springtime

Hi, it's wake up time.  Are you ready to go?

 Some pretty momentous occasions have happened since my last report.  Fereshteh is now a master business lady, soon to be working out on the east coast.  We'll miss her!  And we'll miss Nikki too, who has just started boot camp at the Air Force Academy.  I think she'll do more pushups this month than I'll do this year.  Finally, we added a new boarder, an intern working at Wolfram (not doing all my work, sadly) for 6 months.

 And Clara graduated from preschool!  She started at Wee Disciples as a tiny, just turned 3 year old, and is now a hearty 5 year old ready to tackle kindergarten.  Well, that's if she can get herself out of bed in time.  Lately getting up before 8:30 has been rare.  So a bedtime change is in order.  But that can wait until it's actually dark outside at 8:30 pm.

 Thanks to a company provided 4 day weekend on Memorial day, we took a trip down to Nashville to visit grandpa, grandma, and the southern gang.  It was a great way to welcome spring a bit early -- the weather was so nice.

Jill and I took our bikes for the first time and did some riding in the neighborhood.  Based on our driving around their neighborhood, I thought it would be pretty difficult to start rides from their house.  But I was pleasantly surprised by the very nice road that tracks the west side of the Priest Reservior.  I ventured out into some neighborhoods to ride some steeper hills and rode past the BMX track (not on it... way too scary for me!).  So color me impressed.  I still prefer my commute to any sore of possible commute there, but the "fun" riding is pretty nice.

 Clara and Janny got some pointers for hitting a wiffle ball.  I'm trying to play a bit of ball sports with them regularly.  My goals:  throwing well, catching without flinching (or ducking) and sweet hitting.

And while on the topic of ball sports, church softball season is about half-way done.  If you asked me prior to Monday, I would have said that our team is very tough to beat.  After our 10 run loss on Monday, well, we're still pretty good.  The wind was howling out to right-center, so much so that I hit a ball over the fence.  The problem was that the Vineyard gents were really mashing the ball.  Many balls were into and over the fence, neutralizing our team's biggest strength, excellent defense.

 No more babies amongst the grandkids.  Linda is still too young to play much with the older 4, but that should change very soon.

 We've gotten a lot of rain this spring/ early summer.  Janny doesn't mind, as long as she has an umbrella.

Our (well, mostly Jill's) gardening skills continue to improve.  To date, the big successes are cherries (every other year seems to be good for our tree), raspberries (both black and red), peas, and salad greens.  Much more on the way, including tomatoes, peppers, squashes and beans (if we can keep the bunnies away).

Apologies for not writing often here.  It's too nice outside!