Snow!

I know this isn't that exciting for a lot of you, but it is now snowing for the second year in a row in Houston, and the third year out of five. This is probably the heaviest out of the three, and I believe it is the earliest recorded snow in Houston (so was last year at the time, but this is a week earlier).

Jessie is ecstatic. Of course, it's a bit of a difficulty for the plans for her birthday party tomorrow, which included a lot of outdoor stuff... And of course today's the day the Louisiana contingent is driving here, so that's not the best.

New Stake

Yesterday the League City Texas Stake was created. It consists of the Galveston, League City, South Shore, Clear Lake 1st, Clear Lake 2nd, Broadway 1st and Pasadena 1st wards, as well as the Lehi (Spanish) and Kemah (Spanish) branches. The new stake president is Weldon Reeves.

In addition, one branch moved from the Houston Texas East stake to the Friendswood stake, and two wards moved from the Kingwood stake to the Houston Texas East stake.

Stake Conference

This will presumably be of interest to my family.

This coming Sunday is Stake Conference. It has been announced that at this Stake Conference a new stake will be created. For a variety of reasons, we have every reason to believe that the new stake will be made up of parts of Friendswood and the Houston Texas East (our current) stake, and that the two Clear Lake wards will be in the new stake.

We have also been told that by the end of the year, another new stake will be created somewhere in the greater Houston area. I will provide more details after next Sunday.

Programming Tip

When you call a method that gives you a time interval expressed in seconds, and pass it to a method expecting a time interval expressed in milliseconds, you will find things happening rather faster than you expected...

Update

Time gets away... I know I still have pictures I wanted to get up here, but I had problems when I tried. I still need to find some before pictures of our wall, and upload those and the "middle" ones. I'm nearing the end of construction of the first cabinet, and then we'll start on the second before finishing with the bookshelves and the mantel. Also, we'll still have tiling to do. And then we have to see if we can afford to do the floor of the living room now, which we'd really like to do... So we'll see where it all ends up.

Jessie had a minor bout of the flu week before last. I don't know if I ever mentioned that she decided to run for Student Council--Elementary here is only through 5th grade. The student council officers are fifth graders, but the fourth grade classes each have two representatives. Jessie won the election for girl representative for her class. Sadly, the day of the first meeting was the day she got sick. That turned out to be the only day that she missed, however.

Jessie's also back in bowling. For a few reasons, we ended up not doing the scholarship league this time, though we'll evaluate that again in January. She's still doing well with that and enjoying it. She's been busy with some medium-sized geography assignments, and also trying to complete several book reports.

I was somewhat surprised when she brought home the book, "Someone Named Eva," a story based on history about a Czech girl who was taken by the Nazis and trained to be a perfect Aryan. We weren't really anticipating such subjects coming up, and were somewhat concerned about her readiness for such serious material. So I skimmed through it so that we could make a more informed decision. In the end, I think it was a good experience for her. And I realized that some of what happens wouldn't have nearly the impact on her that it does on me. Anything touching on the Holocaust or the racial policies of the Nazis brings up all those feelings and memories of walking through Buchenwald, and living for seven months in its shadow.

Brennan had his first big assignment, a "Dinorama." He decided to do his on Triceratops. It was somewhat painful to get him to work on it, but he really did a good job. We planned on making his triceratops out of clay, but it turned out our clay was dried out. So he ended up making it out of salt dough, and that actually worked very well.

Brennan has had two baseball games now (with another rained out). The first game he hit the ball all three times he came up. His first time he made it to first easily. The second time, the bases were loaded and he hit it right up the middle. The second base man made a good play to get the ball, and landed on 2nd base, forcing out the runner. But two runs scored, and Brennan was safe. His third hit was again more or less up the middle, and by the time the shortstop got the ball, he realized Brennan was already almost at first and didn't make a throw.

In the second game, Brennan was able to make a play at 2nd on a ball hit to him. He struck out his first and fourth times up. His second time up, he hit a good fly ball into the outfield, but it went pretty much straight to an outfielder, who was able to catch it. But two runs scored on the play. The third time he came up, he hit a line drive into the outfield for an easy single. He's really hitting it much harder than last spring, and even though his bunting in practice is still at the level it was before, he hasn't been asked to bunt in a game yet because the coach expects him to be able to hit it swinging away.

Sunday was the primary program. As always, that means it was a very memorable and special meeting. Both Jessie and Brennan had memorized their parts and scriptures and presented them well, speaking clearly and confidently. They both also knew all the songs, and once again Jessie carried the rest of the primary in the singing. Our new primary president teaches singing, and has asked us to have Jessie take some piano lessons to prepare to take voice lessons, because she really wants to teach her. We're trying to figure out the best way to do this.

Another entertaining part of the program is that there's a 2-year-old girl in the ward who adores Jessie. When Jessie came up to do her part, she was beside herself: "Hi Jessie! Hi Jessie!"

A month or so ago I was released as the Finance Clerk, and called to be a ward missionary. Dee, as always, is busy with Young Womens. She's also adjusting to teaching without her co-teacher from the past three years (and friend), whose husband got a job in California, and organizing the school workroom that she's in charge of with the PTA. I've also ended up with a PTA position, putting together the PTA newsletter. Which then turned into putting together a combined PTA/school newsletter at the last moment... I'm also trying to write some web applications for the little league to use to manage practice fields and batting cages, and this year I'm the first base coach for Brennan's team.

Well, that's probably all I can think of right now.

Bowling

I'm not sure I've said much (or anything) about Jessie and bowling. This summer she decided she wanted to participate in a summer bowling league--mostly, I believe, because of playing Wii Bowling.

Anyway, the way the league worked is that she was assigned to a team. Each Saturday, she would go and warm up, and then bowl three games as part of the team, with coaches there to help teach her how to do better. She also received a card that allowed her to bowl two free games each day for practice. Plus, it turns out the bowling alleys had cards for the summer that we could get for the kids that gave each of them a free game every day. Of course, those free games didn't include shoe rental. So, we ended up buying Jessie and Brennan each their own bowling shoes.

Anyway, Jessie did a lot of bowling, and learned a lot. Her coach ended up giving her a used 6-pound ball. But before long she was preferring to use an 8-pound ball. The coaches frequently told us how well she was doing for her experience level. Anyway, Saturday was the end-of-season party for the league. As it turns out, Jessie's team came in first place. Here she is with her trophy:


But that's not all. Jessie also had the high series among girls with a handicap, gaining her another trophy:


We're very proud of her hard work. Next week she'll be able to start a new league. I don't understand exactly how it works, but depending on how well she does, she can win scholarship money. She's very excited about this. Since the 6-pound ball wasn't heavy enough for her anymore, we did also buy her an 8-pound ball. She's very excited to pick it up tomorrow after school (the shop needed time to drill the holes, which will are measured for her hand. I guess as she grows they'll fill in the current holes and redrill new ones).

First Day of School

I'll join in the crowd of first day of school pictures.

Here's Jessie, all ready for fourth grade. Please note that that's a binder over her shoulder, not a bag. Her teacher is Ms. Danek for science and math (homeroom), and Ms. Houston for English and social studies.


And here's Brennan, heading off for second grade. His teacher this year is Ms. Rock. Keep in mind, his teacher last year was Ms. Schrock. Any guesses as to how often he'll say the wrong name? This is the first year Brennan's teacher isn't new to the school.