night Golf V

I noticed that it is the middle of August and start calling around to see if I can get information about night golf. I remembered the name of the guy in charge so I call his office and get all of the information. Much to my surprise it is only a couple of weeks away. So once again I invite everyone in my address book to play with me. This year I added inviting all of my facebook friends who live in Fort Wayne as well as put out an email for people at work. Once again I get a few people saying it sounds like a lot of fun, but again they start canceling or saying they can't make it. Comes the night of the outing and no one has indicated they want to play. I was considering not going myslef, but, screw it, I have fun. Also by now I know a few of the guys so I figure there is a chance I would get teamed up with them. I show up early just in case someone shows up and grabbed a beer and dinner. The dinner was a bit of a dissapointment. They had a pulled pork, but it didn't have any sauce on it. They let you put your own sauce on, but the pork was so dried out and tough that all the sauce in the world wouldn't have helped it. The bratwurst looked a little scary, but the beans and potatos were very tasty. So I sat there and had a few beers waiting on the off chance that someone would show up. When no one did I ended up getting paired with Dr. Phil, who I had played with before, and his brothers. We headed to the first tee with a cold beer in hand and prepared for a night of fun. They actually postponed the start of the round because it wasn't dark enough, but the threat of rainy weather in the area made me think that we might want to get going. The first hit of the year was a little disspointing, but still not too bad for the 3 or 4 time on the course this year. Bewtween the 4 of us we made a pretty good team all contributing to the effort. Once again the beer cart was never too far away :). By the 4th hole we were one under par (legitamate) and playing pretty good. We had felt a few drops as we approched the tee, and then it started to really come down. We all scramble for the rain gear and umbrellas that we had remembered to bring with us. We continued to play the hole in the hopes that it would stop or at least let up. We finished the hole and the rain let up and then stopped. The rest of the night only sprinkled a few times which was lucky for us. We finished up a little after midnight and went back into the proshop to wait for everyone to come in. We waited and waited for one last team to show up, but they never did. I have said it before where there is usually one group who has to "play in" and make everyone wait. (That really pisses me off). We started to walk out to the course get tell these a-holes to hurry up, and even grabbed a cart to run out there, but finally decided that the group must have finished and just left the course. Still annoying. I think we ended up 2 under and in third place or something like that, once again I don't think the people who "won" were actually keeping score. So we all got out little prize and were done for the night. This is still alot of fun to play in and I am sure I will play again next year. Hopefully one of these years I can take a big group with me. They were supposed to move the outing so it wouldn't conflict with HS football, but they didn't. Hopefully next year they will let me know when the outing is and I don't have to hunt them down.

School Days

William started his first day of Kindergarten a week ago (yeah I am behing in my blogging). He is actually repeating Kindergarten. He did really well last year with his speach delay, but we thought another year would do him good and that now would be the best time to have him repeat a grade. The other factor is that he is changing schools as well and going full day so he wouldn't notice it as much. I missed his first day the last time due to the new job, but I decided I wasn't going to miss this one so I just went in late. Jen had a pretty good plan for getting everyone up and around so we put that into play on Monday. They allow parents of Kindergarten kids go bring the kids to their classrooms on the first day only so we decided ot make it a family trip. Everyone got up and around and we actually headed out the door on time. As we are pulling out of the garage, the heavens opened up to a down pour (perfect). We got near the school and the traffic came to a stand still. So we muddled through that and worked our way through the "drop off" process. all the parents were parking to drop their kids off so we had to park kind of far out in the parking lot. Lucy for me we threw a couple of umbrellas. We attempt to unload all the kids in a downpour with the parking lots flooded. I took Christopher's cup of juice and put it on the floor and of course it hit a blanket and bounced out and UNDER the freakin van. I am dressed for work with an inch of water covering the parking lot, but finally I said forget it and took my umbrella down and hit the cup so it would go behind the van and of course it got caught by the back tire. Finally I got the stupid thing and grabbed Christopher. So here I am carrying Christopher, holding Andrew's hand, and managing an umbrella as Jen took care of William. We got in the gym and William takes off like a shot to his homeroom. We did our best to keep up with him. He went into his room, put his backpack away, and found his seat and sat down. No fuss, no muss, happy as a clam (Thank God). We said good bye and waded back to the car and I took off for work. It's been almost two weeks and William is still having alot of fun. He get's to eat lunch at school every once in a while which makes us a little uneasy because of his peanut alergy, but so far so good.

Yard Work

There are a few things that have been bugging me for years now. One is the state of the landscaping around our house. When we moved in 3 years ago I knew it was in need of some attention, but with having two babies and lack of funds, that project kept getting pushed into the back burner. Finally the kids are a little older and we had a few dollars in the bank so we decided to work on the landscaping. First I defined the area on the side of the house and transplanted some hostas over there with some edging. I ended up taking a Friday off work to try and get some stuff done. I thought that it might be easier to get stuff done since things would be open longer on a week day than a weekend and Jen wasn't working. I had to tear some bushes out of the front planter. I could have killed myself trying to dig these bushes out, but I decided to take the easy way out and invite my father and brother in law over and had them bring a truck. The bushes were no match for the truck. The yard dipped where the bushes were so I decided to grab a load of dirt to even it up. As always looking for a good deal, I found a place on the Northwest part of town. So I ran over there and grabbed a load of dirt. My father and brother in law helped me spread it out to even it. While I was doing that, Jen was on the hunt for plants. We hired a landscaper to come up with a plan for our front yard, but we wanted to see if we could save a little money by buying some of these plants at a home improvement store. She found the rose bushes at Home Depot for a pretty good deal. A little while later, Jen and I loaded into the truck to get the other bushes. I found out that a member of the board of directors of the Credit Union also owns a landscape business. I thought it would be a good idea to give him my business and maybe he would swing me a little deal. We came back with all the plants that we needed and spent the next couple of hours planting 25 bushes. Jen and I had a pretty good system down where I would dig the holes and she would put them in. We finished just in time, since I was totally burned out and I had been at it for about 12 hours. I got up the next morning and headed out for a mulch run. Another trip across town to save a few bucks which by the time I put gas in the truck actually didn't save me anything. I had to make two runs since the one truck load didn't quite cover everything in the front yard. So another 8 hour day of running across town and moving mulch I was spent again. Sunday I think I might have putted around the house a little bit, but spent most of the day recuperating. Talking to Jen later on, she tells me that the money we used to work on the landscaping she had actually put aside to buy a new TV. (I think the TV would have been cheaper). Yeah I was a little bummed about not getting a new TV, but the front of the house looks so much better and I think I enjoy having that project done than I would enjoy a new TV. If nothing else, I am not embarrassed to go outside and talk to the neighbors, and I am sure they are breathing a sigh of relief that we aren't a bunch of hillbillies. Now we just need to maintain everything, plant some flowers occasionally, and refresh the mulch every couple of years.