since valentine's day

so here's some of what's been going on since valentine's day:

--emma was captain of her team for middle school "science bowl;" they went 1-2 while competing against teams that included 8th graders. she had a lot of fun and has a cool t-shirt with einstein sticking out his tongue to show for it;

--ben's had a bunch of bball games. his team is about .500. he's getting to play about five minutes a game and probably averaging a basketball and a couple of rebounds an outing;

--terri's leg is finally getting better. she actually went skating a bit on sunday in fact. now if she can just overcome her cough and not let it get into her chest (like last year) everyone will be happy and healthy;

--ben has been working on his history day project with his buddy wyatt johnson. the topic is innovation and their project is about the invention of the forward pass in football. it was brought in to try to save the game after a series of injuries and deaths. teddy roosevelt was involved b/c he believed football was important for turning boys into men for the country, what ben is calling 'muscular americanism;'

--doug is having fun talking about the olympics in his sport class. also the new winter issue of contexts just mailed: it has a number of pieces on aging in america in it and they are hoping to get some more media attention to it by posting those as a bundle on the website starting the first of march: go to Contexts.org to check it out;

--emma's hockey team finished out the regular season playoffs with a loss this weekend. emma had a really strong second half of the season including a couple of strong shots on goal the last couple of games. this coming weekend the team travels up to Brainard for a season-ending tournament (and probably some fun swimming and hanging out).

--ben will be staying with his friends wyatt and then nick while the rest of us are gone up north--he's got a bball game and then a concert he is planning to go to.

--oh yeah and the weather: despite some 30 degree days of melting and some birds starting to sing, we've still got a lot of snow on the ground and ice cycles like you wouldn't believe off our roof.