The nets are big enough for up to four people to sleep under them and last up to five years.

Our church held a big event to support this cause while we celebrated the consecration of our new Christian Life Center. The event was a lot of fun. We had most of both the mens and womens basketball teams from Texas A&M over and they played ball with all the kids. The head coach of the womens team spoke. There was a silent auction and games for the kids. It was a good time had by all. I don't know the total of what was raised tonight but I do know that it was a very successful event.

The children have been collecting change for the past couple of months in a campaign called nickels for nets. They presented three basketballs full of change tonight. There was a first grader and a third grader who both opened up Lemonade stands in their front yards this week to raise money for Nothing but Nets. They raised $115 and $68 dollars respectively. One of the cool things is that all of the money raised is matched dollar for dollar by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So these to kids essentially  raised enough money to supply 36 nets which could possibly protect the lives of up to 144 people.

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O is for Oops

We left  our eldest standing outside the school for an hour and a half in the rain(at least it wasn't raining the entire time only the last hour).  Yes I thought he had band today after school. Turns out he did not. He could not get back in to call. Finally someone came out and let him in to call. I think he probably could have gotten in the entrance by the offices but that is about a half mile around on the other side and he had a trombone and it was raining. Any way I feel bad for leaving him out there. It's not like we were doing anything that would prevent us from picking him up.

Well I've gone and used up another letter. So you can probably look for a few more letters to be added as I have canceled out the extra one I gained today.

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Today I choose to do the same letter as ohginnyfan. I think friends was a wonderful choice for the letter F and she did a tremendous job of writing about friends. I like friends but I chose to write about something else.

F is for fish.



These are my fish. They have been around longer than two of my kids. They started out as nickel and dime feeders. The first generation now has some that are over 12 inches long. There has been at least three crops of second generation fish. This years was the smallest with only four I think that have grown big enough to survive. This is not there normal home because it really turned out to be more of a fish colander than a fish tank. So it went the way of all failed projects, to the dump. The kids love to feed the fish and they are very relaxing to watch so we will keep them around as long as they stay alive, which could be quite a while because they seem to be quite hardy having survived numerous accidental siphons of the pond.

Didn't get on last night but I just wanted to say I really had a good time rocking Tyler last night before bed. He sang every word of our rocking songs. I think he will be musically inclined as he grows up. It is fun to sing with a two year old.

I was scheduled to take Luke to Schliterbahn water park in New Braunfels  today. Hurricane Tropical storm Tropical depression big rain event (something starting with an E) put the squash on that idea. We decided to give Schliterbahn Galveston Island a try. Hoping to not get to much of the rain from the previously mentioned storm. The drive down took quite a bit longer because it was raining almost the entire 150 miles, sometimes hard enough you could not read the highway signs. This of course made Houston traffic worse than normal. It stopped raining about 20 miles before we got there and when we pulled up there were people on the rides. So we bought our tickets and before we were even in the park it started to rain and we were soaking wet by the time we went to the rest room and got to cover. Then the lightning started close enough that Luke was scared and wanted to leave.

I called Julie and had her look at the weather and things did not look promising. We were about ready to leave and go to Moody Gardens or Nasa, but were going to wait for the rain to slacken before heading for the parking lot. The rain cleared in about thirty minutes and we decide to stay. I am glad we did. We had another hour in the afternoon that they cleared the pools but that matched up with getting a bite to eat so all in all the rain was not horrible. Plus neither of us got sunburned.

Luke had a great time and it was a really good father son bonding time with him. He has been needing something like this for some time. The day was all about the rides he wanted to ride and the food he wanted to eat. I am worn out from the hours spent in the wave river. There was this cool random back wave that would come the opposite way of the waves. The trick was to time the waves and be right at the spot the two waves collided because they would slam together creating a huge wave that would throw Luke up in the air if he was on a tube. Or you would just get smashed by the wave. I spent the day trying to drag Luke against the current so that we could be in that spot. I did get the timing down by about the twentieth time. He really had a great time and so did I.

I decided doing nothing was not going to take off the extra 20 pounds I have wanted to for years. So I started exercising again along with eating less at meals. The exercise goes well although I almost stayed in bed this morning. I am jogging three days a week and doing strength exercises three days a week. I did get up to my target distance of three miles this week so I am proud of that accomplishment. Of course in remembrance of my former self I am doing nothing on the seventh day of the week.

I am hoping to have the will power to keep it going. Past experiences (too numerous to count) say that it usually peters out around week three. I am really trying to not let that happen.