Entries Tagged 'Family' ↓

Notice something about this picture that the girls are holding up and that they have on some of their shorts? I have been coaching youth sports for many years and last season I started purchasing and rewarding soccer players with patches.

Why are the patches so great?
The players are eager to see what patches they earned. When players do great things they make sure to find me on the sidelines to remind me of the assist they got or the goal they scored to make sure I have it down. My soccer teams went from good kids learning and having fun to winning teams thirsty to learn while having lots of fun.

What patches do I give out?
First, I give out many types. I make sure that the players know they are earned and that the gold star patch is the highest honored patch on my team. The gold star is for an assist. I also give out patches for hustle, being tough, passing, goals, and attendance/sportsmanship.

The website I buy these from is soccerhelp.com and I was skeptical the first time I bought them.

At the end of September Krystal played in her first 3rd grade school play. The play was based on appreciation for the United States. Krystal was a dancer during one part of the show. She was so cute with her cowboy hat and scarf dancing.

Krystal was very excited days leading up to the play and was really excited to be in the show. Enjoy some the pics of her in the show here.

Today we had a hockey family on Ryan’s squirt team invite the entire team out to catch fish in a stocked pond in their sub-division. The pond was really nice and had a dock and the family went all out providing bait, poles, and dinner. Krystal and Ryan caught 3-4 fish a piece and everyone had a great time…

All the pics taken from the event can be found here…

I just upgraded my computer at work and found these funny videos that I did with the kids. I think Ryan was doing a school project to invent a healthy new food. So, I came up with the idea for Sea Sick SeaWeed and Krystal came up with Rainbow pony fruit snacks.

Check out these videos we made about it:

Summer is over Enjoying late nights with the kids, having the kids sleep in, having buddies over, getting the kids to do my chores (oh wait, I am not supposed to put that here) is all over for 2008. It has been a fun and HOT summer and we did lots of cool stuff.

- Spent a week in Gulf Shores with Grandma Carol
- Spend a week in Okmulgee with Grandma Jean and Grandpa Richard
- Went to (2) family reunions (Bynum & Whitlow)
- Jeanee is healthier than she has been in over 2 years
- Started organizing the house
- Played a bunch on our new trampoline
- Ryan had a big BDay party
- Krystal started piano lessons
- Ryan started guitar lessons
- Krystal continued her horse lessons
- Ryan played hockey a few times
- Mommy got a new car
- Daddy got a new Drobo
- Enjoyed a full summer with wild Hershey and mellow Topazz

Very busy summer, but all that comes to an end as Krystal heads to 3rd grade and Ryan heads to fourth. We are very fortunate with our teachers this year because Ryan has Krystal’s 1st grade teacher and Krystal has Ryan’s 3rd grade teacher thanks to mommy putting in her teacher requests on-time.

Here are some shots of the kids heading to class….

This summer we visited the USS Alabama and met a wonderful man. This man is Col. Glenn D. Frazier and he is a WWII veteran, a former Japanese POW, Bataan death march survivor, and above all a gentleman. I had the luxury of purchasing his book titled, “Hell’s Guest“.

This book is one of many war books I have read, but like no other it was very hard to put down until I finished it. The other item that kept me very excited about this book was the fact that I had the opportunity to meet Col. Frazier and see what an incredible person he is after the war.

The personal stories of the battle in the Phillipines and his years of a Japanese POW are truly amazing. Col. Frazier is a man of superb strength, courage, and wisdom. Not only does this book tell of his stories during the war but shares how he incredibly was able to forgive later in life.

The book also demonstrates what the true meaning of POW abuse really is. I was quickly able to see how fortunate today’s American POWs from Afghanistan and Irag are. I would like to sit down and hear how Col. Frazier would apply the wisdom of his life to today’s top headlines surrounding POW treatment.

I highly recommend this book to anyone.

During my short time meeting Col. Frazier, Ryan and Krystal had the opportunity to meet him and talk to him. That short visit has formed a life long memory in their mind.

Colonel Frazier signed the book we purchased and wrote a small note to the kids in the book for them. When Ryan and Krystal are old enough I plan to share this book with them so they too can realize how fortunate we are to have been in the presence of a true American hero.

Below is a picture of Ryan & Krystal with this incredible man.

Grandma came into town this week for a quick visit. We went to IHOP for lunch and the kids were amazed that Grandma knew how to color so well.

Posting this is way past due but I had issues getting the raw images converted to JPG. The issue I had was because I accidentally chose sRAW on our camera and that is a Canon proprietary RAW format and I did not have software to convert it until I remembered about the pics and used Lightroom 2.

Anyway, enough of that. Below are some good shots I took of Ryan in Jan 08 in Dallas. Ryan was selected to represent the Squirt league for the Texas Stars Tournament when they were introduced at the Dallas Stars game in January.

Ryan was very surprised how big he was on the screen and I did not get a shot of him waving at the crowd for about one second. He had a lot of fun with this…

Well, we now have some new musicians in the house. Krystal and Ryan have started music lessons. Krystal started piano lessons and Ryan has started guitar lessons. Yesterday was the first day of lessons and the kids were very excited. Krystal got some new music books and is using the family piano. Ryan was super excited because he got a new guitar as well.

Check out these pics of Krystal practicing and Ryan’s new guitar sitting next to his old smaller guitar.

This is pretty cool, I can now write updates to our blog on my phone. I can add pictures to the blog from my phone as well. The pic below was taken at a store while we were clothes shopping. Pretty cool.