Stupid Stupid Stupid

As you know, I have a garden.  I planted some things in mid-March.  Watering is a bit of a pain, because I didn't want to turn on the outside spigot until it was warm enough.  I decided to do this in mid-April, but as I was doing so, I reminded myself to turn the water off in case a freeze was forecast.  Fast forward to last night, when temperatures got down to 21 degrees.  Sadly, I forgot to drain the pipe to the spigot.  Around 11 this morning, Ashley hears water running, and sees a volcano-like eruption of water from beneath our back deck.  She was able to shut the water off, but sure enough, one of the pipes burst.  Sheesh.

We received some snow, but nothing too terrible.  It was cold, and I am worried about my trees--they had budded up so nicely and were starting to bloom.  I hope the hard freeze didn't do any irreparable damage.  I will check on them tomorrow.  I'm hopeful the carrots, lettuce, and peas that were coming in survived--they are fairly hardy, so I'm not too worried.  I have some raspberry plants that have been around for a couple of seasons, and I think I'll get a lot of fruit from them this season as long as they weren't too damaged.  Here's hoping.

My indoor plants continue to thrive.  Pumpkins can grow and grow and grow.  We could have our own pumpkin farm here this fall.

The corn is going great, and I hope to transplant it to the garden in two weeks.  Perhaps this year we'll get edible cobs and have a nice meal.  The corn from the last two seasons just wasn't ripe enough when we had to pick it.

I also have some honeydew melons...

and some peppers.

I'm very excited about the honeydew.  I had two or three on the vine last year; one got to the size of an apple, but then the weather started getting too cold at night.  I didn't plant the honeydew inside last year, so I'm hoping to get some good-sized melons.

I spent yesterday building a robotic arm.

I'm teaching an introductory robotics class this fall.  My department bought eight of these arms, and it's up to me to put them together and figure out what to do with them :-)  Actually, I already have most of the syllabus and lectures done, but learning the hardware will take some time.  I guess it'll give me something to do this summer because in two short weeks, I'm technically unemployed (at least til August :-)  Pleasant week to all.

USAFA Swimming

The coach of the Air Force Academy's men's swim team, Rob Clayton, has some children that swim on the same club team as Bode.  For the past two years, Coach Rob has held a clinic with the Rapids and some members of the USAFA swim team (who, for the past two years, have won the Mountain West Conference Championships, so these guys are pretty good swimmers).  Friday night was this year's clinic, so we went and had some fun.  Here's a picture of Bode at the first station learning how to improve his streamline on turns.

Next is a movie of Bode practicing what he learned.

There was also a quick session on starts.  Bode's start is a bit tentative--I think he could explode a little better of the block, but I guess he is only nine... :-)

And of course the accompanying movie...

They also swam some fun relays, but I didn't get any real good shots of those.  At the end, the team posted for a group picture.  Bode is on the far left, second row.

We had a snow storm yesterday--we didn't get much accumulation, but it was cold, and I'm worried about the trees that were budding out so nicely.  It's forecast to warm up today, so I'm hopeful everything survived.  Pleasant day.

Eli

One of Bode's best friends is a wild little dude named Eli.  Eli has spent the night at our house a few times, and every time he does, the boys have a great time.  Eli came over Saturday after Bode's soccer games (team played twice--great effort from the boys, but they were whipped, so we won't dwell on the outcome).  Bode and Eli currently sit near each other in school, which I don't think is a good thing for their academic progress :-)

We colored some Easter eggs Saturday night.  The boys did an even two dozen.

The big bunny came and hid them during the night, in addition to two more dozen plastic eggs.  The boys sent off on the mighty hunt at the crack of dawn (well, 8:30).

Amazingly, we found all the eggs...except one.  We think a bird or a squirrel made off with it (or the bunny just hid it so well that none of us could remember...err, find it :-)

We didn't do a whole lot after Eli went home.  The boys stayed up well past midnight, so I think Bode is a little worn out.  There are a little less than five weeks of school left for Bode, and three more weeks of classes for me.  We can both smell summer :-)  Pleasant week to all.