Luke’s Notebook

Oh, I’m looking forward to late August! We plan to have the Eighth Annual Softball Classic on August 26th (and possibly 27th), and things are getting exciting even though we’re nearly four months away from the Classic.

In the past week, we have learned that Cardinals outfielder John Rodriguez, starting pitcher Jeff Suppan, and relief pitcher Adam Wainwright plan to join us at Laderman Park for the event! Last year, we had Abraham Nunez, Mark Grudzielanek, and Einar Diaz. The year before, Reggie Sanders and Ray King.

Anyway, it is very exciting to have these players on board for the Classic so early in the planning stages. It’s amazing how God provides, and how we seem to always find some selfless players who are willing and eager to come out to a park for this event. The fans seem to love it, and oftentimes the players themselves seem to have a blast.

God’s goodness is amazing. It really is. Thank You, Lord!

P.S. If you don’t have any plans for late August, please think about making the trip to Belleville (Illinois)! It should be a lot of fun.

Friday was the 27th wedding anniversary for Mom and Dad. To imagine, back in 1979 they were newlyweds. Who would have thought that nearly three decades down the road, they would be parents of 14 kids? Pretty amazing. God is so good, and it is amazing to look back at the ride that they’ve had by putting their trust in Him.

In other news, I think we finally are finished with our driveway project. Today, we drove our truck down to the quarry in order to get four loads of rock, which ended up weighing somewhere around four-and-a-half tons. We used this rock to even out some spots in the driveway. Now we are able to drive on the driveway all we want, with no fear of damaging the drain or disturbing anything. And we should soon find out if our advanced drainage system works or not.

Well, it looks as if our driveway project is finally coming to an end. Today, we had two large dumptruck loads of rocks delivered in our driveway. We filled in some low spots, patched up the areas around the drains we installed, and distributed the rest of the rock across the driveway. As things stand now, the rock is pretty nicely tapered near the three iron drainage grates, and pretty much the whole driveway is even. We have a few things to tweak tomorrow. Soon, though, we should be able to use our driveway again! The past several weeks, we have only been able to enter and exit through a small portion of it, as most of it was torn up due to the drainage tubing we installed.

We’ll have to wait for a heavy rain to see how this new system will perform. Will spending a little bit of money, a lot of man-hours, and using a little ingenuity pay off? I think it will work! It looks like it may rain on Friday, so we might find out pretty soon.

1 Thessalonians 5:12-22

Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.

“Be joyful always.” It’s so simple, yet so often I can forget that! “Always” pretty much covers it all, which means I’ve got no excuse to not exercise joy. And when we look at the cross again and realize the amazing grace being shown to us and how we can experience God’s mercy and forgiveness, that’s enough to make anyone joyful.

A cold front came in today and, boy howdy, is it cold! It’s 46 degrees as I type. The weather during tonight’s softball game wasn’t much warmer, as we had a 9:30 game. Speaking of the game, we had a very, very close matchup against the Saints. We were trailing 9-5 in the bottom of the seventh (the final inning in softball), and we managed to score four runs to force extra innings.

In the top of the eighth, Philip made a great play in right field to redeem my boneheaded play, and he prevented the other team from scoring a run. In the bottom of the eighth, Jude had a leadoff hit, Dad moved him over to third, and Paul drove a ball to left field, which was deep enough to drive home Jude as the winning run. We won 10-9 in a very tight game.

As far as batting went, I crashed back to earth tonight. I batted 1-3 with a single and a walk. It’s a good thing I didn’t let those three homers go to my head, or I would feel pretty silly right about now.

Yesterday, during our family’s softball practice, I was experimenting with a new batting approach. It was a short run-up swing, and it while hitting yesterday it seemed to really help me throw my weight into the swing and have more power and bat speed going at the ball.

Tonight, we had an 8:30 game against Longball’s, and I decided to continue using this new stance/swing to see how it would work in a game. Well, I ended up batting three-for-three with three home runs over the right field fence. Needless to say, I’m pretty shocked! I mean, I knew I had the potential to hit home runs, but I hadn’t hit any over the fence thus far this year, and I had certainly never hit three in one game. So that was quite a treat for me. I think this new swing has a lot of potential, although I’m sure I’ll have different kinks to work out. But I’ll definitely enjoy this moment while I can.

God provided us with another gorgeous day today. In the early afternoon, we all (that is, all 16 of us) went outside. The eight oldest (Seth on up) and Dad met on the field in the back, where we had a softball practice. It’s actually kind of strange, but here in late April is the first full-fledged softball practice we’ve had in… oh, probably six months. We took turns taking batting practice, while the rest of the guys would play in the field to chase after the hits.

While we were having the practice, Mom watched some of the younger guys (and Wizzy) as they played around in the yard and then splashed around in the pond. Jacob and Caleb were having a scum war in the pond, where they were slinging the seaweed at each other. That reminds me of the good ol’ times, where we would used to throw wet sand at each other while swimming in a lake or something.

This evening, Mark and I experimented some more with our green screen. We’re trying to figure out how to get optimal lighting both on the screen and the person in front of it. I think we’ll be able to work with it and come up with a good setup for all of our chroma-keying needs.

Later in the evening, it was volleyball. We won all three games tonight, in this, our second-last week of the session. I don’t think our team is going to be playing for another eight-week session after this, as we usually don’t play in the summer. Personally, I would love to start playing sand volleyball a couple times a week or something. We’re playing softball thrice a week, though, so that keeps a few evenings spoken for.

Wow, what a day. The weather was so beautiful, and I had the privilege of spending a lot of time outside in the driveway with Dad, Mark, and James. We continued our efforts to solve the drainage problem in the driveway, and today we had 48 bags of Quikrete delivered. Armed with shovels and a pickaxe, we went to work. We first set three cast-iron grates on top of the drain boxes, and then we mixed concrete together in the wheelbarrow and re-set the grates in the wet concrete.

After we set the grates, we started filling the ditch with bag after bag after bag of Quikrete. Some 20 or 30 bags later, we were finished, and so we spread the concrete around, added rebar for reinforcement, and then we wet the concrete to get it to harden. As things stand now, we just have a few remaining inches in the ditch, and that’s where we will eventually have the “finished” rock, so the ditch will be completely filled in and look just like the rest of the driveway.

I think these heavy-duty (and just plain heavy) grates will do the trick. The goal was to figure out some type of drain that won’t crack when being driven over. These definitely won’t crack, and if we set them in the conrete well enough and fill in the rock appropriately, they shouldn’t budge when a tire rolls over them. We’ll see how that works!

Anyway, the day was just absolutely gorgeous. Being outside made me just appreciate the area in which we live. Who would have thought that a soggy cornfield could be transformed into a beautiful piece of land for a home? God is so good!

For some reason, I don’t feel that I have that much to write about. Today was filled with a lot of video editing — including a rush job on a video depo for an attorney — and we also did quite a bit of taping for Cardinal Country this afternoon. It was another gorgeous day, and we were fortunate to be able to do a lot of the taping outdoors.

It’s trivia time!

A couple of days ago, in the mail came a bright green piece of fabric, measuring six feet by nine feet. Why is this an exciting thing, especially for Mark and myself?

Tonight, we played a game against Smitty’s Sluggers. Our offense was red-hot tonight, and we won 20-0 in three innings. Paul and I each hit home runs. His was over the fence, while mine was of the inside-the-park variety (meaning I had to run like all get out). I also had a pair of triples, as did Dad. So it was a good game! After two full weeks of softball, we’re 2-0 on Mondays, 0-2 on Tuesdays, and 1-1 on Thursdays. I’ll save you the trouble of getting a calculator out and just tell you that we’re 3-3 so far.

It’s hard to believe it, but it’s Friday already! On Saturday, we hope to take care of some work outside — including finishing up our driveway drainage project. For now, though, I must go. I’ve got quite a bit to do on Friday — editing a video, some more scoping, and other exciting stuff. That’s all for now.

As I’m typing, I can look out my window and see the blossoming apple trees, the green grass, and the shadows caused by a setting sun. I was outside a little while ago, marveling at our bluff in the back, how green it’s starting to become. It won’t be long until the trees are full with leaves.

Last night, we had a big thunderstorm roll through our area. There’s something about the way things look and smell after a rain. Spring is very distinct in that sense. Everything is so fresh, so alive.

I love spring.