Jude taking his first shot on his new basketball hoop

It is Jude’s birthday tomorrow. And what he really wanted was a new basketball setup in the alley. About a year ago we bought a cheap backboard and hoop and put it on the garage. We thought this might be a case of Jude will use it three or four times and then lose interest. But he has played a lot and the cheap backboard is falling apart. So, we got him a much higher quality setup that we installed today (when I say “we” installed that is being generous as Marcy did the bulk of the work).

Drive by birthday celebration for Brody

When Marcy was pregnant with Jude we used to take 6am yoga classes at the gym with Tina Porter. She was also pregnant and they ended up having their babies two days apart. Brody was Tina’s second and Jude obviously our first. Tina and Marcy became good friends and they have done a couple of Spartan races together as well as an untold number of yoga classes.

Tina and her husband Jeff are great people, and they received the news earlier this year that every parent dreads. In June they found out their son Brody had a brain tumor and it was inoperable. Since then they have been doing a whirlwind of treatments and he is doing ok and about to enter a new experimental program in Seattle. Anyway, yesterday was his birthday and they had a drive-by celebration. We had to take part.

Hard at work on Anna’s school project (with matching jackets)

Anna has taken on a new project at school for her elective. It is a “passion project” as the assignment was to take on something you love. She has been sewing for years and she thought it would be really fun to create outfits for her good friends in her class and herself (five outfits). She is doing everything from scratch including designing the outfits, selecting the materials, then cutting the fabric and sewing it all together. She has even kicked Marcy out of the back room as she is using that as a sewing table now.

It is a huge project that she will do over six weeks. She got going in earnest this weekend and she has the whole week off school this week so she will be working on this every day.