Caiden's Birthday

Caiden is 9 years old now. It's amazing how quickly kids grow (I know everyone says that, but it's true). While he has his moments, he really is a good boy and I could not be more proud to be his father. We had some of his neighborhood friends over to play, eat cake and open presents.

East Soph Stats

Here is the link to the final stats for the 2008 East Sophomore Football Team:


http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pbWad6AYo9rmo_PXOqj_KQA

Basement work

The basement is getting close to getting back to normal. I can't wait to have it done and not have to worry about it. I've had to patch and sheetrock most of the walls from 2' down. I still have to do the painting in the office room, laundry room, and Bailey's room, but only Bailey's room needs to be painted before we lay the carpet. Here are some pictures of the before and after progress.

Caiden's Room:

We had to blow insulation into the walls that were not cut open (there were a few of them) and lay rolled insulation in the walls that were cut open, then patch and paint. I didn't get any pictures of the before work, so this is just the finish stuff. Obviously we'll be adding carpet to the room too.



We lucked out with these blinds. They were the old blinds in the house and they just happened to be the same shade as the color of blue we picked out (we didn't even attempt to match because we weren't thinking about the blinds)


Bailey's room:

Again, had to blow in some insulation as well as patch in other areas.

Had to cut in these holes between each stud to blow in the insulation


This is what a typical section of lower wall patching looked like before


Here is an after shot






Office:

Again, blown insulation and wall patching. We're not sure what color we're going to do in this room, but probably whatever paint we have the most of left over will go in here






Family room:

This one took a lot of work. We completely sheetrocked one whole wall (24' long), so that took a while. I also removed our gas heating stove and framed over the old ugly rock wall. I cut holes in the vents above the ceiling so it will allow heat into the basement. I doubt it will be 100% effective, but it's something. By removing the stove, we are opening up a lot more room down here.










Sheetrock over the old rock wall. I am getting rid of the gas stove (too heavy to haul out myself) and we are going to put book shelves across this whole wall, with a little blanket box/seat underneath them.









Hall area

Just had a few corners and some wall damage here to fix.





We are going on Wednesday to pick out carpet for downstairs. I can't wait to get this done.

Football updates

For anyone that cares. My Soph team is now 6-2. We have one game left on the season and if we win, we will finish second in our region. We won our last game 55-12. They scored on our second/third string kids, but it's still fun to be able to get them into the game. I HATE "running up the score" on kids, especially in high school, but we scored our last two TD's with second string kids, so I didn't feel as badly.

I'm really loving coaching. I feel like I learn more and more about the game every year, so it doesn't get boring or stale. Every week I seem to find a new play I can add in and work on the execution, then see it become effective. It's great. I feel like I am really coming into my own as an offensive coordinator. I don't think I'm ready for the big-time (Varsity), but it still feels good to make good decisions on the level I'm coaching.

Caiden's team is now 4-3 with one game left. In his league, they actually have a play-off, so they have a good chance of making the playoffs now. I coach the defense and we have dominated the last 4 games winning 34-7, 26-0, 27-6, and 27-0. If I recall correctly, my defense hasn't allowed a 1st down in the last 3 games (the 6 points from the previous game came from an interception returned for a TD). It will be interesting to see how far we can go in the playoffs.

I'm happy for Caiden because I think he's really getting the understanding of commitment and hard work. There are many times in practice where he get's hurt. He cries, but then he shakes it off and goes back and tries harder. He is turning into a pretty good blocker. I wish I had more time to work with him, but I should have plenty next year when not having to deal with selling a house/moving into a new house, basement floods, etc.

Anyway, if anyone is interested, here are my soph teams stats:

East Sophomore Stats

What's new???

Man, time flies. My life has been pretty much working on the basement and football with a little Call of Duty 4 here and there and checking into work a couple of times a week.

Bailey is growing so fast. She is still the sweet little baby, but it's amazing how much she's grown since we brought her home 2 months ago. She is so lucky to have such a loving and devoted mother in Alene. Alene really amazes me every day with her love and patience for Bailey. Bailey relies solely on her to grow, gain immunities, and things like that. It's so amazing how that works. I'm so happy that Alene is my daughter's mother.

Football is going pretty good. My Soph team lost a close one to an undefeated team (14-6) last week. If we had won that game, we would be in the drivers seat for first place in the conference. We had so many chances to win that game, but didn't capitalize. Our record is currently 5-2 and we have two more games to play. We can finish strong with a 7-2 record and second place in our conference, that is not too bad. We also played that game without our complete group of Sophomores as 3 of them play varsity, but play with us from time to time. The varsity game was so big the next night, that they didn't want to risk these kids getting hurt. I totally get and support that, but it just sucks not having your complete team. We are averaging around 28 points per game on offense and only allowing 8 points per game on defense. Not too bad.

Caiden's team is in the drivers seat to make the playoffs now. We're 4-3 and we knocked of the team ahead of us today 27-6. I'm coaching the defense for them and we're finally getting what we need to do. Our past three games we've allowed 7, 0, & 6 points, so I'm really proud of the kids for learning and playing tough. We just have to win our next two games to ensure we finish in 4 place, which put's us in the playoffs.

The basement is almost ready for carpet. After that I'm going to build a bookshelf unit and then lay the base boards and I hope I never have to hang another piece of sheetrock or mud/sand again in my life. I hate doing it and I'm so tired and sore from it. My back hurts so bad. It will be so nice to have it done. I'll post pictures soon enough.

So that's about it. Not much else in my life. I'm kind of excited the season is nearing an end. I'll be around to help out the varsity for playoffs (they too should finish 2nd in region, which ensures one home game in the playoffs). It will be nice to be able to just be home.