Puppies

We got a puppy before Christmas and she's lots of fun. She gets into things she's not supposed to, she whines when she wants something and is all sorts of trouble. She's been pretty receptive to training. As long as you have a treat, she'll do anything you say. She's a cute puppy.

We had our nephews over one weekend and the youngest, age 4 had a lot of similarities to our little puppy. Whines, gets into stuff he's not supposed to and is all sorts of trouble. We did get him to sit still for a while at a basketball game... but I have to admit it was mostly because of the candy in my wife's purse. He's a cute little puppy too.

The Basketball Ref.

I think its a good thing to have kids in sports. It helps them with coordination, teamwork, confidence. Right now both of my kids are in Basketball. Its probably just a Lehi thing but most of the officials seem like they don't really want to be there. Most are teenagers who let most things go. As a result there is rampant disregard for rules. In her first couple of games, my daughter would get the ball passed to her and run the length of the court only dribbling the ball once. It was funny and cute but the kids just aren't learning how to play.

A couple weeks ago, she had the exception to this rule as the official in her game. Every small rule broken would get a whistle blown and an intense run through over the rule broken, such as the rule for double dribble. Every single time a kid would touch the ball with two hands, the whistle would blow and the ref would yell the rule again and again while all the kids just stood there frozen. There were other rules as well but this is the one broken most frequently. At first we were kind of taken aback. Wow, this guy's intense! It was amusing at least.

She and my son have both had him a couple times now and something interesting happened at the last game. My daughter was actually dribbling across the court, and she wasn't all that bad. When she touched it with both hands, she would actually pass it or shoot it. Ironically, it was a different ref but the message sunk in pretty good. Who knew kids can actually do stuff?