Dirt! Beth and I finally got around to getting dirt. The space behind the retaining wall on the corner of the house has needed dirt for a long time, and now we have it. I also have bricks to build a mini-retaining wall around the gas meter. Also, since we're supposed to be planting a butterfly garden this year, we needed some dirt to grow it in as well. So, I got a truckload of dirt at Superior Excavating...it's amazing how heavy dirt is, and how much it looks like you have, and how little you actually do have when it gets on the ground. I emptied the old sandbox of nasty filthy sand a couple weeks ago, and it took almost an entire ton of dirt just to fill it in, 6' x 6' x 12". At first, I'd thought it would be enough for both the raised garden and the corner of the house. But no, I'll need another load. Dirt day was yesterday. Today we all went to Fort Wayne. I needed some new running shoes, and we wanted to go see the "Bears" movie. I was feeling generous so we also went to Barnes & Noble and Flat Top Grill for dinner.

Tonight, after a hiatus of 4 years, First Christian Church softball made it's triumphant return. Well, return, anyway. I finally just took the initiative myself this spring to get the team together and registered (paid most of the fee myself as well) and although I was concerned we wouldn't have enough show up, it turned out we had the exact opposite problem as almost 20 did. It was a cold, dreary, windy evening, but everyone was excited to be there, and we played...good enough to lose 18-8 in 4 innings of play. Bob hit a grand slam home run in the losing effort. I'm sure we'll figure things out as the season progresses.

Today was the crossing over ceremony for Alex's Cub Scout pack. It was a cool ceremony, one we haven't done before to this extent. We had older scouts from other troops performing a lot of the ceremony, dressed as Indians like the scouts do. Alex completed his Webelos achievements, and received the Arrow of Light, but he is not going to go on to Boy Scouts. Beth and I have been encouraging him to as much as possible over the past few months, but he is just not that interested in it. We've known that for a long time but now I guess it is official. So as of now, Alex is done with scouts.

Last Friday Beth and the kids and I headed out to Birmingham for spring break. This time we made reservations in advance, for the same motel in Bowling Green KY as before, so the drive down went much smoother. We arrived at Judy's on Saturday late afternoon. Alabama is still nice this time of year. We went to the outlet mall and Bass Pro Shop, we went to the zoo, we drove go-karts at the fun center down the road from Judy's, we toured the development where she lives. It has apparently been a wet spring in Alabama, because the lake by Judy's is really high and the spillway going over the dam to the waterfall is really swollen, such that the pedestrian bridge over the spillway river is pretty much inaccessible. We also headed on an excursion outside of town to a place we happened to see a brochure for at the welcome to Alabama rest stop with the rocket: DeSoto Caverns. It is a show cave with some really cool dripstone formations, not as big a cave as Marengo or anything but they give a cool tour of a wide open cave. They also have a fun area where there is a big wooden fence maze with several towers in it, and an area where the kids can pan for gold, and some other games as well while you're waiting for a tour. Alex and I did a bit of geocaching as well. Against his will, pretty much. We headed home Saturday. The new van did well for us on the trip, I must say. Except for the time the brakes were overheating and smoking on the first day down there, but that seemed to go away by itself when things cooled down.

I was 0-for-4 in the final four again. It just burns me that MSU lost to UConn in the elite 8...when they were clearly the better team. And then UConn wins. Urrrrrrrgh!