New surgery date

We finally have a new date for Zach's spinal surgery - January 12th.

Of course that's a double edged sword of sorts. We want to get the surgery done in order to help make his life better. At the same time though, there are all the issues that we are going to have to deal with both pre and post surgery. Really, for me at least, it would be better if they just called and said have him in for surgery tomorrow at 6:00 AM. Then there would be no need to sit around for a month and imagine all of the things that can go wrong. As it stands though, we get to stress about it until the 12th.

I'm not sure at this point what effect this will have on Josh and I doing the race on the 25th. There's no way of knowing what condition Zach will be in at that point. I can't see leaving Janine alone to deal with Zach fresh out of surgery, and Brandon while Josh and I spend the day jogging around South Beach. It's possible that Zach will be fine by that point, but we'll have to play it by ear...

Now that baseball is on a short break, Josh has come up with another activity to occupy that pesky free time on Saturdays. He has become a proud member of his school's chorus.

For any of you that have had the.... pleasure(!!!) of hearing Josh sing, you may be somewhat surprised at this turn of events. Apparently the selection process for this chorus wasn't overly rigorous. Now, as a parent it's probably bad form to criticize your children, but I've gotta stand by this one. To his credit though, he laughs as hard as anybody whenever the subject of his singing prowess is brought up. He's having fun doing it, and could care less about critics.

I was somewhat fearful when we arrived for the "premiere" of the group last week at the city tree lighting ceremony. However I was mildly surprised that they weren't all that bad. Not the Vienna Boy's Choir to be sure, but not horrible. Apparently if you put together enough members, even a chorus of adolescents with cracking voices sounds okay.

I was asked at the performance why Josh was in one of the back rows. I explained that the more ummm.. "powerful" voices are kept to the rear so they don't drown out the more "delicate" voices in the front. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.