Let the mailings begin

Kevin’s success on the ACT last year has spawned some mailings this year; various private institutions encouraging Kevin to apply for full scholarships to attend boarding school.

The first one was in Rhode Island.  Certainly looks nice.

The second one gets full points for the personalization factor…here’s the link

Kevin was very impressed by the personal touch….so much so that he missed that it’s a military school!

Don’t really see us moving forward on any of these ‘offers to express interest’, but, it’s interesting.  Kevin gets wild ideas with the arrival of each new mailing…..

Slow week

Nothing much to report around here. 

• Had two 2-day trips to Columbus, OH and Charleston, WV, so, missed most of the week at home.  Early reports are that everyone survived without me.
• My one full day home (Wed.) I took the afternoon off to go golfing with Kevin…..we both stink, but combined for a few bogeys and had a good time.
• Kevin was awesome at track club on Tuesday; hit the times he had been shooting for in the mile repeats….really really really hope this pays off for him and shows up when the cross country meets begin in a few weeks
• Kevin is obsessed with knowing who his homeroom teacher is……a constant annoying question in the background of everything.
• Soccer practice began last week…first game is Sept. 10.  Really nice to be involved with a bunch of boys who really want to play and do well.
• Pleasant surprise recently; Wiley reacting better to my early morning departures for trips.  Used to be he would get up with me and then be a whiny annoying dog from 5 am on…(I left at 4:30 am on Monday for Columbus).   Now, he gets up with me, but, goes back to sleep until the rest of the family gets up.  Life is good all around.

Football season is here soon.  Matthew can’t hardly wait!

39,832

that’s the number of songs that currently exist in my Itunes library after the neighbor up the street and I began a music swap.

My usual modus operandi is to rotate 4 to 5 gigs of music on and off of my Iphone.  I let Itunes choose this music randomly, in 100 song increments, by using the Itunes DJ function.

So, it was quite surprising to be sitting in the kitchen with Suzanne, Grandma, and Gramps, and have a song come on and have Gramps go “Wait, is that Manhattan Spiritual?  I’ve been looking for that song for years!”

There’s a 0.0025% a chance of that song coming up at any given moment on my Iphone.  Manhattan Spiritual’s one of the songs I absorbed only last week (not quite sure how the guy had it, but, he had the Billboard Hot 100 singles for each year from 1950 through 2005). 

Guess Frank’s out of luck on the lottery for a while……

The tooth fairy flies tonight

The last boy lost his first tooth today (okay, a few days back…took me this long to get the pictures in here…)

Matthew’s last visit to the dentist (about a month back) came back with a request for another visit…the cavity monster had visited.  Unlike the other two, getting Matthew to brush his teeth has been a challenge, he would go in, run the water, and come out without brushing….not quite sure why he’s chosen this route, but, hopefully, this cavity has brought an end to it. 

The dentist also said that the two bottom front teeth would be out soon; you can see the adult teeth coming in behind them.  “Start wiggling” was the advice, and Matthew, of all the boys, took this to heart.  He’s been wiggling since then, and, the last few days, has been really going at it.  The other two recoil at the thought of Mom or Dad wiggling or twisting; Matthew welcomes the help!

So, today, Matthew comes over and asks “Dad, I think it’s even looser…can you twist it?”.  I say sure, and he tears off upstairs to the bed to lie down and wait as I climb the stairs chuckling.

Get to the bedroom and Matthew is there, chin out, neck back, mouth wide open.  The tooth, at this point, can be moved about 90 degrees forward, so, it’s coming out soon, and sure enough, a twist or two (or three) later, out it comes.  “It’s out?” the boy says in wonder…and then grabs it and literally flies down the stairs to announce it’s out to Gramps, Grandma, and the brothers.

Challenge Cup Postscript

Cup Finalist Trophy

Shirts:  Efforts to get our snazzy new uniforms in time for the tournament were unsuccessful; Plan B was to use the tried and true reversible soccer shirts that everyone has.  Those shirts are heavy, and it was going to be hot, so, Friday night, the other coach carpe-diem’d it and purchased some t-shirts and attempted to tie-dye them maroon.  And he wore his Sunday and it looked pretty good, dark red on white.  The problem with all of the other shirts was that he washed them Friday night (so they wouldn’t bleed when the kids started sweating in them), and, despite trying everything to not have them bleed, they did, and thus, you have maroon-purple swirls on pink shirts with some yellow and orange spots.  The shirts that had more tie-dye than others actually looked halfway decent (Matthew’s is this way, if you want to go back to his final goal and look at the video, the back of his shirt is mostly tie-dye dark).  But, we were the only pink team out there……

Matthew:  Had a good four games….mostly positioned in the front, either forward or midfield, and did a nice job fighting forward and passing as necessary.  Was in on defense in the last game….didn’t go quite as well, like many on our team, ended up out of position a fair bit and that wasn’t so good.  I noticed he’d get possession on defense and dribble up to midfield, and, instead of carrying forward with the ball and trusting a midfielder to drop back to take his spot on defense, he would punt the ball to space and drop back, which is good for defense but ended that offensive run for the team.  That last game was good….gives us a lot to work on.

His last goal was right after the team had discussed looking for the pass in front of the goal…..if you’ve seen the tape, he very clearly declined to pass the ball to his open friend and took the shot.  What isn’t very clear on first view is that he definitely looked at his buddy, and made the goalie start to move that way, and then he chose to bury it.  Coach Terry quizzed him on this after the goal and was very happy by this move.

Christopher:  As I think I mentioned here, Christopher’s two days at the tryouts weren’t the best.  He did ok, but, I realize now that those tryouts put a premium on speedy, darting players and someone like the big guy is just never going to show up as A+ in that situation.

As I don’t think I’ve mentioned here, one of the best things about this year is that I’m not the primary coach.  My friend Terry is coaching, and he’s played soccer all of his life and still plays and is an AWESOME coach.  It’s actually worked out well, I think Terry hates the paperwork part of it, and I don’t mind doing it, so, he’s happy that I’m doing it and I’m happy to help him at practice and let him lead the way.

I was very curious where Terry would have Christopher play and what he would have Christopher do.  And how Christopher would do….he’s been at best ok at practice….a lot of clean misses on kicks and trips and falls as he’s tried to make the body do what his brain wants to do.

First game, Christopher has two goals, and is probably the best example of what we’re going to get from Christopher this year.  He could have had five goals, just either couldn’t connect or get his body to move nimbly enough to get in position (there was two times during the weekend that the ball was between him and the goalie, and they were both running for it, and Christopher would pull up and let the goalie get it….Terry said “he is so nice to those goalies!”).

What Christopher lacks in nifty nimbleness he certainly makes up for in big bulky blockiness.  This is a good thing when he has possession of the ball and turns with it…..Terry’s been teaching the kids to use their body to shield the ball from the other player and Christopher’s always been good at this and has the natural advantage that there’s more of him to get around…..he’ll be deadly when he gets more control after practice to keep the ball closer to him.  He’s a good stopper on defense; he’s again taken Terry’s guidance to heart and is falling back and ‘jockey-ing’ until the guy makes a mistake and then pouncing on it…..Suzanne commented that he didn’t seem as aggressive on defense and this is exactly why, he’s doing what coach tells him. 

Four last things

• In distinct contrast to what I thought after the tryouts, Terry relied on big Christopher a lot, for free kicks, corners, and on defense.  He definitely got his fair share (or more) of playing time.
• Especially in that last game, if not for the goalie (80%) and Christopher (20%) it would have been a lot worse then it was.  Many balls bouncing off of Christopher out of bounds or away from the net.
• Late Saturday night Christopher asked us who won the 2nd half of the 2nd game…he thought it was just 1-0…..tried to explain to him that, no, you don’t keeps score by half, it’s the total at the end of the game.  Christopher said, no, Coach Terry told us at the half “it’s a brand new game, 0-0”…..glad he’s listening and taking things to heart!
• Heard on the sideline by Suzanne after three kids on the other team declined to come after Christophe as he was getting ready to come forward dribbling towards them “…would you want to go after him???”  Our team, I think, would be called small, and Christopher’s a head taller than everyone else.

I told Suzanne this weekend, I always have a smile watching him play.  And unlike Matthew (who sometimes thinks that doing well is the be all and end all of the game), he’s happy-go-lucky about it…always smiling, a shrug of his shoulders when something goofy happens (like when he mis-kicks the ball and it sails 20 yard away from where he was aiming it) and moves on.

Short MI Challenge Update

Won the first game on Sunday, 4-2.  This qualified us for the finals.

Matthew Goal Here.

Got hammered in the finals 6-0.  The team we played had been playing together for a year; we had two practices, and they made us look as bad as we made the other teams look.  Oh well, good learning opportunity all around. 

More details on the tournament, and how the boys played, and why they are in pink shirts, later.

MI Challenge Cup

More on this later; at the moment, the boys are 2-0.  Looks like a collision course in the finals against the other undefeated unscored upon team…..would be surprised if we beat them…they look good!

Anyway, Game 1 (a 5-0 win) featured 2 goals by Christopher. 

Goal 1 is here

Goal 2 is here

Game 2 (a 8-0 win) featured a goal by Matthew (who also had to be helped off the field after being damn near clotheslined by a player on the other team….he’s ok, but it was ugly on tape….)

Goal is here

Changed the setting so these videos open in a new window….let me know if that’s preferable or not.

Miscellaneous

• Boys have regained their tree privileges; rules are straightened away, all is good. Finally did get a picture that truly shows how far up into the tree Kevin is getting.

• After getting Kevin from Blue Lake, we spent the day at Michigan’s Adventure. This was the 2nd weather screw up of the week for us; chose to do this Sunday instead of Monday because the weather forecast predicted Monday to be a mess. Turns out we were 180 degrees wrong on the weather; Sunday was by far the worst day for weather. The park was super crowded, the day was super hot (the hottest day in these parts this summer), and the thunderstorms blew in at 6:30 and brought the day to an early end. But, some fun was had in the meantime….Christopher had an absolute blast on the rides…he didn’t go on the big one (Shivering Timbers) and, happily, Matthew liked that enough to want to do it again. Only Kevin attempted the new coaster, Thunder Hawk, and he reports that it was pretty awesome. The park’s ads tout it as “two parks for the price of one”; it has a pretty decent water park as well. Again, just crowded beyond belief….can’t even find a chair. Christopher and Matthew have a great time with me at the wave pool, but, we have the problem we’ve had here before, the waves are so strong and the bottom is so…..’scratchy’, that you can walk away with a bunch of bloody scrapes, and both boys had their collection of those.
• Soccer tournament for the boys this weekend; will be interesting to see how the kids do…..the other teams we are playing against are with travel clubs, and we’re just the local ‘elite’ team at our age group, so, who knows. I like our team, I like our chances. Have had a few practices, Christopher has done well, Matthew has done very well.
• Kevin’s cross country practices begin next week. Guess we’ll see whether all his work this summer translate to the times he wants shortly……
• We’ve set Kevin loose on Facebook…..have to think that if the Internet and such had existed when I was in college that I may never have graduated…….

Blue Lake Postscript

Journeyed out to Blue Lake Sunday to retrieve Kevin.  We’ll recap the camp and the pickup in bullet-style formatting.

• Kevin did sent another letter home; it arrived on Saturday.  Kevin reported that he was the first chair in the Blue Orchestra (his phrase was “no duh!” and that he wanted us to send him more viola jokes.
• If you didn’t know, viola’s are the butt of the orchestra’s jokes….I had printed off 3 pages of them for him.
• I travelled out Saturday to listen to Kevin’s musical theatre performance.  You can find that here.    Kevin speaks and sings, his singing line is “Battles, barbarous and bloody”.  
• The most striking thing about seeing Kevin again after 10 days?  Definitely thought his voice was lower….part of that may be from his ‘overuse’ of the voice during camp, but, Suzanne today said she thought it sounded lower too….
• Whole family came out on Sunday to get Kevin….boys behaved well at camp, so, have to give them kudos here.  Received Kevin’s evaluation…..I guess we were most surprised to see Kevin marked so low…’average’…on scales.  Will follow-up with Kevin’s teacher on Wednesday on this…..am willing to write it off as his no-vibrato technique, but, who knows.
• The big news, or, most disgusting news, is Kevin’s divorce from cleanliness….owned up to not having showered since Wednesday(!) and you could see the dirt on his skin.  Mom’s ready to kill Kevin at this revelation….just a total, well…a picture is worth a thousand words, and I just happen to have a good one!

Kevin = oink.

• Kevin’s placement in Blue was unfortunate in many ways…the worst being that the music was that much more….basic.  He had already had performed 2 of the 7 pieces, one, Dance of the Tumblers, he had performed at Blue Lake last year; Kevin said that version was harder. 
• I guess the final words should be that Kevin had an awesome awesome time. 

IC Fair

Went to the Ingham County Fair Saturday night; the first of our weekend trips that we (I) misjudged the weather for.  We were going to go on Friday night; looked at the radar, saw that rain was on the way, decided to go to the movies instead, and, at the end of the movies, it still hadn’t started to rain.  Suzanne gives me the evil death stare as we exit the theatre….

So, we go on Saturday night.  Good times had by all; Christopher does well on all the rides (the only one he wouldn’t go on with Matthew as the demon-drop freefall type ride) and they have a good time bouncing from ride to ride.  The highlight, for Christopher, is the trip through the animal pens….

 

there’s been some clamoring for a bunny as a pet recently….most discussion of that has ended with the statement that bunny = cat food.

the ever popular Rhode Island Red

These two ducks were battling through the cage, much to Christopher’s delight

The train of goats

“Please take me home with you”

The pigs are always popular…

The other part of the fair that I always like is the people watching; from the other fair attendees, to the carnie’s, to, well, those paying their debts to society.

Went to the animal pens once (with Christopher, but, not with Matthew, who wanted to ride) and then twice (when Matthew wanted to see the sights).  Had the fair food; corn dogs, italian sausage, funnel cake, etc.  “Won” four goldfish, so, we’ll see how long they last…..

This and That - Fric and Frac

A few random things

• Suzanne had an idea when discussing the search for “squirrel bowling games”…google it myself and see what comes up.  Turns out the guy was probably looking for any number of java-games that involved violence to animated squirrels in golf, or bowling.
• Cut off the PS. in Kevin’s note yesterday….”Please send cookies”….
• Went to see the Tigers on Tuesday….of course they got hammered 8-2 but, more details on that soonish….

Fric and Frac have had an eventful two weeks….none of it designed to get them on the right side of the law.

• Christopher (he’d be ''Fric”) has been TV-less for about a week now; too much talking back, not enough listening to Mom and Dad, not enough immediate action on Mom and Dad’s requests.  And, sadly, not enough good behavior to have TV privileges restored.  May have to move on to a different level of punishment if this continues…..
• Tree climbing has come to a sudden halt as Fric and Frac decided one night that they didn’t want a girl in the tree with them…..and rained spit down on her to keep her out.  Of course, that brings little girls’ Mom over……and Dad and boys get to go apologize when Dad gets home. 
• And last night, the neighborhood boys were playing God knows what and the fun devolved into an all hands on deck crab apple fight (still fun, but, not quite what the adults had in mind) with multiple impacts on other boys (strangely, the boys didn’t say they were hit, or, if they were, were smart enough to keep it quiet).

Punishment for insubordination discussed above and still ongoing.  Punishment for spitting still ongoing….the tree is still off-limits and the march to apologize is complete.  Punishment for apple-throwing is over….more irked that the other boy had to come over and tattle than anything else…..will file this incident under boys being boys.  At least we had a discussion that if the boys think someone else has ‘done them wrong’ that the first stop should be to discuss it with Mom and Dad, not marching to the other boys door and complaining.  Totally against the boy code……

Blue Blue Blue Lake

Ride the highest highs with Kevin (like last week, when the guy I was talking with was pointing out his soon-to-be-senior-who-takes-AP classes-and-does-well-in-them ACT scores and they were lower than Kevin’s) and journey to the lowest lows….the first correspondence from Kevin hasn’t arrived, but, the camp has let us know where he placed.

As we feared, his audition placed him in the Blue Orchestra….he didn’t even qualify for the orchestra he made it into last year.   Aside from the botched sight reading, Kevin did the scales without any vibrato (which he’s been using for a year plus).  Don’t know why he did that, but, it seems to me that that’s like auditioning and only showing half of what you can do. 

Oh well….can only hope that this won’t be a downer on the whole camp for him.  Certainly is making me rethink the plans to branch out into violin playing in school next year. 

UPDATE:  started this post when we found out his placement…we’ve since received mail from the Kevster.  Glad it wasn’t a downer….aside from the smiley face with a tear.

Fruit Challenge

Suzanne has combined the boys like for the challenges in Survivor and Big Brother with their total refusal to eat any fruits (other than apples and bananas) to create the Fruit Challenge 2009. 

The first installment brought out the grapefruit, the lime, the lemon, the orange, and a peach.

First up was the lime.  All boys successfully tasted, and liked the flavor, of the lime.  Christopher had to be dramatic and reach for the water quickly, but, liked it well enough.  Kevin was calm and cool and exuded confidence.

  

Next up was the lemon….much more sour than the lime, but, a hit with all.

Grapefruit was next…..confirmed for Dad how much he didn’t like grapefruit and only Kevin was really a big fan of it.  All tried it though, so, that’s good.

Orange went well…thumbs up all around.  The peach had Matthew and me as big fans and Kevin ok with it.  Christopher would have been booted off the island, because he gave up on the challenge during this phase.  Oh well.

Next challenge will have the berries, blue, rasp-, straw-, cherries.