Here is our newest addition, Cassandra June Chase, born April 1 at 6:56 AM. She is 21.5″ tall and weighs 9lbs. 10 oz.

At least I’m starting to believe that. I decided to drop a line in again this evening and proceeded to pull in another 9 largemouth, ranging in size from 9 inches to roughly 15.  I hooked ‘em all with the $1 green and yellow spinnerbait. I knew moving to an area I had the chance to fish anytime I wanted would be fun, I just didn’t know it would be this much fun.

A couple crazy days around here on the hill… we had 3 tornado warnings in a 24 hour span, two yesterday and one today. Outside of the threat of our house being blown away, it’s been really enjoyable. I arrived home from work yesterday near the end of the second warning to enjoy watching the fog moving across the yard at record speed.

Well, after today’s warning, my wife and I drove down to get the mail and decided to take a slow drive around the lake and see what the massive amounts of water have done. We found our beach under water as well as the fishing docks. We decided to go get the kids and show them and I decided to grab the fishing gear as well. I’m so glad I did. I caught a total of 10 largemouth bass (don’t worry, all were catch and release), and the first seven were within the first 30 minutes. It was quite enjoyable. A couple were keepers, but I just wasn’t up to cleaning them. The best part is what I caught them with. I decided to stop at Walmart yesterday on my way home and grab some new gear. They had some $1 spinnerbaits, so I grabbed a variety of colors. I chose to use something bright since the water was very murky and proceeded to drop my line near one of the feeder streams. The first cast yielded nothing, but the 2nd, 3rd and 4th did. What excitement.

The kids enjoyed the high water so much they decided to get as wet as possible without actually swimming, something our kids have perfected over the years. You’d think my wife and I would have learned by now to always have them in bathing suits when taking them near water, but where’s the fun in that?

These are the days I look back at when proclaiming ‘Life is Good’.

My first day off during the week in quite a long time, and it’s been well worth it. I got to sleep in some and then was blessed to awake to beautiful weather. We had a nice breakfast and took our time getting out today… nice not to be rushed for a change. We headed over to the Killbuck Marsh Wildlife Area for a wonderful leisurely stroll on an old closed road through the area and enjoyed the abundant wildlife. The house and barn swallows were particularly fascinating as they were flying low and close to us. They’re usually flying too fast at our house to get a good look at. As expected when visiting any bog type area, the air was filled with the sound of red-winged blackbirds calling out and the frogs were plentiful. We even heard a bull frog, but I was unable to find him. We did a bit of shopping on our way home and then the kids made a fire outside. While sitting outside, we heard another bull frog by the pond on the property behind our house. The pond is about 150 yards away, but it sounded like he was just a few feet away. The sun is now down and the air is cooling off… setting us up for a perfect night for sleeping. Hopefully the rain can hold off long enough for me to get a chance to get in some fishing tomorrow.

A very simple word it is, one easily remembered… at least one would think. I wanted to get a list of synonyms to see if there was another word I would want to use, and one of them that came up was humanity. Do you see the irony as I do? Kindness is what humanity is sorely lacking these days.

For all the people who really don’t care about the other drivers around them while they’re talking on their cell phone, for the people who run red lights or block a drive because they’re impatient, for cashiers who spend more time talking with their co-workers than the ones they’re checking out, there are as many, if not more who are just having a bad day, or in a hurry to get the crying child stuck in a car seat home to be held and comforted, or thinking about the loved one they just were informed they lost.

My wife continuously reminds me that one doesn’t know the state of someone’s mind or their current situation when they ‘inconvenience’ you. This is so true and the best thing we can do is to remember that simple word… kindness. Please keep this in mind next time you feel slighted by someone. Maybe they really are an idiot who doesn’t care for anyone but themselves, but being an idiot in return does not solve anything and even though you may think at that moment it makes you feel better, it really doesn’t. In fact it probably is having a negative impact that lingers more than you realize.  Take my word for it, let it go, and if you have the opportunity, offer them some form of kindness. It may be just what they need at that moment.

Being kind is contagious, so please, for the sake of humanity, help spread the wonderful disease known as kindness.

A little tweak here, a fixed picture there… It’s starting to come together. Probably just in time for me to change the layout again. Actually, I don’t have the time to start fresh again until next year at the earliest, but it is nice to finally be getting things in order since my server crashed 2 months ago. The beauty of all this is I now have my server running in a virtual environment, so backing up is a piece of cake and if anything goes wrong, getting back up quickly should be fairly simple… at least that’s the plan.

With that said, stay tuned for some real content in the next few days as I’ve got a lot on my mind. The hard part now is getting it on ‘paper’. In the meantime, if you notice something missing or out of place (besides my hair), please drop me note and let me know.

I’ve finally done it… I’m back online with my original data. I can’t believe it took me this long, but in between moving and being slammed at work (and working a lot of extra hours), I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I had a couple worthless posts on the ‘new’ site I’ll bring over in the next couple of days, but at this point, I’m just happy to have my original site back. It looks like all the pictures are broken links, but I’ll save that for tomorrow. It’s getting late and I need my beauty sleep.

Oh, my soul
Overflows
Oh, what love, oh, what love
Oh, my soul
Fills with hope
Perfect love that never lets go

- David Crowder Band

I see this and wonder how it is possible my wife has been able to become more beautiful, but she found a way. Me on the other hand, well, let’s not talk about that. The past 19 years have been an adventure, but if you know me, I like adventures. I can truly say I would not be anywhere near the person I am today without her.