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Apopka Pirates fall to 0-2

We put in an excellent effort today. we played much, much better than last week, in fact I think we opened the game a bit over aggressive. Practice on Tuesday was rough, the kids were not listening, so I made them run laps over and over again until they started listening as a group.

The discipline may be paying off though as the kids really responded to what I was trying to get them to do. The trouble this week was that the other team really had a superstar that we just could not stop, and we fell on a score of 6-7. Next week, we'll work on ball possession a bit more, and start to teach some defensive fundamentals which we have not even covered yet.

Ella learned to swim

Watching Michael Phelps in the Olympics really motivated Ella to swim, so she taught herself how to do it in the bath tub. We had taught her the basics, like floating and kicking, but Ella (after putting on her goggles), taught herself how to hold her breath and put it all together. We met Sarah's parents at a hotel last night for dinner. They had a pool, so Ella was ready for her first real swim. She did all of this with a nasty cold too, she sounds like an old lady who has smoked her whole life right now, but she didn't let that stop her.



Adding one more video now:

Apopka Pirates Open the Season at 0-1

We had our first soccer game yesterday, and despite a tough effort, we fell to the Jaguars 8-6 (they scored 2 of our goals too). We don't technically keep score or standings, but I do, I just don't tell the kids. We played well, and played especially good in the last 5 minutes. I have to work with my team to be more aggressive. If the other team had the ball, we would tend to just run next to them and not try to take the ball away. Our next game is next week.

Come on down to Florida for your Birthday

Disney just announced their new promotion for 2009, and they are giving everyone a free ticket on their birthday. Not bad, a 1 day ticket is running $75 right now, so that is pretty good, plus you get a free place to stay.

Link to story in the Orlando Sentinel

Looks like Ike is going to pass us by

Hurricane Ike has continued to move south and west, so it is now going to slide right by Florida by way of Cuba. It looks like it will move through the Gulf and hit Texas. Sometimes these things hit the Gulf and then do a U-turn back into Florida, but there are no systems coming along to push it back our way, so we are looking safe.

Ella's coerced confession

Kind of a funny story over the weekend (depending on how you look at it). Ella's teachers put things in her backpack that they want to send home, calendars, letters, homework, stuff like that. Well, on Friday when I got home for work, I opened her backpack to see if there was anything in it. There were two little toy ponies that were definitely not ours. Last year, they had toys in the classroom to play with, so my immediate thought was that she brought them home from school. I honestly did not think Ella would have plotted to steal them, but it seemed a little weird.

I decided to ask her about it, and she just said that she didn't know how they got there. That seemed a little weird to me, so I kept pushing. Ella kept changing her story on me, first she didn't know, then she claimed our friend Tracey put them there, then she said something about Katie (we didn't know who Katie was). Sarah started questioning her about this time too. It was pretty late, past her bed time, and she was starting to get pretty stressed out and whiny. We kept asking her if she took them from class, and she would say no and look all nervous. Then she finally said that it was a secret, that did not sound good. Ella was pretty frustrated at this point, so we just let her go to bed, figured we would deal with it in the morning. Then, at the last minute, she said that she took them from class. We decided to let it go for the night and address it in the morning.

The next morning, we woke up and I set her next to me on the couch and talked to her about stealing and lying. I told her that as long as she always tell the truth she would not get in trouble, and how it is never OK to take things that do not belong to us. We decided not to punish her, but told her if she ever did it again she would be in big trouble.

We let it go from there, by the time her next class rolled around on Wednesday, I put her in the car to take her to school (usually our friend Tracey takes her in the morning). On the way there I talked to her again about not taking things that do not belong to her, and that she needed to give them back to the teacher, tell her what she did and apologize.

So we finally get to her class, we go in, I give Ella the ponies to give back. She is looking pretty nervous, but it is a good lesson for her, so I let her toughen up and take it. She hands them to her teacher and said she was sorry. Then the teacher said "these are not yours?". I told her no, Ella took them from the class, and then she said that they were Katie's (took her a few seconds to remember), Katie had brought them in for show and tell, and the teacher must have put them in the wrong backpack. I bent down to get level with Ella and tried to make sense of the whole thing in Ella's head. I told her that I was sorry, that she had indeed told the truth, to which she simply replied, very emphatically, "I know".

Sarah and I felt pretty horrible for pressuring Ella into a confession. I guess it ended up being more of a lesson for us then it did for Ella. Sarah told the story to someone at work, and he said that we were running a little guantanamo bay.

Random notes and news

I noticed that Detroit's finest mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, finally gave in and resigned as mayor of Detroit. I said it when he was elected, I still say it today, that guy is a thug and a gangster, I can't believe that he was ever elected, what a moron that guy is.

On other fronts, I was very impressed with Sarah Palin's speech last night at the convention. She has a great sense of humor and seems to be grounded in good sound principles. It will be interesting to see how this whole plays out. I am getting quite disgusted by how many articles I see springing up around the Internet, and various media outlets trying to devalue her as a VP choice.

It looks like Tropical Storm Hanna is going to miss us completely after sitting in the Caribbean for a little while. However, Hurricane Ike is going to be a monster, projected to be a Category 4 storm (Katrina was a 2), and is headed right for us. We will know more over the next couple of days, if it comes our way, it should get here mid next week. My parents are coming in on Wednesday, so we are hoping that it does not effect their travel plans.