March 19

I am leaving on a jet plane. US Airways will take me to Florida today for a 2-day EHR conference (EHR is Electronic Health Record for the uninitiated.) Most of you know I have been feverishly lobbying for an EHR for awhile. It looks closer than ever now. Probably this calendar year.

Leslie had a small idea. She thought it would be nice to have "something" to cover the ground under the swings so the kids' shoes don't get so muddy. As usual, her something turned into a huge project. Because I am old now, I decided to hire 4 teenagers (and their young backs) to help me shovel out 112 square feet of topsoil 4 inches deep and replace it with two tons on stone dust. This is the base for our recycled tire rubber playground surface. I guess if she keeps me busy, it will keep me out of trouble.

I am trying to post pictures of the events but blogger is giving me trouble. I will try one more time.

It didn't work again. I know what you are thinking. How is a guy who can't use Blogger going to implement an EHR for a large organization? We'll see.

Home improvement can be such a drag. I thought my washer had a leak and bought a new one. As I was creating a mess trying to get the old one out, I noticed that the sink our washer drains into had a bad plug at the drain. It was the sink that was overflowing! It took 5 minutes to clear the drain and about 3 hours to do and undo all the unnecessary junk. Ugh!

Today was also tough because our children got no dessert and no movie. It was a punishment for displaying a bad attitude yesterday. Aaron took the lesson well and came around. Shannon intensified her resistance. It was tough, but she became downright sweet by the end of the day. She has a tough time submitting to authority, but we can't let that shape her destiny. Please pray for our precious litttle girl. I am sure she wants dessert again before college.

I know most people only visit this blog to see pictures of our adorable children so here goes. The first one is Shannon with all her little people displayed in her Barbie house. The boy with her is Caleb Schans. He just moved out of the neighborhood this week much to our children's chagrine.



The next one is a model of the solar system that Aaron made for fun Friday. He used the string from his marble game as the orbit for Mars. All the planets are marbles and the sun is the shooter.

The Morrisseys took advantage of early Spring weather today to go hiking at Chickee's Creek. It was a balmy 64. That is T-shirt weather here (for those of you in TX and California who expected to see parkas on us in the pictures).
One great thing we experienced was Aaron's bout of courage climbing a steep gully. Normally, he is a pretty cautious guy, so I try to let him have free reign when he wants to attempt something a little dangerous. (Don't worry Mom, Christal and Lois -- I do mean a little dangerous.)


After we did it once, he begged us to do it again. First, we made him walk with us out to the lookout point. It was gorgeous.

On the way back, we decided to let him do the gully again, but this time he did it alone. He nearly exploded running down the hill to meet us afterward, the story of his exploits running out of his mouth faster than his feat down the trail.

We are looking forward to many more adventures as the weather warms up.