| 5-29-06
Hello All, Well we are getting to the end of May already! We are staying busy with lots of stuff as usual. The boys are counting down to the end of another school year. Adam, (sophomore in high school) received several awards last week. He has maintained a 4.0 GPA again this year. He practices drums and guitar almost everyday and he puts together music compositions on his Personal Computer. In between times he plays basketball. The summer basketball program at the High School will start next week. Jon (8th grade) will graduate from Middle School in two weeks. He also has maintained a 4.0 GPA! Jon is extending his Track Season into the summer with the Junior Olympics, more on that later. Cody is finishing up 2nd grade, he also has had a great academic year! Lorelei is babysitting, 3-4 days a week and occasionally substituting on her off days. She is pretty sure that she will give up the babysitting and just be a substitute next year. Many of the people in the Life Skills and Special Ed programs know her and call her directly to line up sub jobs for her. Around the place, the boys and I are still trying to find time to finish cutting down the big oak tree. If you remember it�s the one with large branches hanging over the boat/car port and power lines. We have managed to trim most of the large branches and with ropes, swing them away from the aforementioned obstacles, with only a few close calls! I�m getting to old for this! Climbing 40 ft. into a tree with a running chainsaw is just not fun. We kind of, got a garden going, but we had some late frost, so am not sure how it will turn out. The boys planted some additional seeds last Sunday and then it proceeded to pour rain all night! The orchard is doing so-so. Between the deer and the bugs, maybe we will still get some fruit this year. The strawberries are doing well and we should have some ripe ones as I type this. I had a heck of a time with the lawn tractor this year. First the belts on the mower deck and then the bearings on the blades went out. Jon was a big help and we got it all back together. Hopefully it�s good for the rest of the year, cause I have a bunch of mowing to do! We got the car maintenance all done. Again Jon was a big help. We did the timing belt, water pump, all belts and hoses, hopefully we can get another 100 thousand miles out of her. More on Jon and Track, if you are bored with hearing about this, just skip to the next paragraph. In the regular school track season, Jon did not lose an individual event! He set new records in the 400 Meter run, the High Jump and a relay team they put together set a new 4 X 400 Meter school record. His 1500 meter races were not even close! There is no-one in this County that can keep up with this kid in the longer distances. On May 5th we traveled to Eugene Oregon to historic Hayward Field to watch Jon and some of his teammates run at the Annual Hayward Twilight Meet. It�s a Collegiate Meet, but they have an event for Middle School boys and girls, it is the �Twilight Mile�. Kids from all over the state come to run in this event. The Amity kids have had such an awesome advantage this year in having Ken McChesney as one of their coaches. Ken is one of the famous McChesneys� from the Eugene area. His whole family runs. His older brother ran on the same team as Steve Prefontaine and was an Olympic athlete. His Mom has set records in long distance events. Ken himself is an accomplished athlete and was training for the Olympic Trials when he decided that his career and family were more important. This guy knows what it takes to compete at the top levels of the running sports. On his own time he is helping these kids and it was he who coordinated taking the kids to this event. Anyway back to the Mile Run. Jon lines up with approximately 35 other 6th, 7th and 8th grade boys from around the state. The gun goes off and everyone heads for the inside corner. Jon gets tangled up with another kid and goes spread eagle on the track! His Mom screams, I don�t know what happened because I am trying to video, Jon�s coach didn�t see it happen because he was on the other side of the track. Jon gets up as if nothing happened and takes off, he is now in last place! Jon proceeds to pass about half the kids on the first lap. Then one by one on subsequent laps he moved his way up and finally finished in 2nd place. Not bad for starting dead last! His coach came over to congratulate him and when we told him what happened, he could barely believe that Jon fell down at the starting line and still finished 2nd . The training Jon is doing for the Junior Olympics is grueling. He runs almost every day. He will run in a meet next Saturday, one the following Saturday and then the Junior Olympic State meet is the next Saturday. We will be busy and I will keep you posted. We haven�t much time for family fun, but this morning I think we are hitching up the boat and heading up to the lake for the day. The boys are such good help with stuff now, it really takes a load off of me. With the boat, they help with the maintenance and cleaning. They are a big help at the launch ramp, making sure everything gets done. We haven�t had the boat out yet this year and with gas prices it probably wont be very many more times! That�s about it for now. I know I left out a bunch of stuff. We like hearing from everyone, drop us a line! Glynn Jr. |