Sunday, August 16, 2009

Froggy Got Baptized

This morning our church had a baptism service where about 30 people were baptized. Kids 5 and up were in the service instead of chidlren's church. How great the impact. My daughter on the way home asked if dogs went to heaven. I told her dogs don't have a soul and therefore can't accept Jesus as saviour. Well, tonight my 5 year old son asked me to re-inflate the pool. Wasn't long before he and a "toad" friend were swimming together. About 5 minutes in he says, "Hey daddy, froggy got baptized."

You never know when life's magic moments will occur.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Just a Few Things

We went to Crater of Diamonds State Park near Murfreesboro Arkansas and the weird experience of the trip was driving thru Hope AR. It is the birthplace of Clinton, but that is not strange. What was strange or weird was seeing the thousands of small white FEMA trailers that were used during the Hurricane Katrina days. These things are packed in like sardines for acres. Not sure if they are usable anymore.

The day after we got back from our trip the a/c blower on my truck stopped. Fortunately for me I only had 35,300 miles on my truck and it was covered. Another 700 miles and I'm sure that would have cost me about $500 bucks.

Today was my first official day back at work for the 09-10 school year.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

This Weekend

Wow, I packed a lot in this weekend. Last Thursday I went to the midnight showing of GI Joe. Friday I mowed for a friend and that took up 2 1/2 hours of my day. I played cards both Friday night AND Saturday night. Sunday we got up and decided to head for Arkansas. My wife had been wanting to go camping since Spring Break. There was no planning and prepping involved. Our main destination was Crater of Diamonds State Park. We found out online that the campground was closed. We left our house about 9:45am, gassed up, then headed east. We stopped on the way for groceries and arrived around 2:30pm. It was HOT! We basically checked the place out and asked where would be a good place to camp.

We arrived at Narrow Dam campgrounds about 4:30pm. While setting up a park ranger informed us that we were setting up our tent in a restricted area. After talking with him for a while he recommended another campground nearby that might be more enjoyable. It was right on the water and had a beach swimming area. We made it there and got our tent set up by 6pm. We purchased 3 day fishing passes, hunted for worms, went swimming, fished and then had hot dogs and smores before dark. We packed it in.

We bedded down about 9:30. As of 12:45am I had yet to fall into a deep sleep. At one time I saw the moon as it glided across the sky right about our open screened tent. We packed up camp by 8:30am and headed to search for diamonds..

We spent about 4 hours total sifting through the Arkansas soil searching for the big one. It is really just a field that has been plowed. You rent a bucket, screens and shovel for about $20 and we paid $18 as a family to get into the park to dig. It was really hot so we found a large tree and started digging. As far as we know we didn't find any diamonds. This couple acre area was deemed not a profitable place to mine for diamonds, but a few big ones have been found there.

As we were finishing up our daughter reminded us that she had gymnastics practice. We hurried and left by 1:15pm and made it home by 5:30. Just enough time to shower and get to practice.

FUN times!

The Zone McKinney

I took my kids this morning for pizza at Alfonzo's at The Zone in McKinney. It had been a long time since we had visited, but the last time we visited we saw changes due to new ownership/management. After visiting today I doubt I'll ever trek across town to visit either the pizza place or the arcade area.

What went wrong at Alfonzo's Pizza:
It was about 12:30 when we arrived. I would think this is peak lunch time, yet when we arrived there were only 2 other people having lunch. Of the 6 pizza slots only the remnants of 2 pizzas existed. When we ordered the buffet I was charged for kids drinks which comes with their meal. The high school worker was nice, but not knowledgeable at all. I asked about 3 generic questions and was answered with, "I don't know." The guy making pizzas did make what I asked for although when I asked for bbq chicken he responded that he wasn't sure if they had any chicken. The lettuce was not so fresh and was JUST lettuce instead of a normal mixture with purple cabbage and carrots. The dessert had yet to be put out. When he did put it out there was nothing to pick it up with(fingers). I was bummed they didn't have rice krispy treats.
They ran out of plates so I reused mine twice. Loud music was blaring from the pizza making area.

What went wrong at The Zone arcade:
When we visited about 4 months or so ago it appeared as if they were shutting down. They were decreasing the number of games they had. Today many of the crane machines were almost barren. You could see the bottom of the machines on at least 3 of the games. Other than that many of the games didn't give out tickets or were just out of order.

In it's hey day the place was busy. Today it was a ghost town. Kids are out of school and this place should have been hopping. I can't see this place staying in business much longer. That's a shame.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Don't Tease

Last week I went to a few teacher workshops. Teachers in Texas are expected to take 18 hours of Professional Development throughout the year. To help with this most districts have weeklong summer workshops for subject specific areas. One day I took a morning session and in my class there were only 5 people. I knew the instructor well since she is a curriculum person for my subject area. She started the session off by saying we'd get out early since we had such a small group. She posted a time......11am. So when 11am came and went the whole group got a little antsy. 11:20 and she is still instructing and then started asking for feedback. She asked what we could use from this workshop in our classes. AND then she asked what she could do better to make it more relevant next time. REALLY? It was 11:28 when she said, "We are going anywhere until everyone shares something."

Somehow I walked out of the class 1 minute early. I really wanted to tell her in front of everyone that she not should say we are getting out early when indeed we didn't. I've experienced this with this person a few times prior so I was leary when she said we were getting out early.

This would be like telling a kids they could have ice cream later and not coming through for them. Or a wife telling her husband that maybe there could be some quality time after the kids go to sleep tonight. Once that carrot has been dangled that is all a guy is thinking about all day. Then the night comes and it doesn't happen he is bent. Well, I left the inservice bent. I am still wondering if I should email her the constructive feedback or will it only put strain on things since I will be working with her all year long.