Off Broadway Play

This week was full of activities for the girls. We started off the week attended Night of Excellence for Canyon Rim Elementary. There is not an honor roll so instead all the students who are in fourth to sixth grade and get A's and no more than one B in the first three quarters get to attend this special night. Both Kristine and Nichole made it this year and we are really proud of them.

Then Thursday and Friday night we attended the school musical for fifth and sixth graders and watched Nichole in her Off-Broadway performance. She did an excellent job, she even had a couple of lines. She looks so grown up - she got the dress from my sister it is a size 1.

Not to leave Zoe out, she had a talk on Sunday and was able to read the talk all by herself. I had her read John 3:16 and she was able to remember all the big words (believith, perish, whosoever, everlasting). They are wonderful girls.

Penni had a good week too. She met a lady at softball, she is one of the other mothers. The lady is real outgoing and talkative. During one of their talks she expressed how sad she was because she was being ostracized by her church because a comment that her daughter made about sex. As Penni was telling me the story I could see that this was going to be a missionary opportunity. Penni came home, got a Book of Mormon and wrote her testimony in it. Then the next game Penni was going to Zoe's game and I was going to Nichole and Kristine's game where this lady was going to be. So Penni had me deliver the book. Luckily she wasn't there, so we packed that Book of Mormon around for three weeks since the lady had not been going to the games. She had been sending her daughter with a neighbor. Well final she came to a game last week and Penni hooked up with her. They decided to go to lunch and Penni gave her the Book of Mormon. More to follow - I know that Penni is going to Women's Conference and the story should come from her, so ask Penni about more details. I will add them in later.

April 22nd - Lug nuts "What lug nuts?"

Somehow I thought that I wasn’t going to have anything to talk about this week but that was fixed in a hurry. I took Penni’s van into get the brakes fixed last Thursday. My mom works at Mesa High School and they have an auto shop. People can take their cars in to have the students work on them, of course the teachers look over everything. They did a lot of work on my purple truck and fixed some problems that other shops were unable to do. All I have to do is buy the parts and give them soda and pizza for labor. Given Penni’s disdain for spending money on car repairs I think it is a great deal.

So I buy the brake pads, brake cleaner, Dr. Pepper and pizza. I take the van in and they take two days to fix it. I carpooled with my mom so that Penni was not inconvenienced. So far so good. I pick the van up Thursday night and then planned on going to the girls’ softball game. Penni calls and my truck is out of gas and she needs me to fill it up. I have a gas card so that is OK. I switch cars with her and she goes to pick up Nichole and Kristine, then we will meet up at the softball game. Zoe and I go get a quick bit to eat and my cell goes off. Penni’s saying “there is something wrong with this van”. My first reaction is to say just keep driven and turn up the radio but I know that just won’t do. So I meet her at dance to fix the problem. I drive it and there is a problem so we all go to the game in my truck. Then I have Penni drop me off so that I can take care of the van. Penni has said that I throw her under the bus in some :of my stories so I will forgo some of the things that are said and my feeling as she pulls away. At 8:00 pm I jump in the van and head to my office which is about 1 mile away. Then at 10pm I decide to go home and plan to pull the tire off and see what’s going on. I am driving home and it quickly becomes clear that I am not going to make it all the way home. The problem is getting worst, so I head to my parents house which is about 3 miles away. Then as I am driving the back end of the van drops – there is a huge thud and I know that the tire came off. I pull over and my luck is the fact that the axle is resting on the rim of the tire and there is not much damage. This could have been a lot worst. I will try to speed it up. The tow truck comes and I tow it to my parents house and then I slid into bed at 3:00am. The next morning my mom goes into the auto shop and asks for my lug nuts, they basically look at her like she is stupid. They say that the lug nuts are on the car, she says no they are not and then all their faces go white. Basically they hand tightened the lug nuts on the rear tires thinking that they will do all four tires the next day. The other teacher decided that they were only going to do the front brakes so the rear tire never got tightened. They felt bad and have done everything possible to fix it. I had it towed back to the shop and one of the parts will be here tomorrow and then it should be. So much for get’ in something for nothing.

April 15th - Tax Season is over! Play ball

This past week the girls all had softball games. Zoe was playing left center and a ball was hit in center field. She took off like a rocket to go get the ball, now in tee ball usually there are about five or six players that chase after a ball the goes past the outfields and then there is usually a struggle between two or three kids to see who gets to throw the ball to the pitcher. Well Zoe hustled out to the get the ball along with the right centerfielder. He ended up with the ball because he dove for it but I loved the hustle.

During Nichole and Kristine’s game – Nichole hit a double, which is amazing. Because she is real timid. Even her base running has improved. A ball was hit to the shortstop and Nichole ran to third and beat the throw. Every week she gets better. Kristine played catcher for a couple of innings and had a couple of strong hits. I think by next year she will be hitting them out of the park.

On Saturday Nichole and Kristine had softball practice. Kristine ended up being the star of the practice because she was hustling caught a couple of fly balls in the outfield but she really shined playing shortstop. She is turning into the son we never had. Nichole had a good practice but she doesn’t have the killer instinct that some people are born with, so I try to be encouraging and make sure that she has fun.

That might have to be my last practice or I may need to just stay in the car. Because I don’t want to be one of those dad’s that plays sports thru their kids and that is barking all the time. It is hard standing on the sidelines. I yelled out a couple of instructions to N&K and then had to just pace back and forth. At the games I don’t like sitting on the chair by Penni because I like to be down by the field “helping” the girls. But Penni has to tell me to sit down and leave them alone. Anyway enough of softball.

On Saturday the girls had a piano and violin recital and they both did real good. I had no problem sitting and being quite at the recital.

April 8th

Happy Easter!! The girls had a good Easter; Kristine was up at 2 am. A couple of days before Easter we got home from the girls softball game, Penni and Zoe headed upstairs to get Zoe bathed. Then I heard Zoe screaming like someone was beating her. I couldn’t imagine Penni doing that and I was downstairs. So after a couple minutes hearing this incredible screaming and it was not getting better, I headed upstairs. Come to find out that Zoe was not listening and Penni was “parenting”. Penni loves to use anything that the girls are looking forward too as bait to get them to do what they are suppose to do. Sometimes it works but most of the time it doesn’t. The girls are so bad at it that if my parents are planning anything fun to do with the girls they tell us the day of so that Penni doesn’t have a chance to use it as bait and so there is little chance that the girls will loose it. So anyway Penni told Zoe that if she didn’t put her clothes in the dirty clothes hamper then she was going to call the Easter Bunny. Well Zoe didn’t listen and Penni went to the call the Easter Bunny. Then all hell broke loose – so you should have heard the screams. So basically our girls love their chocolate holiday. They take after there mom.

April 1st

Well the back is still hurting and I am not getting much sympathy. I told Penni that it would take at least a week to heal. So she asked me on Saturday to lift a 50 lbs. bottle of water and my response was that I am not suppose to lift anything over 20 lbs. So if she wants it moved she needs to dump 3/5ths of the water out. You can imagine her response. Then what seemed to be minutes later she wanted me to move two flower pots well over 100 lbs. Yah sure I can do that. She did offer to help.

One of the guys that I went to the dunes with is a Physical Therapist. He felt sorry for me so he told me to come see him this week and he would hook me up. So I went to go see him three times last week and I am feeling much better.

March 24th - The Dunes Trip

Well I added to my toy chest – a quad (Suzuki Z400 – piped, jetted and runs real fast) a couple of weeks ago. Some of the guys I work with ride and go to the dunes by Yuma, Arizona. So we had planned a trip for this weekend. I had really been looking forward to it because my CPA class had finished up and I really wanted to go have some fun. Penni, to her credit gave her OK for the trip so that even made it better to get the stamp of approval. There was some discussion about men going to the dunes, leaving their brains at home and getting hurt but that wasn't going to happen to me. She still remembers when we "almost" wrecked when we were dating but that has been almost 16 years ago and the key word is "almost". Anyway, I was told that the guys we were going were novice rides so I felt that I wouldn’t be pushed to exceed my abilities.

We headed out on Friday at 5:00 pm for a three or four hour ride. There were six guys (4 on quads, 1 motorcycle and 1 rhino). We had three trucks, I had my quad in the bed of Bret’s truck (Bret decided to same home so it was just me) and the other trucks were pulling trailers. I brought my radar detector just in case. Good thing I did because I think we averaged 95 mph the first two hours of the ride and I was the last one in the caravan. So I was either doing 35 mph or 110 to catch up to the pack. But on the way there we got a flat on the trailer about two hours into the trip. The flat tire was confirmed over the walkee talkee/ GPS unit that we were all given at the beginning of the trip (not sure how the pioneers made it all the way across the plains without constant communication and no GPS). These guys didn’t mess around we had CO2 tanks to run air hoses with impact wrenches and we had every accessory imaginable for the fun lov’in testosterone filled man. As Penni has said a couple of times since I came back that I must have been in heaven, and I was. Back to action - so we jumped out of the trucks like a NASCAR pit crew ready for someone to hit the stop watch and have this tire changed in 13 seconds. Only one problem – no spare time. I know you probably saw that one coming - long story short we got to the dunes at 12:30am.

During the ride everyone was talking about going on a night ride when we got to the dunes. They all were going to camp at the dunes – I had a reservation at the Marriott in Yuma but I needed to see where they were camping and I also was going to leave my quad with them. So at 12:31 everyone is running around putting riding shirts, pants goggles, gloves, chest protectors and basically suit’n up. I look around and think to myself should I change into my riding shorts – then I remember that I am wearing my riding shorts. So I get my helmet and realize that my goggles are tinted - but wait I have clear lens that I can change out. Well after 15 minutes working on that little project someone tosses me a old pair of goggles so that we can go. And off we go into the dark black night. So we are riding and I quickly find out that these guys are really good – not novice. I am doing all that I can to keep up – being dark, my goggles are all scratched and keep fogging up this was more stress that I wanted. But I was holding my own. We have been out for about 90 minutes and at the dunes you ride in these bowls of sand. Mostly you are riding on the side which is at an incline. If you feel yourself losing traction you just turn and ride the bowl down and then find another way out – not a big deal. So I am riding along about in the middle of the pack and I feel myself losing traction so I turn to go down the bowl. This bowl was fairly steep but I turn and start going down, as soon as my headlights illuminate the bottom of the bowl I notice a big bush right in my path – it is about twenty feet wide and since I am going down at a 15% grade there is not much to do. So I brace for the impact. I hit the bush which turns out to be a burm and my quad goes right and I go left. Flying in the air backwards – the first thing to hit is my butt and my lower back then the back of my head hits the sand (hard). I get the wind knocked out of me - as I am lying on the bottom of the bowl looking up in the sky seeing the lights of the other riders circling above me like birds of prey. Everyone cames to check on me and I was mentally checking myself to see how bad the damage was. I knew that my back is messed up and my pride took a huge hit but that I will live once I caught my breath. The ride back to camp it painful – my back is really hurting. As soon as we get back to camp it is decided that it is time for Bratwursts at 2:30am. Which the funny thing about that is I didn't see any bathrooms just sand. So I am not sure it is smart ot play with fire but that was the least of my problem. This is my sign to head to the hotel. It is about a 20 minute ride to Yuma and it was painful. I get the hotel, check in and make it to my room. I walk in the door take off my right shoe and realize that I may never get that shoe back on and head towards the bed. Once I get into bed and it was painful – I realize that I am covered in sand but it is too painful to do anything about it so just lay there in pain in a bed of sand. The next morning I am able to slowly shower and get dressed. My back is still hurting really bad. I drive back to the campsite with the intent on getting my quad and heading home. But when I get there everyone is glad to see me and they are ready to go get breakfast (breakfast burritos – yes!!) from so street side vendors. They talk me into getting into the Rhino and once I get into the rhino - surprise - that my back doesn’t hurt as much. The guy who owns the rhino had really nice seats and they really felt good. I rode over to breakfast and then after the killer burrito I was feeling well enough to go on a ride. I was able to see competition hill and then we continued on the ride. The guy I went with was a really good driver. Rhino’s have a tendency to roll over on there sides. But he was doing great but as the morning grew on he got braver and braver. So we hit a hill - jumped off the backside and hit another hill straight on so we rolled the rhino head first. Which come to find out is really rare for the rhinos to do – but we did it. As I was hanging upside down in the seatbelt harness I said anyone got a camera. I thought that it would like a nice picture – but then someone saw gas leaking out of the tank and that ruined the Kodak moment. After that we went back to camp and sat around for a minute before I headed back to Mesa. It was then that I was debating on how to tell Penni. I was thinking what happens at the dunes stays at the dunes. Another guys said that his wife he does get an hugs if he comes hurt. So he will get home late go upstairs and get his hugs and then confess that he is hurt. I didn’t see that happening. But I had a real dilemma because I was risking never seeing the sweet sands of Yuma but this story was too good to bury. So I took my chances. Penni’s only comment has been that I am not ever taking the girls and she has not asked me how I am feeling or if there is anything that she can do to help.

I guess the good thing about this has been that I am getting a lot of invitations to go to the dunes.