Another Championship

 Well, it happened again. This is almost unbelievable. My dream run of professional sports team championships continues.  In the 2015 World Series, the Royals won.  In the 2016 Super Bowl, the Broncos won.  And now in the 2016 Stanley Cup Finals, the Penguins have won!  I bet there aren't too many people who have had their favorite MLB, NFL, and NHL teams win the three respective team championships in a row.  It's just extremely improbable, but it's happened to me!  The Bulls are not going to win the NBA title this year, so there's no way I'll go 4 for 4, but still.  I'm super lucky to have been able to have this run.  If Sporting KC can win the MLS Cup this year, or if the Cubs or Royals can win the World Series, it'll make it even sweeter.  But regardless, I'm really enjoying what's happened to me in these last seven months.

Zoey's Third Birthday

After the Lenexa event, we went to Alaina's parents' house for Zoey's third birthday party.  Our kids always love the baby swing, even though they aren't babies.  And they all put Gary to work by getting wheelbarrow rides around the back yard.  After they wore Gary out, I stepped in, and they wore me out too.  It's almost as if it's more work to push the wheelbarrow than to ride in it...  They all had a great time, as they love getting to see their friends Hayden, Zoey, Caleb, and Cambrie.

Get Outdoors Lenexa, and Go Fishing!

After baseball today we took the kids to the City of Lenexa's annual Get Outdoors Lenexa event.  It's on the same day as National Get Outdoors Day.  It's a free event that seemed to have a lot of fun things included, and it's at one of our favorite parks, Black Hoof Park, so we decided to go.  As you can see here, there was a bounce house, which is always a hit, a collaborative painting which allowed kids to just paint whatever on top of a scene, and then there is still the natural things that are always there. They also had a bean bag toss and an obstacle course that included one of those rope web things that you have to climb through.

Hannah wasn't so sure about the obstacle course, but she decided to do it after a little encouragement.  Here she is jumping onto the hoops.

We were proud of her, because she even decided to go through the rope thing, and she made it all the way through.

They also had a disc golf event, which was funny because the old man who was running it didn't know anything about disc golf or really even what the objective was.  I filled him in on it, and he seemed happy to know, but really it doesn't matter, as it's just a fun thing for kids.  They also had yard games such as ladder golf.

But one of the main reasons we went was because they were having a fishing derby.  You just had to show up and they provided all the equipment.  Joshua has never gone fishing (well, none of the kids had), but he had shown interest in it, so we thought this would be a good time to get started.  So here is Joshua fishing for the first time in his life.  Clara did it for a little bit too but got bored, and Hannah was not interested.  Meghan ended up taking them to another part of the park.  But Joshua and I stayed, and I'm glad we did because...

He caught a fish!  And not only did he catch a fish, because it was a fishing derby, they were keeping track of all the fish caught that day to see who caught the biggest one, and it was his!  We were notified later in the day that his fish was 11.5 inches, and the next biggest one was 7.5, so he won by a lot!  We won a prize pack of fishing equipment which I will need to go pick up from city hall some other day, but it apparently includes a big net, some gloves, a nice stringer, some fishing pliers, and a couple other things.  We'll use those later this summer hopefully, as this was a positive experience for him, and he said he wants to do it again.

USMNT Live!

The Copa America is a major international soccer tournament generally held every four years between the best South American teams and a couple teams from North America.  This year is the 100th anniversary of it, so there is a special edition with an expanded field, and they're playing it in the US for the first time.  The US was invited as a participant because we are hosting.  I love a handful of teams: K-State football and basketball, the Royals, the Cubs, the Bulls, the Penguins, the Broncos, Sporting KC, and the US Men's National Team for soccer.  The USMNT only plays a few games other than in the major tournaments, but I try to watch them on TV.  So I'm in Chicago for a couple days this week, and it suddenly occurred to me that one of the few games the USMNT is playing in the Copa America, which is going on this month, is being played in Chicago tonight!  I had a free night tonight, so I decided to try to get a ticket, and I did!  And it was a great game, as we thumped Costa Rica, 4-0.  It was played in Soldier Field, so there was a raucous crowd.  So now I've seen the USMNT play in person, which is one more items crossed off my sports bucket list.

As I landed in Chicago last night, I took this picture from the plane.  We all know Chicago is a big city, but sometimes it's hard to fathom.  For example, in this picture, the city goes on for miles.  And what's crazy is this was out one side of the plane, and the other side of the plane looked the same, so this is less than half of it.  Just lights as far as you can see.  There are some things to like about Chicago, but it's really just too big of a city for my liking, at least in terms of where I want to live.

First Week of June

I struggle with pictures in the summer because we mostly go to the pool over and over again. So I feel like my photos are not very exciting this week.

Halie came over one day this week. She took the kids to open gym, which they loved.

They spent a lot of time at the gym and then went to the park and to lunch.

At the park, they wanted to explore the path just like at school.

 This is Clara after Joshua asked her to marry him. He gave her the flowers for the wedding.

 All my kids love peeling carrots. To the point where I have to stop them if I want carrot left.

One thing we often do when we don't go to the pool is go to the "big kid park" which means the playground at the school. It's really close to our house and we don't often go in the school year because we can't if school is in session. There is summer school right now, but it's not every day so we can often go. Hannah was concerned about chicken being left behind so she figured out a way to attach her to her backpack so she could bring her along. We were not planning on bringing backpacks, but she was so excited so I let her bring hers.

Hannah still really needs a nap. We do quiet time most days, but not every day and, on the days we don't, she gets pretty tired. This is when she fell asleep on the trampoline.

There is a hospital across the street from our church and they had their strawberry festival this week. The kids noticed the bounce houses set up on the way from church so we came back after lunch to check it out. They had fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances to check out. Joshua also wanted to give ladder golf a try.

There were various booths set up to display the hospital's services, but the main draw was definitely the bounce house. They had two: a jumping one and then a slide. We spent a lot of time there.

Then we finished up with balloons and treats. It was a lot of fun and everything was free.

Here are their balloons after we got home. Joshua got spider man, Clara got a puppy, and Hannah got Hello Kitty.

I liked Clara's wetsuit so much that I decided to get Joshua one, which means I had to get Hannah one even though so far she is not prone to being cold in the water as the other two are. but it will still be helpful for swimming lessons indoors in the fall because the water does tend to be colder there. She looks like a cute little surfer girl in her suit.

A Rare Non-Galaxy

I've always tried to mention in this blog when I get a new phone, if for no other reason than someday I'll want to look back and see which phones I had and when I got them.  In January of this year, my Samsung Galaxy S5 was pretty much shot.  The screen had been cracked for months (it mysteriously cracked when Meghan and I were in Maui for Club last April while we were on the catamaran, and I have no idea how it happened).  I could live with that, but then mechanical things started failing.  The headphone jack didn't work, which was problematic, since I would really like to use it with headphones for my work, and also when driving in the car.  Also, the gyroscope broke, meaning it no longer had orientation awareness, so I couldn't take any pictures in landscape mode.  Finally, people were complaining that sometimes they couldn't hear me when I was talking.  That was the dealbreaker, because I use my phone for work, and I can't have that happening.  So I needed a new phone.  Unfortunately, I wasn't eligible for an upgrade until April 1.  That meant I could either pay full price through Sprint, or buy one off Craigslist, which is what I decided to do.  I did have an HTC Touch Diamond back in the day (2008 to 2010, or so), but in 2010 I got the Samsung Epic 4G, which was actually the version of the Galaxy S for Sprint.  At that time, that brand (the Samsung Galaxy series) didn't mean much, but it quickly emerged as the main alternative to the iPhone.  I really liked it, and since I'm eligible for an upgrade every two years, and because they release one each year, I then had the Galaxy S3 and the Galaxy S5.  Anyway, so the S6 was the latest one in January, but it was really expensive, so I needed a stopgap, and I found a HTC One M9 on Craigslist that was in good condition and a good price.  It got great reviews, but because it's not an iPhone or Galaxy, the resell market was weak, so I took advantage of that and got the phone.  I've really liked it, and it would make me actually consider getting another HTC, but my hope is that I can keep it until spring of next year when the Galaxy S8 will be out, and I'll definitely be eligible for an upgrade by then.  I also like the way the phone looks.  In a world of plain black phones with the occasional white phone thrown in there, I like the gold color this phone has, including the back, as it's different but not obnixious.  I have a very lightweight case on it that actually has a clear back, so the unique color of the phone comes through, which I like.  So this will be my phone for awhile, but I'm planning to get back on the Galaxy train next spring, unless something convinces me otherwise.

Box Sliding

I'm planning to clean out the garage this weekend, so the lawnmower box that I've kept in there for awhile really has to go.  The kids had so much fun with it the last time I brought it out, that I decided to save it for one more time.  So today is the box's last hurrah, which would be really sad for the kids if I told them that, but I won't.  Instead it'll just get recycled this weekend, and they'll likely never think about it again.  But for now, it's one last chance to enjoy it, and today they figured out a way to make it into more of a pure slide.  They propped it up against a chair and then slide down it.  The bottom of the box is very sturdy and rigid, so it made for a good slide.  They did that for quite awhile, so I think the box ended up getting quite a bit of extra use for something that had a sole purpose in life of protecting my mower in its journey from the factory to the store to my house.