Guess What I Just Found

Serus Victoria!!!  Thanks to a good friend who was very handy on the internet, he discovered this gem of site. Enjoy!

https://sites.google.com/a/serusvictoria.com/www/home

My New Career...Professional Fort Builder

I can easily remember asking my mother and father to build my sister and I a fort when we were younger. They would take blankets and drape them over the dining room chairs and we would huddle inside our fort and would magically be transported to an imaginary land. Nothing existed outside of the fort. Along with us, we would bring our favorite toys and blankies and hunker down in the fort for as long as we could, which was usually until dinner or bed time. Soon, we began to build our own forts. We made new designs and would use as much furniture as we could to make it larger and more grandiose.

Fast forward 20 years. (Yes, I still enjoyed forts at 13!) Clark's new favorite thing to do is to have anyone make a fort for him. Thanks to Uncle Chris, who introduced him to a fort, Clark constantly is asking for us to make him a fort (which sounds more like "fork" when he says it). Now there isn't a day that goes by without a fort being made in the house, and the best thing about that is that I get to play in them as well.

Clark and I in the small fort.

Clark in the super couch fort.

A Quest for Perfection

One of the many reasons why this blog has had a lack in posts is due to the fact that I have enrolled in a Masters program. Pretty much all of my free time now goes towards Clark, Alli, school, or my new schooling. Having jumped back into the grinder of graduate level classes, I made a decision that I would try to achieve greatness while taking my classes. That greatness being a result of straight As in all of my classes. I have never been a straight A student. The only time I ever got straight As was in my final semester of college, which was mostly puff classes, and I wanted to see if it could be done.

As I wrap up my latest class and approach the mid way point, I have hit a new record. This class will make it 6 in a row! Booyah, old self! 4.o here I come!

Has it been that long?

Man, I guess the summer really got the best of me. Sorry for not keeping up with the posting, but I thought I should get back into it. Teaching, taking Masters courses, and being a family man takes a lot out of a guy. So...since I've been gone for a while, I'll catch you up quickly. School is going well. The new class is good, but filled with some characters. I just finished my fourth course in my Master's program. I'm holding steady with a 4.0. Alli is doing well at OHSU and Clark is turning into quite a little man. His vocabulary is growing like crazy. He's a little sponge that sucks up everything around him. He has started at a new day care and is having a blast. Music wise, I've been working with some friends at the church to record guitar and bass parts for some original music to share with the church. (Don't worry...I'll post it when it's done.) Lastly, our house is finally to the point of being close to completion (with home improvements). All that's left is to paint.

Once again, sorry to have neglected the blog for so long. Just to make it up to you, here is a cute picture of Clark in his fireman hat that he got from the fire fighters who talked at his day care.

Breaking News!

My wife is the bomb. After seeing my post, she replies, "Mal is the Han Solo that shoots first." Man, I love that woman!

Castle SPOILER!!!

I'm so glad Kate picked Mal instead of Anders! Mal Reynolds is the man. And Anders is a Cylon anyways, so doesn't that automatically count him out?

But I look really good in a flight suit! Kate has to pick me!

But I got a cool gun, I'm captain of my own ship, and I look really dashing and have Han Solo- like charm. I win.

Vanity Fair = UPS

For those that haven't seen the latest cover of Vanity Fair, prepare yourself. First, it's nice to see that Vanity Fair has taken an interest in soccer. With the World Cup right around the corner (Only 23 days till it begins!), every one is writing stories and editorials on the players and places. Enter Vanity Fair. Hot on the heals of Drogba being on Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World list, Vanity Fair chose to feature Drogba and Ronaldo on their front cover. It's great that the world is doing it's best to let us all know about the stars that will take center stage at the World Cup, but why to portray two of the best players in a total beefcake pose on the front cover is ridiculous. We already know that footy players have nice bodies, but to grease them up like Chip and Dale dancers and have them stand so close to each other that their pelvises are nearly touching is just gross. And it's not like these two need any other excuse to increase the size of their already ultra-inflated egos. Sure...Ladies will drool, but Vanity Fair might as well change their name to UPS because it seems they are trying to deliver Drogba's and Ronaldo's packages to the news stand of America.

To see the pic, click here.

We got bombed on!

Many people lately have been getting into the art of photo bombing. Photo bombing is when someone is taking a picture and you jump in in the background and make the most ridiculous face ever. Some friends and I at work even try to bomb on each other whenever pictures are taken. And finally...it happened me. My friend Sean was taking a picture of us. He snaps the photo and says, "That's the one. It's a keeper." In my excitement, I asked for the camera to see the perfect family photo and this is what I saw.

Thanks Clint. Just wait. You'll get yours!

Tenfold

It's funny how God can use situations to teach you lessons.

Rewind about 13 years ago. I was in my first band... a hardcore band we called Tenfold. We wanted to focus in on the fact that whatever you do, if done for Christ, he could take it and multiply it tenfold. We always dreamed of playing the huge venues and to thousands of fans that would be there to see us. Largest crowd we ever played for... a little over 100 people.

5 years later, in Serus Victoria, I dreamt of the same thing. Huge crowds. Large venues. 2 CDs and many shows later, the band ended when I left for Oregon. Largest crowd we ever played for...about 500.

Today, I am currently not in a band. I make music with my friend Travis at the church, but we do it for fun. I also play at Sunset on the worship team. I may not be writing a ton of music, but I play on a regular basis. In all honesty, I've lost the desire to NEED to make a name for myself in the music industry and am very content and happy that I am using my musical gifts for God's glory.

Flash forward to yesterday. Alli and I were sitting in our church service and she leaned over to show me something in the bulletin. I looked down to see what she was pointing at and, in awe, saw the total number of people who attended the Easter services (which I happened to play for). Total number...5,500. I couldn't believe it. Never in my entire life could I have ever imagined playing music for over 5,000 people.

I guess the name Tenfold was very appropriate if you think of it in comparison to SV's largest gig. All in all, it's good to be in God's plan using my gifts for His glory.

The Perfect Storm

So...I've been saving up sick days for when Clark would get sick and I would have to stay home with him. But today was a doozie. All three of us were sick today and me with the worst of it all. I used to laugh about how people with small children just pass it all around in a vicious cycle. It's completely true! On top of that, Oregon has chosen to act completely crazy and snow in late March. We all sat in the window the other night and were shocked to see it hail so much the ground was white. And all this after the most gorgeous weekend that got up to the 60 degree mark. I guess all of the planets have aligned and we all got the short end of the stick. Here's to hoping for warmer days, minus the sickness.

"That scared the hell out of me!"

"That scared the hell out of me!" a student said as I walked by him and his friend in the hallway at school. My first response was to correct the student to not say "hell" while he was at school, but the more I thought about this phrase, my brain kept taking me back to a special moment in my past.

When I was about 5 years old, we were living in the small town of Reedley, California. Dad was working as a youth pastor at the big Reedley MB church, and every Sunday we would go to church and listen to the pastor preach. In my 5 year old mind, the man was amazing. He knew everything in the Bible and never stopped talking about it. He would talk about the life of Jesus and the Ten Commandments. He also preached about things like heaven and hell. I didn't mind hearing about the heaven stuff, but hated listening to sermons where the topic was hell.

Anyways, the preacher must have been preaching something fierce about hell and suffering and being apart from God one night at church, and I started getting really scared. The whole drive home I sat in the back seat, my brain churning with terrible thoughts of the devil, with his pointy three-pronged pitch fork, waving at me from his fiery pit of damnation. It was "scaring the hell out of me", so much that when my mother was tucking me into bed I quickly blurted out, "What do you do if you don't want to go to hell?" My mom smiled, and right there told me about asking Jesus into my heart. It all made sense to me. Jesus = no hell. So that night, I accepted Jesus into my heart.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the best way to get people to come to Jesus is to scare them into a relationship with Christ, but I for one am glad the preacher used a little fire and brimstone talk to grease my wheels. It's just good to know I had "the hell scared out of me" on that late Sunday night in Reedley, California.

My Favorite Gift

It's no secret. I love Kung-Fu movies. Even more that that, I love Jackie Chan movies. Sure, getting movies for Christmas is fun, but you can only watch them so many times. But when someone gives you something that is completely unexpected, yet still relates to one of the things you love...those are the gifts to cherish. So imagine the look on my face when I unwrapped this.

Yep. That's right. It's Jackie Chan. A 12 inch movable doll that is one sixth the size of Jackie Chan himself (which really doesn't make sense considering he isn't 6 ft tall). He came with detachable sunglasses and jacket and can be molded into any position that you can think of. He now resides on the top of my desk, eagerly waiting to open a can of kung-fu hurt on any 4th grader who wants to pop some attitude. Watch out 4th grade! Here comes Jackie Chan!

Thanks, Mark!

In 2009, I...

Became a father,

Taught 4th grade for the third year in a row (my 9th year of teaching),

Got a new brother-in-law,

Wrote three songs, some blog posts, and my first (official) short story,

Enjoyed watching TV shows, including Burn Notice, Angel, Leverage, Castle, and the 9th season of Smallville,

Continued loving my wife for the 9th year in a row (6 years married),

Read The Lightening Thief, The Magicians Elephant, the ultimate guides to Superman and Conan, and more trade paperbacks than I can count (thank you, library!),

Rocked out on my guitar at Sunset Presbyterian Church,

and became an official dork by visiting the SciFi Museum in Seattle.

When I grow up, I want to be a...

As Clark grows older, it's strange to think that some day this little nugget of a dude will grow up and have a job in some sort of field. As he grows older, he has even started to show signs of strengths and interests in things around the house. He loves watching lights, has tons of energy, and has even started bouncing to the beat when he listens to music. So I think to myself, maybe he'll be a musician, play sports or even become an electrician.

Then one day I noticed another habit that he had. He loves to play with the tags on toys. That's fine with me, except the fact that all of the tags happen to be on the rear ends of all of his stuffed animals. So the other day I was sitting with him, and as usual he began playing with the tag on one of his favorite stuffed animals. I couldn't help but think, as Clark looked up at me to take this picture, either he wants to be a veterinarian when he grows up...or a proctologist.

Christmas Dumpster Diving

Now that it's legally Christmas time (December) and I can now listen to Christmas music and pull out the old decorations and decorate the tree, I have been thinking a lot about the things we all do for Christmas. It always seems every year is different. Last year was the first year Alli and I cut a live tree. This year, I portrayed Joseph in the children's Christmas play at our church. The list could go on and on, but the more I think of it, the more one memory always comes to mind. That memory is of the year my father and I dumpster dove on a cold Christmas Eve night.

We had already pulled all of the decorations out of the boxes that we hid every year in the garage and did as much as we could to turn our home in Visalia, California, into a winter wonderland. We put the wreath on the door, hung the countdown calendar on the fridge, and set up the nativity scene in the front room. It was all perfect all except for one thing. We didn't have a tree.

It was no secret that year. We didn't have a lot of money. Dad had told us money was a little tight and that we would get a tree....eventually. We just didn't know when "eventually" was. Did that mean in a few days, or did he mean in a couple of weeks? We waited all month for the moment dad would tell us that we were going to hop in the car and go to the Christmas tree lot to get a tree, but the days passed and we continued to wait. We waited all month. It wasn't until Christmas Eve night that dad told me that we were going to go and get a tree.

"You got some extra money?" I asked.

"Not quite," my father replied. "But we'll be able to get a tree."

How in the world were we going to get a tree without money? I wanted to ask my dad, but I knew he had a plan. He had never let me down before, so why should I think any less of him now? We were going to get a tree. I just didn't have a clue how we were going to do it.

After dinner, we jumped into the car, just he and I, and we started driving. The city was a ghost town. Everyone was inside, snuggling up under the covers, waiting for Christmas day to arrive.

"There's got to be one around here somewhere," my father said as he drove. "We just have to find one." He was a man on a mission, searching the parking lots we passed by like an eagle searches for it's prey. We kept on driving until he finally saw what he was looking for.

We pulled into the parking lot to one of our favorite places to eat. Mearl's Drive-In. The place was ancient. It had been around when my father was in high school and was still up an running, still making their artery clogging burgers, fries, and gigantic ice cream sundays. Although the diner was closed, the huge neon light still buzzed on through the night. "Eat at Mearl's," the sign flashed to me as I looked out the car window.

"This will work," my dad said as he stopped the car. "We can get our tree here."

"Here?" I asked. "There's nothing here. The Christmas tree lot that was here already closed down. How are we supposed to get a tree now?"

We walked all the way to the back of the parking lot and stopped next to the dumpster. He turned and motioned for me to come over to where he was.

My father finally stopped to clue me in on the plan.

"Every year, Christmas tree lots everywhere end up having extra trees that they can't sell. It's usually the scrawny ones or the ones with problems that they can't get rid of. So, they just throw them away on Christmas Eve when they close the lot for the season." He pointed to the dumpster. "Somewhere in this dumpster has got to be a tree that's good enough to put in our house...and you're going to find it."

I pointed to myself. "Me?"

"Yep."

"So you mean I'm going to jump out that dumpster and pick a Christmas tree?"

"Yep."

A smile spread across my face. It was like a game. Find the best Christmas tree in the dumpster.

Seconds later, I was in the dumpster. My dad climbed right in after me. The dumpster was full to the brim with all different sizes of trees. Tiny ones. Scrawny ones. Dead ones. And tons more. We began moving trees to see what we could find. We kept digging. It seemed like all the bad ones were on the top, but we were determined to find something special in that heap of unfortunate trees. Finally, as we neared the bottom of the dumpster, we found it.

We picked it up and threw it out of the dumpster. It was huge. And tall. It would have been a perfect specimen of a tree, had it not had a huge hole towards the base of it's body.

I stared at the hole in the side of the tree. "What are we going to do about that?" I asked, pointing to the hole.

"We'll hide it in the back. That way no one will see it." My dad smiled at me. "When we're done with it, you won't even know it's there.

And with that, we picked up the tree, tied it to our car, and took it home. A couple of hours later, the tree was decorated. We all stood and stared at the tree in satisfaction. It was big, beautiful, and best of all, it was free. You couldn't even tell that it had been pulled out of a dumpster.

To this day, I still sit and think about past Christmas trees. I try to remember some of the other trees that we decorated as a family. Which was the biggest? The best? I try to picture them in my head, but I can't remember any of them. The only tree that I can remember, and the best tree I ever had, was the tree my father and I rescued on Christmas Eve...the dumpster tree.

Not to brag, but...

When November came to an end, NaNoWriMo wrapped up last week as well. At the beginning of the month I had set a goal of writing 7,500 words over the entire month. That meant having to write at least 419 words a day for 18 days. It was difficult to push myself to write during class time with the students because you always have something that needs to be graded or done, but I buckled down and actually did it every day. Now that it's over, I'm actually amazed at how much I have written...which is over 8,000 words! Not only did the kids enjoy listening to my story as it grew day by day (which motivated them, too), but I also really had fun. Just taking 30 minutes a day to express myself creatively through writing was actually very therapeutic and rejuvenating. I highly recommend it. Who knows, maybe I'll write 10,000 words next year.

Alligator Wrestler: Part 6 - The End

Mrs. Anderson quickly disappeared into the house and then appeared with my towel in her hands. She motioned for me to meet her in the shallow end.

"Just act cool," I told myself and began to swim towards the shallow end.

One by one, the girls started glancing at me as I waded towards the steps. I had crossed the line into enemy territory and the enemy knew I was there. I quickly worked my way to the steps and sat down.

"I just need to rest for a little while," I said out loud for anyone who was in ear shot. The girls looked over at me for a second, but then went back to their chattering and giggling.

"Alright. Quickly. Let's go," Mrs. Anderson said, just loud enough for me to hear.

It was the moment of truth. Now or never. I quickly jumped up, one hand covering my front, the other covering my rear, and ran into the outstretched towel. Mrs. Anderson quickly wrapped me up tight, like a burrito.

I slowly turned to see if anyone had seen. To my surprise and great relief, no one had noticed. They all just continued to play, unaware that I had just experienced the most embarrassing moment in my life.

Mrs. Anderson led me to the hall bathroom. "I already put a pair of Billy's old swim trunks in there for you to change into," she said. "Just holler if you need anything else.

I walked into the bathroom, locked the door behind me and began to look for the pair of trunks. There, on the counter next to the sink, was the swimsuit.

"What are the chances?" I thought to myself.

There in front of me was Billy's old swimsuit. It was like a mirrored copy of the torn suit that was barely hanging onto my waist, only it was the color blue. They even had the same red stripe that went down the legs and around the bottom of the leg holes. I removed the tattered suit from my body and put on Billy's old suit. They were just as tight as my old pair.

"Here we go again," I said as I looked at myself in the mirror. I grabbed my towel and headed back outside to the pool. Maybe there was still time for me to get back into the game. But as I made my way outside, the scene I saw was completely different than when I left it.

There, in the middle of the pool, floating by himself on the alligator, was Billy. All the other boys were strewn about the pool. Some hung onto the side of the pool, while others lay on the walkway exhausted. It was like a battle field and only one final soldier was left floating atop the alligator.

Billy yelled triumphantly. "I'm the best Alligator Wrestler in the world!"

I stood there, now in Billy's old swim suit, debating whether I should go and challenge the now reigning king of the alligator.

Billy spotted me standing by the side of the pool. "You wanna take on the champ?" he yelled.

I still had the energy to do it. While I had been changing, he had been wasting all his energy becoming the top wrestler. I knew I could do it, but I also knew how flimsy old swim trunks held up against the most physical pool game I had ever played in my life.

"Nah," I replied. "I think I'll just swim instead of playing Alligator Wrestler."

Billy smiled. He was the champ…the king…the top Alligator Wrestler. "Woo hoo!" he cried. "I win!"

Even though I knew I could have probably beat him, I was still satisfied with the way things turned out. Billy, the birthday boy, had won. We were all having a great time. And no one, except Mrs. Anderson and myself, knew about my swimsuit being torn in two. Sure, I wasn't the winner of the game today, but that was the beauty of Alligator Wrestler. It never ended. It would continue to go on, and the next time the game continued, I would be right there in the middle of it all. And most importantly, I would be there, wrestling with all the other boys, playing in my new swimsuit.

Alligator Wrestler: Part 5

I looked to the steps in the shallow end, but there THEY were. The girls. What moments ago had looked like a small pack of minnows now looked like a teaming pack of piranhas, ready to gobble up anything they came in contact with.

There had to be a way out without completely embarrassing myself. If I went out of the shallow end, all the girls would see and then I wouldn't hear the end of it. I could here it now. The laughing. The ridicule. The nicknames. I wasn't going to get out of the shallow end and risk getting pegged for life with a nick-name like Bare Butt Ben.

The more I thought, the more I realized that someone was going to end up finding out because someone was going to have to help me cover up as I got out of the pool. I looked back to the boys. No. Then to the girls. No way! That left me with only one option…a parent. If my mother had been there, she would have helped out, but that was the problem. She wasn't here. She was off running errands.

My eyes scanned through the parents sitting poolside. They all seemed to be in deep conversations with each other. I continued to scan the crowd until I came across what I thought to be my one and only hope. Mrs. Anderson. She was watching all the kids play in the pool as she sat in her chair near the shallow end.

"Mrs. Anderson!"

She looked over to me as I waved for her to come over to the side of the pool where I was hanging onto the edge.

"Yes, Ben? Do you need something?" she said as she squatted down by the edge of the pool.

"I kind of have a problem," I replied.

"A problem? What problem? You look just fine to me," she said.

"It's my pants."

"Your pants?" she asked.

"My swim trunks." I took a deep breath. It was now or never if I was going to ask for help. "They, uh, kind of, uh, ripped."

"What, like, a small tear?" She put out her index finger and thumb and put them about an inch apart.

"No. Like a tear!" I put out both my hands about three feet apart to get my point across.

"Oh dear. That is a big tear," she said.

"It goes all the way from the front to the back! Please, you gotta help me," I pleaded.

She stopped talking and thought for a moment until she perked up. I could see the light bulb turn on in her head. "Alright, here's the plan. I'll go get your towel and meet you at the steps in the shallow end. You'll get out super fast and I'll wrap the towel around you so that no one will see. Then you can go inside, change into one of Billy's old swimsuits, and it will all be fine. OK?"

"OK…but," I began to say, but it was too late. She had already turned to go inside to get my towel. "But…but…The shallow end?

Not the shallow end! Anywhere but the shallow end. I'd almost risk getting out on the side of the pool and all the boys seeing my bare buns than go to the shallow end!

Alligator Wrestler: Part 4

The girls made their way back to the shallow end, where they once again began to chatter, giggle and point. The rest of the boys lined up behind me. The game was about to begin again and I was at the front of the line. The alligator floated in the center of the deep end.

"Alright, Ben," said Travis, who was standing behind me in line. "Let round two begin!"

"Yeah, go already!" yelled Billy, who was waiting at the end of the line.

Oh, I was going to go alright. I was going to leap…no…fly on top of that alligator and with one mighty squeeze of my legs, I was going to crush it to pieces in front of all the girls who stared at me from the shallow end.

"Go, Ben, Go!" their eyes screamed to me as I stepped out to the edge of the diving board, took a deep breath and jumped.

But this was no ordinary jump. This was a super jump. The jump of all jumps. The uber-jump. It was one of those jumps that takes you so high, when you hit the apex, time seems to slow to a crawl and stop. And in that frozen moment, I could do no wrong. Nothing mattered. Not my year old swim trunks, my ultra white thighs, or the fact that I was a puny ten year old boy. All that mattered was that I was about to make Alligator Wrestler history.

I landed with a thud. My eyes and ears became filled with all the sights and sounds of the moment. The girls squealed with delight. The boys yelled their manly battle cries. The parents cheered from the side of the pool. But in the mix of all these sights and sounds, I also heard another sound.

Rrrrrrriiiiiiiiiippppppppp!

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "No big deal. Threads pop and tear, but it couldn't be that bad, right?"

Wrong.

I quickly slipped off the alligator as Travis jumped on behind me and swam to the edge of the pool to assess the damage. My hand shot to my backside to feel the area and see if the tear was bad. I felt nothing. In some cases, feeling nothing would be wonderful, but in this case it meant I felt exactly that…nothing! Where I should have been feeling swimsuit, I felt nothing but the skin on my now exposed and bare butt! It was the mother of all tears.

I continued to feel about, but the more I felt, the more shocked I became. The hole, if you could even call it that, was not just in the back. The sheer force of my super, spectacular, uber-jump had torn my swimsuit in two. The only thing holding the two pieces together was the elastic waist band, which looked as if it too was about to pop.

"Great," I thought to myself. Not only was my butt hanging out the back, but mini-Ben and the boys were dangling out the front as well.

"You still playing?" Billy yelled from the alligator.

"Yeah," I quickly replied. "I'll be back in a second. I'm just taking a breather."

"But we just started back up! Just admit it," he said, "you're not man enough to continue."

Oh, I was man enough all right. If I got out of the pool right there he'd have been able to see how manly I was whether he wanted to or not.

"What am I going to do?" I thought as I continued to tread water by the side of the pool.

Alligator Wrestler: Part 3

We landed with a thud.

"Woo hoo!" I yelled as I wrestled my way up the alligator.

"Isn't this awesome?" Billy yelled, who was vying for a better position on the alligator. He made it up to the top and we wrestled to see who the master of the alligator would be, but were torn from our place by all the other boys. Travis, who I could now see in the middle of the group, slid up onto the alligator and took over our spot. I began to swim around the alligator, looking for a place that I could grab hold when something else caught my attention.

It was the girls…the minnows in the shallow end. They were still talking like they were before, but they were doing something else I didn't notice before. They were watching the boys. Some stared. Others pointed and giggled with delight.

"They're watching us," I thought to myself. But then a light blinked on in my head. They weren't watching us. They were checking us out!

Suddenly a new thought occurred to me. This wasn't a game anymore. The addition of the admirers of the opposite sex had changed this from a game into a way for young boys to display their strength and power. This was the true alpha-male extravaganza and all the girls had front row seats to the competition. I needed to get back in there! I couldn't let the girls just see Billy and the others in their macho display of strength. They needed to see ME! It now no longer mattered if I had white legs, wore an old swimsuit or was one of the smallest boys at the party. I needed to show the girls that I was the man. The one. The only. Alligator Wrestler!

I quickly grabbed hold of someone's leg and got back up onto the alligator. But as soon as you would get back up on to it, someone would pull you down and the cycle would begin all over again. The war waged on for what seemed like an hour until it was suddenly interrupted.

"Cake and presents time!" yelled Billy's mom.

Everyone got out of the pool and walked over to the patio where Mrs. Anderson stood.

"Can't we keep playing?" I asked.

"After cake and presents," she replied.

Cake was served and we all gathered around Billy, who began unwrapping his gifts that sat next to him in a huge pile. First a transformer. A shirt. Some Legos. Some shorts. And tons more. I couldn't help but sit there, waiting anxiously to get back to the game. Even though the game had no end, I knew the party would, thus creating an end to this round of the game. In my mind, there was only going to be one alligator wrestler left standing (or floating, in our case), and that was going to be me.

As soon as Billy finished unwrapping his final gift, a Voltron robot that he had asked his mother for, we all tried to make our way back to the pool..."tried" being the key word here.

Billy's mom yelled after us. "You guys have to wait 15 minutes before you get back in. If you don't you'll cramp up from all that cake you guys ate."

15 minutes? We wanted to play NOW, but the one thing that you couldn't do was say no to Mrs. Anderson. Even if she may have said everything with a big smile plastered on her face, we all knew she meant business.

We sat back down and proceeded to stare at the clock. 15. 10. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

"Finally!" I yelled as I made my way quickly over to the diving board.