Graham and Us

Yes, I have been ignoring the web site. The year has been mostly uneventful. Graham finished his first year of high school with OK grades. He is still playing soccer and will be on the same team in the fall. He tried high school soccer and hated it so I don't think he'll do that again. He has decided to try tennis. That should be interesting since he doesn't really play. Scott is super busy with work as usual. I just seem to work and I taught a class at the university in the spring.

There ended up being 7 slots available for the Super II league and 12 teams trying to qualify. The format of the tournament was horrible. A random draw to seed the teams so it was anyone guess who we would be playing. Win your first game and you get one of the open slots. The six losing teams would play a single elimination tournament for the last slot. We ended up playing a decent team, but they only had 10 players. We had 16 of ours show up. They didn't look very good the first half, which isn't completely unexpected. It was their first game and there are a lot of new kids on the team and most of the old kids were playing in new positions. We were down 1-0 at the half. Graham scored a beautiful penalty kick in the second half to tie the game. Chris scored at the end of the half, but was then called off sides. I am not so sure that he actually was, though. Tie games go to penalty kicks. After the first 5 we were still tied. Daniel managed to block one in sudden death and we ended up with a Super II slot. I think that they will do OK once they play together a little bit more. I am looking forward to a good season. The only bad thing is that our home games will be in San Antonio so we'll be doing a lot of driving.

Graham's soccer team is hoping to move to Super II. Their qualifying tournament is next weekend in San Marcos. Based on the spring season where they were playing some not so good Super II teams, it doesn't look promising. They have picked up a keeper and at least one boy who can finish so maybe that will be enough to take one of the open slots. We don't have any information on the tournament yet except the dates so it is going to be one of those last minute things. Hopefully they will play well enough to move up. Not sure what will happen if they don't, play DII in one of the north leagues would be best.

So we are already into February and 2014. We are just doing the same things here. Scott is two weeks in to the new semester. He is teaching Game Programming and gave himself a TA to help with the course. Graham made it in the All-City Band which had all of their practices and performance last week. I just got back from Utah. Grandma Liz died and I went for the funeral. It was nice to see the family. I just wish it had been for a better reason. We'll be together again in October for Mom and Dad's 60th wedding anniversary.

Scott has to teach today. The semester starts late this year and he isn't done until almost Christmas. Sounds like a really stupid schedule to me, but then no one asked for my input. He has been super busy with his coordinator job. We haven't seen him much the last couple of weeks. I don't know if things will slow down now that school has started. I kind of doubt it.

Graham is in his second week of school. It seems that he might have a decent year. We'll see how the school work goes. He volunteered to play tenor sax in the band. I think that is pretty cool. The school actually provides the tenor sax so we didn't have to buy one for him. If he likes it and decides to keep playing in high school we might get him one later. He is having a little bit of trouble with it. Apparently you have to hold the mouth piece different then the alt sax. He is getting the hang of it though. He just needs lots of practice.

Soccer games supposedly start next weekend. I am not counting on it. I don't remember the league ever starting when they first say they will. We went all summer without enough kids on the team, but now have 13 so at least they can play. I think the team will shape up pretty well. The trainers are good and there seems to be a lot of potential on the team. Soccer is 5 days a week right now. It will be 6 when games start. Graham is trying to get out of training on Wednesdays. I think he will go a couple more times and see what the homework load is like. He is playing very well and I would like him to keep it up.

Just work for me right now. It is horribly tedious, but hopefully I can move on to something more interesting in a week or so. I am moving the web stie to a content management system and it is a pain. I have also been putting together a web site for Graham's soccer trainers. That has been more fun.

Scott went to Portland last week for an ABET conference. He was delayed at the airport here for hours because they weren't letting planes into Dallas because of weather. I think he got to Portland 7 hours late. He came home sick and has been out pretty much the whole week now. I think that he has finally passed on whatever he has to me. Oh joy.

Tomorrow is Graham's first soccer game on his new team. The season is short. We only have 5 games with the possibility of advancing to the finals if we do well. Tomorrow we are off for Harlingen. Two away games and three home games isn't too bad. Good luck to the boys tomorrow.

We are one month into 2013 and it is life as usual at our place. The new semester started for Scott last week. He is teaching a double section of CS1. We'll see how that goes. Scott has rebuilt the flowerbed in the backyard after we had to dig everything up for a gas leak. I need to get the weed mat down and start putting in some flowers. Scott says that he is going to build a fountain. Hopefully that will happen. Graham has just started the 4th grading period for the year. He needs to work harder. His grades are less then stellar. Graham has moved to a new soccer team. This is a really good opportunity for him. He needs to work really hard to earn a spot on the team in the fall. If he doesn't do that, I am not sure that there will be any other teams for him to play on. He says he wants to do this so we'll see if he steps up. Work for me is about the same. I am enjoying using Ruby on Rails. Makes web development really nice.

We have had a busy Autumn semester. I was asked to teach a class at the university and decided to do it. My last class was yesterday. I still have projects to grade, but after that I am done. Scott finishes classes today and has a final to give and graphics demos. I think December will be stay at home month and do things around the house. Graham is doing OK in school. Could be better, could be worse. He is already asking when winter breaks is. I think they finish up Dec 19th and he'll have two weeks off. He has to do a science fair project so he'll be doing some work over the break. I think we are all looking forward to having a couple of days off.

We have been enjoying our time at Grandma and Grandpa's. On the drive here we stopped in Denver to see Scott's family for a few days. We also go to see the Mitchells who are now living in Denver. Kaci and Jordon showed up yesterday. Tonight they are going to camping and taking Graham with them. I think that they will have a good time. We are here for another day or two and then we will head for home. Scott has a defense on Wednesday so we have to be back by then. We have been biking and eating and playing games. Tomorrow we'll go pick up Graham from camping and then we'll need to do laundry and start packing.