Baseball..An Update

As luck would have it, the call came right at the rush hour in our house, cleaning up from dinner, trying to get the boys out of the door for early evening dentist appointment...  When it rang, I did jump and rushed to look at the caller ID.
No one I recognized so this must be it, I answered and looked over to the dinner table with a thumbs up. Senior smiled.

His name is Coach C, and NW was his first pick, but he saw that NW had a brother..and took him as well.  ( what a great guy!, I  like him  all ready)  I was very grateful that he picked both, and thanked him repeatedly for doing so.
And yes, as all can guess Senior is going to assist.

So they are going to be "Orioles" and not a team with any sort of royal blue colors, we have drawers full of royal blue ball socks, and belts.
We had to explain to ND what the Orioles were , he kept insisting that it was actually the "Oreos"  lol
Then Senior showed them pictures of the Baltimore Orioles, and of the most famous one : Mr. Cal Ripken Jr. 

So all is right in our world for now, Tonight is a meet and greet with the team, and tomorrow is the first practice. Saturday is a league clinic with the local high school baseball team ..which I think is great, the little kids look up to the bigger ones, and it is a learning experience for all involved.

That Time of Year Again

 

It is that time of year again. That time to play America's Game. Little league try outs were this past Friday night and the draft was last night. Now I sit by the phone, like a teenage girl waiting for a boy to call. We wait for the manager of what ever team that has drafted our boys to call. Both  are in the minor division this season, and for logistical reasons we requested that they be on the same team. Try outs went well, But NWs was a bit better, and we know of two teams who have him as their number one pick. ND also did well, but he needs work on catching pop flies. So tick tock goes the clock, and every time the phone rings, I jump.... 

 

Saturday, while, Senior was working on his rocket stove, NW and I got out in the back yard, and cleaned out my raised beds. Then we turned the soil, and put in some radishes and carrot seeds.

The one little plant is cabbage, that NW brought home from school as a project.

By this time of year the freezes are not as harsh, and should we get one, I will just cover the boxes with a tarp.

 

 

I was also  playing with my camera, and caught this pick of Jack the Cat sitting up in the "Crows Nest" of his cat tree.  That is his place of solitude when he wants to escape the wrath of Libby and the kids... 

 



 



 



Pre-Game Fireworks...

In case you missed it ( Senior and I did. )  the best part of the Super Bowl did not come when Seattle slaughtered the Broncos. It was actually during a pre-game interview Bill O'Reilly did with President Obama. It was the second time the top rated newsman had the privilege to interview Obama, the first came during the 2011 Superbowl.

Typically he likes all the fluffy questions, but O'Reilly who is not one to back down, came out and hit hard, on questions the American public would like solid answers on. So much so that the President became flustered and quite upset :

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Once we realized the fireworks that happened during the interview, Senior quickly found the video but after just a few minutes Of the President stammering to answer questions, or not answering them at all, Senior had a enough and turned it off. Clearly during the interview the President was challenged in a way that the main stream media hasn't. I was worried O'Reilly would back down, but happy he did not. And from what I have read today, O'Reilly told him that he would not ask any soft questions, like other news men have in the past. And boy he didn't. He pinned the President down, and had him wanting to smoke a carton of Newport's.
I can only imagine how he was afterwards, If only the walls could talk....

Jimmy Kimmel and the State of the Union

Kind of under the weather today, so this is my post:

We saw this last night on Hannity, and I wanted to share it with you guys.
On the Jimmy Kimmel show this week he went to the streets of LA to ask every day Americans questions on the Presidents State of the Union. Only it was before the speech was made. So there is no possible way they could have known what was said during it.

See the ignorance of some of our population, no wonder he was voted in twice...

CLICK HERE TO WATCH:

State of the Union Questions....

Are You All Warm and Fuzzy?

Last night was the State of the Union Address.  Senior and I listened even though I can not stand the sound of POTUS's voice.  It is just kind of fun to watch expressions on the audience, and listen to the lies he tells.  Senior and I took part in the online political poll with Bing.  I kept hitting that "Strongly Disagree" button like I was a contestant on Jeopardy.

Instead of mentioning the  millions that are unemployed..he talked about the few who do have jobs. And how fantabulous it is that people are getting back to work.
He showcased a lady who has been on unemployment that wrote him a letter.. well my thought is if she is unemployed , and struggling to make ends meet, then how the heck did she afford to travel to Washington D. C ?
And then Senior said " We paid for it"     "DUH" !

Next was how spectacular Obama Care is.. No mention of the folks who have lost insurance because of it. The camera went to the face of Kathleen Sebelius..did you see how she rolled her eyes and shook her head?
Then he decided once again to trample on the Constitution, and warn of using executive powers to invoke his will on the people. That is when I got a good glimpse of John Boehners face, he looked like a man who just ate the worlds hottest pepper... 

Did you also hear the race card dropped?  " We must do more for the young black men of this country" or something like that..... 

BO  Painted the picture of  a Rockwellian Society...every thing is just warm and fuzzy. Don't you feel all better now?

Common Core

 

If you do not have a school aged child then perhaps you have not heard of it. Basically Common Core is a new government education initiative to be rolled out in 45 states starting this year. More then half are all ready teaching the standards with Alabama leading the way.

What it was created to do was bring diverse curricula to all school aged children. When the stimulus was hatched in 2008-09, the school districts were offered stimulus money to help them through the recession. If they took the money they had to commit to teaching CC. Now if a district does not teach CC, they will not be eligible for federal educational funding.
What is the worse part about CC ? Is that it is even being forced on home schooled kids..If home schooled students are not taught CC and cannot pass CC testing, they will not graduate.

As our oldest progresses through the 3rd grade, Senior and I are starting to see signs of CC. He never brings home a  book, only work sheets. He is currently working on 100 math problems to solve in 5 min. The class can not progress to the next level until every one has passed the current level they are on. So for instance:  Student A who flies through the questions and passes, he can not advance until every one else as passed as well, thus holding Student A back.
So now, because not every one has passed in our sons class, they are actually falling behind. Currently they should be doing multiplication problems, but the entire class is still stuck on subtraction.
Michelle Malkin had a typical 3rd grade CC math problem posted on twitchy today, and please note that there are no shaded areas :

The good news about CC is that support is sinking. The NY teachers union, a group composed of more then 600,000 educators has withdrawn support for it and have shown no confidence in this initiative.
 Texas, Minnesota, Alaska, Virginia, Nebraska  are charging forward and telling the federal government to stay out of the their classrooms, Four opted completly out, and MN  opted out of the english portion. South Carolina's governor; Nicki Haley is supporting state legislative action to block it as well. Florida has adopted the legislative but is opting out of the testing phases.




resources:
http://twitchy.com/2014/01/27/good-luck-solving-this-3rd-grade-common-core-math-problem/
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-04-28/common-core-education/54583192/1
http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/11/unlike_alabama_these_five_stat.html

Pet Preps and Other Pics

Some times we get laxed when thinking about our four legged family members If a natural or man made disaster should occur. Ideally if we needed to bug out I would love to take the dogs with us for extra security, or God Forbid we needed them for a food source. So, Senior and I decided to start being a little more diligent in prepping for them as well. We purchased some 5 gallon buckets and gamma lids. Then stocked up on 55# bags of food :

 

              We tried to get a pic of the doggies facing the camera, but no one wanted to cooperate...

------------------------------------------------------------------

Now on to other stuff. Last Thursday NASA launched the ATLAS communications rocket, We use to go outside and watch the Space Shuttle launches all the time, and have missed the activity since ole "you know who" had the program shut down...

So we take what we can get.  We are approx. 100 + miles from the Cape, so the initial pic looked like a little red dot , then I did some photo editing and this is the end result...thought it came out pretty cool:

 

Last evening high clouds rolled in to make for some nice sunset shots:

 

 

Almost looks like the woods are on fire: