Busy week. On Tuesday, softball had an epic 12-inning battle against one of the Wesleyan teams. We were evenly matched, all right...we eventually lost 14-13, but played an unbelievable amount of innings without either team able to score. They eventually got the better of us in the 12th, but they had a gift of a really blown call in the 11th that should have ended the game, but instead allowed them to tie it again and keep it going. Moral victory, I guess. Later on I finally got Alex's new phone set up; he has a slider phone with a touch screen (which I didn't realize when I bought it, so the girls are jealous). He has the same number, I have his old phone with my same number. And he's not on Verizon any more, which was a bit complicated but will save us some fair amount of money. Alex and the girls are on Red Pocket, a virtual network that operates by leasing the Verizon network. Same service, but a lot cheaper. Wednesday, I flew hodge-podge for the first time successfully. I've been working on finishing up the new version of the plane, which I finally did a week or so ago, so I took it to the church and flew it around the parking lot. There was a teen even going on so I got Griffin to video it for me, and I was really pretty shocked that it flew so well. Good control, good lift, good steering. I even landed it successfully and re-flew it again. Amazing, and makes me feel so giddy. Love it. Thursday evening, we took Natalie to visit her great-grandparents, who she hadn't seen in a long time. We had a nice visit...they sure can talk at length about a lot of things...and Natalie seemed pretty happy to see them and visit with them again. Friday we went out to dinner at another new restaurant in town, El Faro, which was pretty good although its focus is Mexican seafood so there’s not much the kids would eat. We went out with the Purvises (Patrick is still pretty sore from totaling his car last week). The rest of the weekend, we spent largely setting things up for the garage sale next weekend. We’re going camping in Holland next week, and I have a feeling we’re going to be really pressed for time if we wait until after we get back to set things up. I also finally broke down and bought a new battery for the lawn tractor because I’m tired of charging it and spraying starter fluid in the intake every time Alex needs to cut the grass. Today, I flew hodge-podge again, also at the church parking lot, and again it flew brilliantly. Until it broke. In mid-flight, as I was doing a flyby of me and the kids, you could very distinctly see something come flying off the nose of the plane, and the propeller and motor flew off and could be seen dangling  from the wires. However, it still glided surprisingly well. I was able to get it to the ground pretty much intact except for what was already broken just using the elevator. I think I can repair it without too much difficulty.