Busy spring

Airborne School
Life has been busy the last few weeks. Mel is in Airborne school so we barely see him during the week. He has the weekends off, but he's usually recovering from lack of sleep and physical exhaustion making our family time limited. Today I went out to the drop zone to see him jump. It was a beautiful morning and nice to be in the fresh air sipping coffee watching this.

Tomorrow is graduation. I'm pulling the boys out of school for the ceremony. They like hearing Daddy's stories about what he's learning and doing and I think seeing him graduate tomorrow will show them the reward for all his hard work. They've nicknamed their dad "Super Duper Paratrooper!" It came from a story Mel told us during the first week of the course. This is what the instructors and students yell back and forth...

Airborne Instructor: What do you want to be?
Student: Airborne!
Airborne Instructor: What do you really want to be?
Student: A super duper paratrooper!
Airborne Instructor: What are you now?
Student: (head down, under their breath) Dirty, nasty leg.


Soccer
Jacob is playing soccer and he's doing really well. At first he wanted to play goalie (because they don't have to run up and down the field) but he's one of the fastest kids on the team so the coach pulled him from the goalie position. I'm glad. He needs to learn to hustle on the field. I found this t-shirt that's so opposite of him, but I had to buy it anyway. Maybe if he wears it, he'll start believing it.He's fast. He's active. But when it comes to sports he just doesn't get the hustle part. I realize he's only eight, but we're trying to teach him that he needs to work hard if he's going to get better at anything.
I explained to Jake that "riding the pine" means sitting on the bench. If you hustle, you play harder, get better and contribute more to the team. As you get older, your coaches will notice your good effort and you'll spend less time on the bench. His response to me, "I like riding the pine." I guess he's only eight, right?

Our garden!
We've started a garden. We're using the Square Foot Gardening method by Mel Bartholomew. It's a raised bed so we don't need to fuss with hauling in huge amounts of black soil or deal with the Georgia clay soil. Right now everything's in and planted and we're seeing the sprouts of beets, spinach, pea pods, beans, carrots, onions and lettuce. We're also growing corn, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, basil and cilantro. Kyle is a big gardening help and likes to check on the progress every day. Jacob not so much. He told me he just wants to reap the rewards of mine and Kyle's labor. Hopefully we'll be able to reap something come early summer.

Seeds planted and pepper and tomato plants in.

Onions, pea pods and beans coming up.

Oh yes, and the bugs and creapy crawlies that I'm probably attracting to our garden kind of freaks me out a bit. However, if I KNOW they're going to be there, they won't be so scary, right?

Spring Sports

I've always looked forward to the day when the boys started organized sports and Mel and I could spend our evenings watching their games. This spring Jacob started Soccer and Track, but with the weather we'd been having the games and meets were less than enjoyable. Some evenings temperatures were in the 40's and it was drizzling. I watched one track meet wearing my winter coat, wrapped in a blanket and holding an umbrella. Not fun. At two soccer scrimmages, I sat in the car and watched.

However, last week the weather was much more summer-like and watching Jacob's soccer game and track meet was a lot of fun.

Jacob is the second from the right. He took first place on hurdles.

Jacob played well and scored two goals during tonight's game. He was really attentive and hustled when he played offense or defense because the action of the game kept him focused. However, toward the end of the game when he was playing goalie there wasn't nearly as much action. At one point, Jacob was hanging from the goal post and another boy playing defense was playing in the dirt right in front of him- both totally oblivious to the game. I wish I would have had my camera to capture that scene.