our cousin, eric smith, plays for the new york jets. last year he started at safety (many of you will remember the vicious collision between he and anquan boldin). there was a massive debate about the helmet-to-helmet contact between eric and boldin, but i honestly believe that kerry rhodes' involvement in the play didn't help matters, and eric found himself in an incredibly dangerous situation. (eric was knocked unconscious as well.)
at any rate, we got to hang out with eric at our family reunion a few weeks ago. he is delightful in person. quiet and reserved. great with the kids. kate and ian were on cloud nine the entire afternoon. (my grandfather and eric's grandfather are brothers, and for those of you who don't know, yes, my maiden name is smith).
at one point in the afternoon, many of the relatives were talking about what fantastic athletes the smiths have produced...and it's true. my grandfather was recruited by the st. louis cardinals prior to WWII. my cousin rob was a tremendous basketball player and now coaches at urbana university. eric's sister stacy is being recruited out of groveport to play college volleyball. all of the other cousins have shown an enormous propensity toward athleticism. it's pretty cool.
so anyways, here are my kids with one of their heroes. they have many, but i'm pretty sure eric ranks right up there at the top.
what is the filmy residue that builds up on the inside of the front windshield of my car? does anyone else have this?
i heard the song "rock of ages" by def leppard a little while ago on xm radio. it reminds me of you, d.j. owens.
i would like to create a web site just for people who can't sleep in the middle of the night. that way, insomniacs (or people who are just plain full of anxiety) can log on, chat, and know they're not alone.
ian has started referring to his genitals as his "willy wonkas". i have no idea where that came from. he usually just refers to them as his "boys".
have any of you seen the "coming home" series on ESPN that's hosted by rick reilly? excellent show. i've seen it twice, and both times, rick has featured christians: kurt warner and josh hamilton. leo wants me to email rick and see if he'll do a special on chuck ealey.
my kids are currently dancing/jumping up and down on my bed while watching zac efron sing "lady's choice" from the movie hairspray. zac is awfully cute, if i do say so myself.
when my sisters and i were little, our father would make us be quiet during the opening themes of tv shows so he could tape them on his tape recorder. i can still remember him shushing us and holding the white, rectangular microphone up to the television. (he only did this during the 1970s.) my personal favorites are here, here, here, and here. in the 1980s, i fell in love with this, this, and the best tv opening of all time: this.
have you ever had a paranormal/ghostly experience? i have smelled my grandmother's cigarette smoke a few times since she died in 1991.
true or false: "you can't control how you feel."
what song do you have stuck in your head, right now?
i love comments. leave some comments. nice comments.
oh my gosh...what a BLAST! ian was in heaven being on the all-star team! he alternated between playing shortstop and pitcher. (he is seen in most of the video wearing a heart-guard, a requirement for boys playing pitcher.) ian was the lead-off batter and had a pretty good on-base percentage. his fielding was awesome, too.
all in all, we couldn't have asked for a more wonderful tournament season. the boys were absolutely terrific (and adorable) and really pulled together as a team.
and as for our coaches...hey, we love you matt snodgrass, jeff davis, rick swain, and kent shanks! you guys rock!
p.s. to see erica snodgrass' fantastic tournament pictures, click here and here!
i just got off the phone with tony stover. tony lives in sevierville, tennesse. tony is a pretty cool guy. he proves that most people are, despite their shortcomings, essentially good.
a few weeks ago while on vacation, i fell off a boulder. yeah, a boulder. i landed several feet below on another boulder, located in the river that rushed through the chimneys (an area in the smokey mountains). to give you a visual, here is julie navigating around one of the rocks:
the mountains had experienced severe downpours for the previous twenty-four hours, so the water was moving extraordinarily fast, as you can see from the video below (excuse the fuzziness of the picture).
the boulders were also very slippery. i saw a rock that i wanted to get to, and told myself wisely not to jump to it. instead, i thought, i will take the safe way around...one step later found me five feet down, wedged between two boulders. my camera, which was strapped to my wrist, flew into the water as my hand bounced off the rock's surface. a knot instantly came up on my wrist, and the ribs on my upper left side were hurting terribly.
i was stunned at first, not realizing what happened. then, i frantically began looking for the camera, which julie saw fly into the river. (as most of you know, cameras and i just don't get along. i am ALWAYS dropping them!) i reached my arms down into the rushing water to no avail. i was panicked. i was in pain, and my camera was gone. gone. oh man. what a loser i was.
julie was calming and reassuring. i was lucky that i wasn't seriously hurt (as in, my head did not bounce off the boulder). we climbed up out of the river, dried ourselves off, and headed back to the motel.
fast-forward two days...
tony stover has taken his nieces and nephews hiking in the chimneys. about 200 yards downstream from where i had been, his nephew finds a camera wedged beneath a rock. tony told me on the phone, "i felt like God put the camera in my hands so i could return it to the owner. there were memories in that camera that you deserved to have back."
tony took my little cannon power-shot home, removed the memory card, which miraculously was still intact even though the camera was toast, and viewed the pictures on his computer. he noticed a red-headed girl with "waverly volleyball" written on a t-shirt. he saw another picture of a man (from our family reunion, which had occurred the day before we left on vacation) with a name tag on. he started researching the man's name and "waverly" and decided to call waverly high school in ohio.
tony was put in touch with our head volleyball coach, to whom he explained his story. the coach then called my niece, taylor, who was on vacation with us, and relayed this amazing tale...how a gentleman found my camera and actually wanted to return it. he even wanted to pay the postage without reimbursement.
true to his word, my broken camera and good memory card arrived in the mail about a week later. tony had paid $4.75 for shipping.
cut to today...
i spoke with tony for about 15 minutes this afternoon. super, super, super-nice guy. i told him my part of the story, then he explained his role. we talked about family (his father recently passed, and he is helping take care of his mother), and vacations, and strange coincidences. tony even invited me to his lutheran church; if i'm ever back in tennesse on a sunday morning or wednesday night, i am welcome to come in and make myself at home there.
i told tony our church believes that small things done with great love change the world.
he agreed whole-heartedly.
but i think i already knew that about him.
(p.s. both the picture and video in this post came from the broken camera that tony returned.)
"A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
