A Quote to Start Things Off

""I'd love to go to Santa Fe at some point, Emmett said, but for the time being, I need to go to New York. The panhandler stopped laughing and adopted a more serious expression. Well. that's life in a nutshell, aint it. Lovin' to go to one place and havin' to go to another. Amor Towles in the Lincoln Highway.

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Pictures of Memories I

Pictures of Memories I
Snow kidding! These "kids" now range from 17 to 23

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Sports Catechism: NHL: 2 teams are 4 wins away from 2015 Stanley Cup

Q: What is a catechism

A: A summary of the principles of Christian religion in the form of questions and answers, used for the instruction of Christians. It is also a series of fixed questions, answers, or precepts used for instruction in other situations.

Q.  Why a sport's catechism?
A: Because sports loyalty is sometimes described or lived out in spiritual terms.  
Examole.  The Cubs faithful were delighted with the late inning heroics in today's game.  

Q: What is the Stanley Cup?

A: It is the Championip Trophy of the National Hockey Leagu (NHL)

Q:  How many NHL teams are there? 
A: 30.  The 30 teams are divided into 2 conferences (Western and Eastern)  and divided further into divsions


Q: What is required to win the Stanley Cup

A: 16 playoff wins

Q:  How many teams go to the playoffs?

A:16

Q: What is the playoff format?

A: The top 3 teams in each division qualify for the Playoffs.  The next best 2 teams in each conference qualify as wild cards.  So each division can have as many as 5 and as few as 3 teams participating in the post season.  The 16 teams are seeded as the top 3 teams from each divison 1-3  respectively and the wild card teams seeded 4th.  The division champion in each conference with the better record plays the wild card team with the worse record in the 1-4 match ups.

Q: Which teams qualified for the playoffs this year.

A: In the Atlantic division of the Eastern Conference the,Montreal CaLightinnadiens were seeded 1st, Tampa Bay Lightning 2nd, Detroit Red WIngs 3rd and the Ottawa Senators were the first Eastern Wild card: In the Eastern Conference's Metropolitan Divison 1st was New York Rangers, 2nd Washington Capitals, 3rd New York Islanders and Pittsburg Penguins as the 2nd Eastern Wild Card.  Montreal drew Ottawa , Leaving New York for the Penguins, and the 2nd and third teams in each division faced each other.  In the Western Conference's Central division 5 teams made the playoffs the top 3 finishers were (in order) St. Louis (Blues), Nashville (Predators) and Chicago (Black Hawks) .  3The Western Conference wildcard teams from the Central were in order Minnesota (Willd) and Winnipeg (Jets) The Pacific divison top 3 finishers were the Ducks (Anaheim) Canucks (Vancouver) and Flames (Calgary).  The Blues drew the Wild leaving the Jets for the Ducks.

Q: The first team to win 16 games wins the Stanley  Cup how does that work.

A: A series of 4 rounds of playoff games matchups where the first teams to win 4 games go on to the next round.

Q: How many teams are left now:

A: Two

Q: How did the first round play out

In the East

Canadiens 4 Senators   2
Lightning    4 Redwings 3
Rangers     4 Penguins  1
Capitals     4  Islanders  3

In the West

Wild             4 Blues        2
Blackhawks 4 Predators 2 
Ducks          4 Jets          0  
Flames        4 Canucks   2

This left 8 teams remaining each looking for 12 more wins

Q: What happened in the next 2 rounds"

In Round 2 The Lighting beat the Canadiens in 6 games, Where the Rangers need 7 to advance past the Capitals.  The Ducks doused the Flames Stanley Cup chances in 5 games.  The Blackhawks swept the Wild in 4.  
4 teams remained with 8 more wins needed for the Cup.  

The Conefernce Finals took 7 games to settle with the road teams (Lightning and Blackhawks) each beating the home squads (Rangers and Ducks).

Q: Which team has the home ice in the FInals?
A; Tampa Bay

Q: What is the Playoff record for each of the remaining teams in the last 10 seasons excluding this one
A: Lightning 5 apperance in 10 years 2 straight playoff appearance (including this year)

1 Stanley Cup Championship 03-04
3 Conference Quarter Final losses ( 05-06,06-07,13-14)
1 Conference Final loss 10-11
Total playoff wins in last 10 season 30 plus 12 this year for total of 42

Blackhawks 6 appearance in 10 years, 7 straight playoff appearances (including this year)
2 Stanley Cup Championships (9-10 and12-13)
2 Conference Final losses (08-09 and 13-14)
2 Conference Quarter Final Losses (10-11 and 11-12)
Total playoff wins in last 10 season 57 plus 12 this year for total of 69






Post of the Week

I just read an excellent post  entitled when you're a Christian but not a virgin.  It is about virginity, the loss of virginity, forgiveness and hope. As the father of 2 daughters and one son who are in their teen years or quickly approaching their teen years I was really glad to see such good instruction that I could pass along to them,  So,  Raquel, of  It's Raquel ,  thanks for writing such  a fine post and congratulations on being. post of the week

Monday, May 25, 2015

Announcement coming June 1st


We interrupt your Memorial Day to tell you that there are changes coming to this blog starting June 1st.  I know, I know, I should probably just tell you now.  But it's like the old joke goes ...

How do you keep a blog reader in suspense?

I'll tell you June 1st.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Post of the weekFlorida!

This week's post of the week comes from my daughter. I know that seems like a little bit of nepotism. I was on the same trip as she was and took all of the pictures and still found her post interesting.



Wolfina's Secrets: Florida!: Last week I went to Florida and had a great time.  I went to Walt Disney World (Magic Kingdom, Epcot and Downtown Disney), Seaworld, Cl...

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Post of the week is ontime. Wow, I did that.

For the first time since I started Post of the week, I have turned one in a timely fashion.  The goal for Post of the week is for me to read the accumulated posts on my blogroll for a given week and choose one as the post of the week.

It is not necessarily the best post, just the one that is most significant to me. 





 This week we sold all our copies of Mystery of History at a curriculum sale.  This was a gutwrenching thing for me.  I taught the kids volumes I and II myself and Amy taught III this year.  It is a fabulous curriculum but due to other considerations we chose to sell them.  

Then Laurie Bluedorn of Trivium Pursuit comes out with a great review of the product and some thoughts on comments regarding the resource.  It easily became the Post of the week.  

Now that I have put two posts of the week together in a timely fashion, I hope to make it an everyday Sunday afternoon thing.  Time will tell.


The nounsense is over




My A to Z Challenge  theme was nouns.

A noun is a person, place or thing.

My people were:

Allen Levi
Dave Ramsey
Frank Thomas
Hank Aaron
King Tut
Minnie Minoso
Nobody
Paul  Konerko
Jimmy Stewart
Bob Wallace

My Places were

Comiskey Park
Debt
Elgin
Illinois
Nowhere
Turkey
Uzbekistan
Virginia
Zoos

My Things were
Bibimbap
Discussions
Giraffe Poop
Jack & Diane
Library
Nothing
Oreos
Quinjet
Ragamuffin
Xanthosis
Yoyo

I enjoyed my time doing a to z blogging.

Here are three things I learned.

1) It is a lot easier to do a to z blogging as a full time home school dad than it is working outside the home.

2) I tried to do two blogs at the same time and had to give up on my  baseball one at U.

3)  Blogging here everyday for a month has gotten me more psyched for blogging than I have been in 2.5 years.  I am actually planning on participating next year in 3 blogs but have already picked my themes and hope to be much more prepared then I was this year.

I am sorry it took me a few weeks to post my thoughts.  But i went to Florida for 1 week right after this ended and it's taken me about a week to get back in the swing of things.

Speaking of road trips I am participating in the a to z road trip .  For more info click here.


Friday, May 15, 2015

Friday Fragments @ Half Past Kissing Time

Here are today's fragments . . .

Trix are for the bathroom?

 I was at Target today and went into the Men's bathroom.  The bathroom smelled exactly like Trix cereal.   I have been noticing this for a few years.  Many bathrooms smell like this but especially Target.  I  have been wanting to post about it  for quite a while.  It is perfect for Friday fragments, because I could not imagine ever writing an entire post about bathrooms that remind me of cereal I ate as a kid.  In fact, I can hardly believe I've written a pargagraph about it.

Saint John the Evangelist


While I was in the  Trix smelling bathroom, I picked up  a religuous tract that had been left in one of the stalls.  It seemed to be left there for the purpose of distribution.  Now, I have handed my share of tracts out in my life.  I know this is not method I would use.  My critics would say, hey it worked, you picked it up.  Christians are supposed to display the aroma of Christ.  Trix or worse bathroom smells are definitely not the aroma I would want to compare my Savior to.

Milking Robotics for all it's worth.

Tomorrow is the big day,  Spider Droid's FLL Robotics Tournament.  His team has been working so hard to get ready for this day.  The theme of this yearsis Food Factor and his team has been working on a solution to prevent the spoiling of milk.  One of the things I love about F.L.L is their Core Values.  The core value I like best is: What we discover is more important than what we win.  So, while the tournament is a culmination of several months of work and research, their season has already been succesful no matter where they finish.










Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Hof Trip Day 1


I just came home from a trip with one of my kids.  Before I get into it.  Let me tell you about  a trip my son and I took last year.

On Thursday 7/23 SD and I drove to  New York for the primary purpose of going to Baseball Hall of Fame.  We left home at 4 a.m.  and drove out of Illinois  into and out of Indiana and breakfasted in Michigan.




We ate at Cracker Barrel





After breakfast we headed towards the border and at 11:30 a.m. central drove into Canada. We drove a few more hours and stopped for lunch at A&W which are more like the A&W's I remember as a kid and not like the few still in Illinois.


We started a root beer trend that continued on the trip.



I got excited when I saw the above sign and even more excited when we saw the below sight.




Over the past year, I have been writing a limerick each day.  I will share at the end of each post that day's limerick.



Setting 3:40 a.m. alarm
Does my sleeping a great deal of harm
But gives vacay great start
And sure played a big part
Ending day at Niagara with charm.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Monday, May 11, 2015

Post of the Week - Mothers day edition

Time again for another monthly edition of post of the week.  I would change it to post of the month, but then  I would probably do it annually.

  The jist of post of the week is to find the most excellent post on my blogroll from the last week and repost it here.

Yesterday, was Mother's day and my sister-in-law who blogs at Peace, Love and Yoga Pants totally nailed it with 5 Lessons My Mom Taught Me.


Sunday, May 10, 2015

Puppy was talking about cheerios tonight and how they are good for you. She said if you opened your heart you would see Cheerios and Jesus.

Mothers day gifts of a lifetime!


A to Z 2023 Road Trip

#AtoZChallenge 2023 RoadTrip