Two trips out and about

Tuesday:  Went straight from basketball practice to dinner and then over to the Breslin Center for the Holiday Hoops Invitational….the last game of the night was the Okemos boys versus Flint.  We are pretty good this year; both the guards will be playing Div 1 when they get there and we were undefeated heading into the night.

The good guys warming up for the second half

We were up by ten in the first half and then slowly kept turning the ball over and let the other team back in it….and kept turning the ball over and let them pull ahead and win in the fourth quarter.  The fun part was watching Christopher watching the center for Okemos do what he’s been doing; box the other team out, grab the rebounds, pass to the guards, make the easy shots down low.  A fun night.

Friday:  After being cooped up all week with me at home while I worked, I said we’d go to Zap Zone if the rooms were clean and chores were done.  Shazam!….cleaning is the #1 priority. 

We arrived around noon and played two games of laser-tag, along with the usual tokens-for-tickets games.  The boys are all ‘veterans’ at laser tag now….they just don’t like it when they have to slow things down to explain rules to the ‘newbies’ and they know when and where to go to blast the opponents into swiss cheese.

fortunately, I’m still pretty good at this sport.  This is my scoresheet from the second game, I finished 3rd out of the 31 in the game.   I think all of us finished in the top ten in each game.  You have to love when the the little little kids are in the maze and don’t really know what’s going on….just easy pickings for more points!

Post-Christmas 2010

The wrapping paper is long gone….the cardboard recycling outside of our house was stacked almost as high as the trashcan! 

The hits this year are:

Table Tennis:  Suzanne had to talk me into this one….we’ve had other entertainment in the basement (foosball table, arcade games) that get used a little and then just sit there.  We’ll see how this works out in the end, but, it’s the big hit right now.  Kevin is currently “King of the Household”…I was able to beat him and hold the title for a day but I fear that it will be an uphill struggle to reclaim the belt.

(update:  I did regain the title for a day….beat him 3 times during that day and sent him to bed all pissed off.  He did trounce me yesterday to regain the title though)

Madden 11:  A very last minute request by Matthew, but, it’s been all that Kevin and Matthew have played since then.  I’ve especially enjoyed watching Matthew, Kevin, and Ashton play on the same team (the Seahawks, of course…).  Matthew certainly holds his own….

Franchise mode is really popular…here Kevin is guiding the Seahawks against Tampa Bay

Steeler Gear:  Christopher received the Polamalu jersey and some Steeler sweatpants….he immediately ran off, shed the clothes he was wearing, and returned in his new threads.  And did not take them off for three straight days….

 

 

he also got some mini-Fat Heads….

Compared to last Christmas, it has been really low key around here….of course, there are a lot of wistful sighs and longing looks back at what we were doing a year ago….

Hey China! Kiss off…..

Last night as I left basketball practice I was greeted with about 100 messages in my gmail account from people who were out of the office or whose accounts have been deleted/abandoned….turns out something accessed my account and sent out an email for some bs electronic site.

Turns out the ‘culprit’ was from China

(Enter curse words here!)  Still not sure how they did it but since my google password is the same as a bunch of others we are changing almost every login we have over the next week.

Third Graders

You don’t have to watch this video for long to see Matthew’s special talent….

 

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I think you can see him in pictures at the 8:19 and 9:25 marks as well

Project Work

Figured I’d scan in the two projects that I spent a lot of time this fall working with Christopher on for school before they hit the trashcan…..

The fourth graders tracked the high and low temperatures for two weeks and then came home and had to create a graph.  Both of these assignments came with detailed rubrics (a term I can’t ever recall hearing while I was in school) and that made it pretty easy to make sure we had all of the required elements to get a good grade.  Despite my best efforts, you can see the white out where Cpher got a little confused on the spacing for the text.

I wonder how many kids had the break in the lines for the weekend; it took me a while to explain that concept to Cpher…..

  

This is the front and back from the first book report;  Cpher had to create a book jacket.  You can see his artwork; all of the text on the front and sides was required straight out of the rubric (why the copyright date?….me no comprende).  At the end of the night I showed him some books that had reviews and quotes on them and we decided to make up our own for the back cover. 

“How do I love you? Let me draw the ways….”

 

 

Indoor Soccer

We’ve played six games so far (two each weekend) and carry at 2-2-2 record into our two weekends off (we finish up the week after Turkey-Day).

There are only four teams in our division; unlike last year where we were the young team playing a bunch of older teams this year we are the older team and we’re playing a bunch of older teams.  So, it’s good competition. 

My experiment in formation is continuing, still trotting that 2-2-1 out there. 

Matthew – his best position are either of those 2’s up there; he’s just naturally a forward or a midfielder.  No goals, but, a lot of great passing.  I need to make the time to work with him on his kick; he still doesn’t have his weight forward enough and so he ends up on the ground after kicks and his kicks tend to sail (like today, right over the goal..). 

Christopher – His best position is that 1 in the back….while my change in formation is a good thing for the team, it’s a definite minus for Christopher….he’s not built well to be that one guy in back (if he’s not careful he can get exposed pretty easily…he was giving me nightmares in our game on Saturday by creeping up too close to the other’s team forward, who was a really fast and quick kid) and he’s just not built to be the midfielder I need in this formation (someone who can run end to end quickly and for long periods of time).  Oh well.  That game on Saturday was his best game in a long time; he was everywhere on defense and really held the fort as we cruised to a 4-1 win. 

(started this post in November…. guess I’ll finish it now)

We finished up 3-3-2.  Beat the team that we should beat 3-2 and then came out and laid a giant egg in the very next game and got down 4-0 really quickly.  I’m actually kind of glad it happened…..I had been telling the boys that the 2-2-1 formation had one really big down side….if the two midfielders didn’t come back to play defense when the other team has the ball, we are going to give up a lot of goals really quickly.  And that’s exactly what happened.  We were tired; we hadn’t played in almost three weeks and back-to-back games with tired kids will get them to start walking and watching instead of running.  But again, I’m glad it happened…..all of the boys got to see what a good team will do to us if we stop hustling in that formation.

There’s also some TNT news rumbling around…..looks like the team will split into two teams for the spring.  I think this is a good thing for Matthew…he’ll be up with the higher group and he’ll know more what to expect from this teammates and they know what to expect from him (can’t even describe how frustrating it is to watch Matthew center ball after ball after ball this fall into the middle and watch some of the kids just not be able to handle the passes and convert….).

…a few random things…..

• Dad to Fric and Frac today.  “the mailbox is not snowball storage!”
• Cpher = Polamalu’s biggest fan.  Watches every game just to see “his guy”.  Doesn’t care a lick when the offense is on the field.
• Looked back and realized I forgot to mention a notable event in the basketball loss to Holt….it’s the fourth quarter, and Christopher is out there battling with the other team’s center for position.  The kid shoulders Cpher out of the way; Cpher gives it right back to him.  The Holt kid wants that position…Cpher isn’t budging and gives the guy back everything he is getting.  Finally the ref blows the whistle….he doesn’t call any fouls but comes over to the two of them and has a little discussion with them and play continues.  Ask Cpher about this at the end of the game and the ref was very pointed “this isn’t football!”.  Cpher was very clear that he wasn’t going to let the other guy get away with his shoving, and that’s the way it went……
• It takes a while for the photos from the OnGoal camp to show up online…that happened over the last week.  Not any of Cpher worth collecting, but, Matthew had a few good ones as he competed in the dribbling competition on the last day.

 

Basketball – Game 3

I know I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again….been crazy busy at work, so blogging is taking a back seat.

We won our third game, 24-5 against Bath.  They scored the first two points, we scored the next 22 I think.

You can see that first Bath basket in the video posted here.  I clipped out three + minutes; you can see Christopher’s two baskets in the last 30 or 45 seconds of video.  He had about 5 chances, he made two of them.  Sat a lot of the 2nd and 4th quarter; that’s a good thing, we were pasting this team and the other kids should play more when we are up like that.

The other team, as woeful as they were, did have three very big guys…there were a couple of time they put them all on the court at one time and Christopher was immediately placed back into the game at those junctures.

Basketball – Game 2

Lost, 18-11, to the same Holt team we lost to in the tournament.   I wouldn’t have guessed this; we had a big lead in that first game and blew it…I figured with our best, or 2nd best player, playing this time, things would be different.  They weren’t.

The Good:  We played solid defense, every player, every position.  Christopher had 2 steals, which is somewhat shocking, he’s supposed to stay back and hold the middle, but he came out on his guy when we were in man-to-man and one time denied the pass to his guy and the second time just reached in and knocked it loose.  He also took a nice pass and converted it into 2 points in the fourth quarter.

The Bad:  That bucket was the only made shot of his 3 or 4; just rushes things a little bit too much under the basket.  We were missing three players, so, we had a bunch of tired kids in the end (I’m not the head coach, I’m not the head asst coach, I’m the guy who keeps score, so, I don’t feel any need to worry if some kids aren’t getting enough playing time…that being said, we only had seven kids and I’m sure that two of them didn’t even play a quarter of the game).  Christopher played all but about 3 minutes (90 seconds in the 2nd quarter he was out, and he sat the last 90 seconds of the game when it was painfully obvious what the final score would be.

The Ugly:  The team, as a group, had a ton of shots and made almost none of them.  Our guards seemed to forget there were three other players on the court and tried to do everything themselves; never a good team concept. 

The boys were very goofy in practice on Tuesday…..the other coach mentioned that we seemed over-confident at practice.  Don’t think that will be a problem this week.

Season Record:  1-1. 

Seattle

Not a lot of posting because I’ve been super busy at work.

Suzanne, Kevin, and Matthew returned from Seattle late Tuesday night….they had a good time and I’ll share here the pictures they shared with me, either via text message or Facebook.

  

As I’ve said before; they had some sweet seats

 

Matthew was very excited; the tattoos were almost impossible to get off….I had to pull out the goo-be-gone stuff on Wednesday when they got home to fully eradicate the ink

 

The Seahawks fell behind 14-0…..I assume Suzanne took this picture of Kevin at some point when the Seahawks were floundering.

  

But all’s well that ends well…..they won 31-14 and here are two happy fans!

 

 

A few pictures of Matthew; one reading the funnies at breakfast one morning (I don’t think he’s ever read them at home; Suzanne found it amusing) and one of the “I want to go fishing” boy with the fish at Pike Place Market.

This was the view at dawn from the Marriott in Redmond

And they had a great view of the Space Needle when they switched over to the Westin for the last two nights downtown

You can go days (weeks!!) without seeing Mt. Ranier off in the distance; happily for the group they were able to spy it on three of the four days…this was the last day and the look out the window of the terminal as they waited to come back home

I received a lot of photos from Suzanne; she received one from me….this photo of Christopher having crashed for the night after a busy day here at home.

Weekend Update

Basketball:  Christopher’s team won the first game of the season, 31-11 against Mason.  No points for the big guy….he had at least 6 attempts and keeps rushing his shot and misses.  I need to try and find time to go and practice those up close shots with him although I’m not too sure what I can do for him, he makes them consistently in practice.  He had a lot of rebounds, and played excellent defense, even when he was matched up on the other team’s guards late in the game.

As opposed to the tournament where we were competitive and lost, this time we blew them out (it was 16-2 at the half).  Really, it could have been 51-11…if Christopher had made any of his shots and the other kids not taken so many long range jumpers and just driven the ball inside.  But, a win is a win is a win and everyone certainly got a chance to play.  While the game was still ‘in doubt’ Christopher played most of it; he only came out for 90 seconds on the game clock in the first half.

The Mason team, on average, was about 1-2” shorter than each of our corresponding players (and their big guy wasn’t very good….).  Lots of blocks, lots of turnovers for them.  To be fair, it was their first game, and we had played in the tourney….

Refrigerator:  Suzanne’s been wanting to ‘upgrade’ our aged decrepit fridge for a while.  There’s been one big obstacle to this plan; when we redid the kitchen we put the cabinet above the fridge and left only 2-3 inches of clearance.  That was fine then, but, now, you can’t find a fridge that is shorter than the room we had.  So, this purchase was put off, and put off, and put off, and finally we realized we were going to have to take down that cabinet if we wanted to upgrade.

Now, of all the cabinets we installed, that cabinet, the one above the fridge, was the biggest pain-in-the-ass.  It’s heavy, way heavy, and it’s deep, so, securing it to the back wall is a huge challenge because you have to be standing high enough to reach inside it the 30” to get to the support screws AND it’s so stinking heavy that it’s very difficult to maintain the cabinet in place while you are doing this.  I remember finally having to utilize the fridge as a support and put phone books between the cabinet and the fridge to get that bastard in place.

I swore, after I got it up there, that it was never coming down.

Of course, last night, I took it down.

(insert music from ‘2001’ here)

It was not easy getting this bad boy into place, it takes up every bit of clearance between the walls and cabinets.  In fact, you’ll notice the drawers are gone on the bottom cabinet….the 1/2” thick cover panel that used to sit just to the right of those cabinets had to come out.  So, last minute, I had to remove all the screws that held the cover panel in place.

Putting the cabinet back above the fridge is a challenge that will wait a week or two….there are logistical challenges (I have to saw off two bolts I never thought I’d have to remove and I have to hang another support bar above the current support bar) that need to be solved before that project can occur.

Away:  Suzanne, Kevin, and Matthew are away in the Pacific Northwest this weekend.

 

It’s a sports weekend in Seattle; Saturday was University of Washington –vs- Texas Tech in basketball….the Huskies won easily.  Tomorrow is the trip to Qwest Field for the Seachicken, er, Seahawk game.