That's right, it's vacation time for the Cornett family....aaahhh, finally.

I can't wait to get on the road. The cost of gas will make this trip interesting for sure. We are packing up and heading out to Rock Port for a week. Time for some R&R on the coast. Lots of fishing, swimming, site seeing, and just pure relaxation. I will be screening calls on the cell phone and most importantly I will not be working on a computer. I will not be programming, emailing, blogging, chatting, rebuilding, networking, or even looking at a computer for an entire week, wow. I will be focused on family fun for the entire week.

I'll post pictures of the trip when I get back. I can't wait...

I'm sorry to everybody that reads my blog but I am still having trouble with my blog site. If it's not a problem with the DSL company it's my server crashing. I've been looking at some different hosting solutions but I haven't had much luck with it yet. I may just build me a new server and be done with it. Bite the bullet and spend some money and make it all good, right. The last two blog entries that I entered went out to lala land somewhere instead of my blog site, gone forever.

I can't believe that it has been a month since my last post. Time flies by when your having fun, right.

I have had a pretty busy schedule this past month for sure. I went down to Austin for a National Institute for Staff & Organizational Development (NISOD) conference. I went because I won an excellence award for making a difference in education otherwise I probably would not have gone. The conference is geared more towards teachers in my opinion so there was little benefit for a programmer. While I was there in Austin I had the chance to hang out with a good friend, Buster. We had a pretty good time bowling. I think we both surprised ourselves with some nice scores. I had something like a 229 and Buster had a 219 and then it went down hill from there, haha. Thanks for a fun afternoon Buster.

The following week I was in Waco for a TSTC conference. It was more like a planning retreat with entertainment. I had a pretty good time due to the company that I was with. There are tons of fun people that work at TSTC.

At the end of the Austin trip I had a slight tooth ache so Mari made me an appointment with the dentist. Well, the pain increased faster than the speed of light. So I had my tooth pulled by the "Highest" bidder. $225 bucks to get that bad boy pulled, ouch. But let me tell you, it was worth every freaking penny. So the day before heading out to Waco I had the tooth pulled. So the Waco trip was made totally on drugs and in pain. But I still had a good time there so I'm pretty sure that I would have had a blast under different circumstances.

More to come...

Zoe had her first T-Ball game of the season yesterday in Colorado City. She had a pretty good time giving it three quarters of her all. She had to hit off the tee but the hit was one of the best for the game. She made it to first without any troubles. Then after the next hit she took off to second then around to third. When she was running in to home she got tagged out. The reason I say that she gave three quarters of her all is due to her running. She is a very fast little sprinter so there is no reason that she shouldn't make it around every base with ease. But, she is in her own little world when running the bases for some unknown reason. She will either look at her feet while running or look up into nothingness. Both cause her to slow down her stride so she ends up getting tagged out. Oh well, she has fun playing and that is all that really matters.

I was a little shocked when we met the other coach and went over the rules. Let me give you the history here. In the past four years the T-Ball games have been played more as teaching games rather than all out we are gonna kill you competition style games. I'll be honest with you I really liked the void of competition that we enjoyed in T-Ball. We would bat the entire roster of kids then shuffle them out to the field to try fielding the ball. This would happen for two innings then the game would be over. The parents that wanted to help would be out on the field or in the dug-out working with the kids. All in the effort of trying to teach the kids how to play the game. Now it seems that those days are over.

The rules are as follows:
three pitches from the coach and two attempts at hitting off the tee, three outs or seven run rule, take one base on an over throw, and a few other rules that I can't remember

Then there are these special rules that are not in the official rule book, haha. The pitcher can not tag the runner while the runner is running from home plate to first base. The ball has to be thrown to first base for it to count, or rolled to first. And I'm sure there are other hidden rules that we will find out about as we go along.

I'm not against playing T-Ball in this manner but I would have liked to have known about the changes three weeks ago when we started practicing. We have been practicing for the style of game that we had been playing in the past four years. Now we will have to start all over and get the kids to understand that they may not get to bat in a game because of three outs in three innings in a row. Nine kids out of fourteen will get to bat for sure.

I'm not one of those people that believes in sparing a child of all negatives. I think that a touch of real life is helpful and that a child needs to understand that negative things, such as getting out, will happen. But I am one of those parents that thinks four, five, and six year olds shouldn't be subjected to a mass amount of negatives or failures.

Just my opinion.