New U.S. Citizen!

Ceremony was on Wednesday April 15th. Just in time to pay taxes:-)

1-year birthday - Lina

Multiple birthdays!

Strawberry Cheesecake this night! The Walker's have celebrated quite a few birthdays in the past few weeks! Isaiah, Gina, Joe, Young-Soon, and Lina.

1-year birthday - Isaiah

Curse of the Bambino, from Wikipedia

Daydreaming after reading about the Josh Beckett suspension, Pa started reminiscing about former Red Sox hurlers Curt Schilling, Jim Lonbourg, Babe Ruth, and Cy Young. However, one of his all-time favorite hurlers is L. Tom Perry. So, Pa did some editing today, adding three references for the following wikipedia section: Attempts to break the curse Red Sox fans attempted various methods over the years to exorcise their famous curse. These included placing a Boston cap atop Mt. Everest and burning a Yankees cap at its base camp; hiring professional exorcists and Father Guido Sarducci to "purify" Fenway Park; spray painting a "Reverse Curve" street sign on Storrow Drive to change it to say "Reverse the Curse" (the sign wasn't replaced until just after the 2004 World Series win); and finding a piano owned by Ruth that he had supposedly pushed into a pond near his Sudbury, Massachusetts farm, Home Plate Farm. In Ken Burns' 1994 documentary Baseball, former Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee suggested that the Red Sox should exhume the body of Babe Ruth, transport it back to Fenway and publicly apologize for trading Ruth to the Yankees. Divine intervention was mentioned by many fans during the 2004 season when those of all religious denominations prayed, sang, and supported their team. In 2003, shortly after his installation in Boston, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley told reporters, "the first request I received from a Boston priest was that the new archbishop make sure that the Red Sox would win this year, so I'm working on it."[1] On April 27, 2004, Israel Independence Day aka Yom Ha'atzmaut, Dr. Scott Sokol , of the Jewish Music Institute, sang the national anthem at Fenway. Due to a rain delay directly after his performance and then a cancellation, Sokol again sang the anthem when the game was played as a rainout makeup two days later.[2] Some LDS fans smile and state that the Red Sox were heading in "the right direction" when on May 8, 2004, LDS Day at Fenway, an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, L. Tom Perry, threw out the first pitch, which was a strike.[3] Some declared the curse broken when, on August 31, 2004, a foul ball hit by Manny Ramírez flew into Section 9, Box 95, Row AA and struck a boy's face, knocking two of his teeth out.[4] 16-year-old Lee Gavin, a Boston fan whose favorite player was and remains Ramirez, lives on the Sudbury farm owned by Ruth. That same day, the Yankees suffered their worst loss in team history, a 22-0 clobbering at home against the Cleveland Indians. Some fans also cite a comedy curse-breaking ceremony performed by musician Jimmy Buffett and his warm-up team (one dressed as Ruth and one dressed as a witch doctor) at a Fenway concert in September 2004. Just after being traded to the Red Sox, Curt Schilling appeared in an advertisement for the Ford F-150 pickup truck hitchhiking with a sign indicating he was going to Boston. When picked up, he said that he had "an 86-year old curse" to break.

1. Michael Paulson, "Of Red Hats and Red Sox", Boston Globe, October 12, 2008
2. Let's Go Red Sox,”Hebrew College Today”, vol 19 no 1
3. Greg Hill,"Red Sox pitch: Elder Perry hurls a strike", “Deseret News”, May 15, 2004
4. Brian McGrory, "Taking teeth out of curse? Teen hit by Ramirez foul ball lives in Babe Ruth's former house", Boston Globe, September 2, 2004