Brothers

Here's Luke, my major leaguer. He's a great pitcher, a solid hitter, and a speedy runner - a triple threat, if you will. Thanks to Bill-o for the great shot that captures some of that steely determination.

Incidentally, Luke's baseball is great for Zach because Luke's teammate's little brother Chase is one of Zach's best friends. That means that the interminable - oops, I mean compelling - games and practices just fly by while the Zach and Chase play together on the sidelines. Yesterday Chase and Zach were playing basketball, when suddenly the game came to a complete halt because they found a fuzzy caterpillar on the court:

Later Chase told Dave: "Zach and I are like brothers. We like the same things, we like to hang out, and we never argue."
To which Dave responded, "Uh...so you're not really like brothers at all."

Bragtime

For Luke's California mission project, he created a version of Mission Santa Cruz on Minecraft. This took him many, many hours and it involved no help whatsoever from his parents. Yes, a few other kids did their missions on the computer too. But what Luke created was so cool, and so detailed, and so incredible, that it had everyone agape.

At Night at the Missions last week (all the kids show off their mission creations to the parents) Luke attracted a steady crowd of people, especially girls (!), and most notably, the principal. 

The principal was so impressed with Luke's mission and thoughtful presentation (and his stated desire to become an architect) that we got an email from her later that night. Our local assemblyman was going to be at school the next day and she asked Luke and three other kids to bring their mission presentations back to show the assemblyman. (Do you see my heart pounding out of my chest, cartoon-style, with pride yet?) 

So he showed his mission to the assemblyman on Friday...and THEN this morning the principal came up to Dave to tell her how proud she was of Luke. She told Dave "how articulate and calm Luke was in the presence of an important person. The assemblyman is not too tech-savvy and he was extremely impressed." Do you see me just collapsing on the floor with pride? 

The final cake-topper: He got an A (and heaps of compliments) from his teacher on both the model and the report. Atta boy.