Anthony met me this morning before I went to work. I reminded him that is birthday is tomorrow. He said, “You know this?” I reminded him that I was there. I have told him in the past that when he came out he was hungry. What I told him this morning was that when he came out of mommy’s tummy, he was hungry and wanted some macaroni and cheese. He responded, “I didn’t want that, I was looking for a doughnut”.

For a few years I had him convinced that we got him from the baby section at Walmart. He described it as Mommy and Daddy were shopping and he started saying “pick me, pick me”. He told me that on his package was: Anthony James Rader, The funniest kid on the planet.

One thing about playing ball in the back yard is that the dog wants to play as well. I have been training him to sit, laydown, roll over, jump, and spin around. He does these pretty well. He hasn’t mastered the Marine Dog low crawl yet.

The dog is out there when we play ball. He is a prety good infielder when he doesn’t catch the pitch before it gets to the batter. That kinda sucks when he does that. However, he is now fetching batted balls and bringing them near the pitcher. The bad thing about this is the balls are coverd with dog spit when they are pitched the next time. It makes for a nasty spit ball for the next pitch.

Anthony is continuing his quest to be an All-Star. However, last night we had a little setback: He is afraid of the ball when playing catch. I have been trying to get him to stand still while playing catch, but, he is always moving out of the way. This makes it hard for him to catch the ball. So, being the baseball coach from hell, I started throwing the ball at him instead of right to his glove. I figured that he may catch the ball is self defense. I hit him square in the chest. He started crying. I told him that there is no crying in baseball and to throw the ball back. He said that is hurts. I told him to throw it back, or I wasn’t going to practice with him becasue I don’t want to play baseball like a girl. He kept crying. I went inside. He asked me to play again. I told him no becasue I dont want to play girlie baseball. He said that he was going to practice on his own. he actually did this, so I returned and we palyed some more catch: Not the girly way either.

Today was my 36th birthday. I told MC a few days ago that I am happy that I work in a secured facility. She cant do anything to me on my birthday. She showed me. She got with my co-workers and decorated my cubicle. They all jumped out and surprised me. It took about 2 hours for my blood pressure to normalize and for the adrenaline to wear off. I will pay every one of them back.

Once again Patrick has made the Sierra Vista 9-10 year old National League All-Star Team. Their Play begins on July 7th in Benson Arizona.

Michael (Shane) was selected to attend RoboTech Camp at the Joint Interoperabilty Test Command at Fort Huachua. The camp is sponsored by the National Science Center and the Department of defense. They will design robots using computers and build them using legos.

Anthony has decided that he wants to be an All-Star like his older brother. I told him that he needs to practice a lot if he wants to be an allstar. He has asked me to practice every day since. He is now able to hit a wiffle ball over our fence. It is about 60 feet. He is doing very well.