A little behind here at BNS again…..
There’s nothing wrong with being behind…..the screen.
Coming Attractions:
Fall Futbol – Game 3; the referee decides to have ‘words’ with Matthew….
Football(!) – Game 2; another trip to the woodshed for the opponents…..
Iphone Photo Dump
First Month of School Update
So just sit back, relax, and chill out. We’ll get something online soon enough!
Trudge down to Canton (6:10 am wake-up time, ugh!) for the first two games of the fall season.
The good thing this year is that we are playing the best of the best in this 8v8 league; I don’t think there’s a tougher U10 division in a league in this state. And that’s a bad thing as well, since, I’m not completely convinced we’re ready for that…..we don’t practice as a team for the most part (we practice with the other 8 kids who play on the 6v6 team). The other teams have played three or four games in pre-season tournaments; we had to schedule a scrimmage with the older age group to try and get ready for the weekend.
I’ve told Suzanne that I think Sunday morning could be really ugly….
Game 1: 8:30 am start against the Tigers. They’ve been featured here before; we lost to them in the Canton Cup in a crazy game. *They* played in a preseason tournament with the two soccer clubs that everyone would agree are the best in the state and won the tournament. My hope for this game? To not lose by more than five goals……
And the first half went by much as I thought it would and we were down 3-0. The first goal seemed like it shouldn’t have happened; our goalie bobbled the ball and they punched it in. The other two goals, well, that’s how it rolls when you play with the big boys…..
Second half starts and it’s pretty even….and about 10 minutes into the 30 minute half they make a mistake on a goal kick and turn it over and we punch it in….it’s 3-1. And it is a completely different game after that….
They, by and large, are better than us on the first touch and seem to have a lot of possession. But that changed as the game went on and after a scrum around the net (Matthew picked off a pass and centered it….and after three of four different players on our team touched it we scored) it’s 3-2. And momentum, fickle thing that it is, is clearly on our side.
With about three minutes to go we get a 2-on-1 and score and it’s tied up. The last two minutes of the game had all seven Tiger field players in their deep quarter of the field desperately trying to hold the boys off…..we don’t score, the game ends as a 3-3 tie.
Some ties suck….this tie, it was pretty clear who was ecstatic about it and who was hanging their heads like they had lost….
Matthew played well; held the line on defense and chipped in with possession and offense when needed. I’ve written here that I don’t particularly care for Matthew sliding so much during the game but this game sealed it for me; Coach Alex is all in favor if you do it right, and Matthew does it better than most. Many times when I’m muttering that he’s on the field on his butt, Alex is yelling “Good stuff, Matthew”, etc. I’ve told Matthew I’m sorry, and will shut up on this subject, but, if you slide, get up fast…..
Game 2: Play at noon against Waza. They lost at the same time we were playing earlier; they lost to the Tigers 4-0 on Saturday. So, expectations are a little higher for this game….
…and the boys came out so flat it was scary. No hustle, no energy, and Waza cleaned their clock, 8-2.
Literally, not less than 15 seconds after the game started, the Waza player dribbled by one guy, completely blew by Matthew and blasted the ball by our goalie for the first goal.
They scored again in the first half to make it 2-0 going into the break. Matthew looked dead on his feet; hard to think he’s out of shape with all of the stuff that kid does but he just was not here today…..and our defense paid for it. He was not the only one with dead legs out there though….
Suzanne got these shots of him making his moves….
And I think those two moves were being made as he tried to get by this Waza player. Unlike the girls from the Ox Roast tournament, who play with girl teams during the regular season, this one plays with the boys.
I told Matthew after one of the Ox Roast games that he “ate the other team’s lunch”….his passes just tore them apart. I told Matthew after this game that he needs to ask this girl for his lunch money back. She beat him so badly on multiple occasions the only thing we can do is joke about it now and resolve to do better next time. She scored four goals, and two of them (including that one I described above) were possible because she made moves to go by Matthew and had wide open shots on goal.
Now, he had his success against her at times, but, in the end, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he had nightmares about her…..
Five minutes left in the game, the Lunch Girl gets two fingers into Matthew’s eyes and he’s down for a moment and out of the game (afterwards it was pretty swollen but no bruising). It’s 4-2 when Matthew leaves, and our defense decides to check out of the game as well and they score four goals over the next five minutes to coast to the 8-2 win.
I imagine practice this week will be interesting……I know a lot of the post-game talk after this game was on being ready mentally. Looks to be a real even grouping of teams too…six teams, no team with two losses, only one team undefeated after two games. Of course, our next two games, away and at home, are against that outfit.
Travelled to Grand Ledge for the first of our three games against the Comets. GL is a traditional football powerhouse around here (as opposed to us, where it’s a definite afterthought on the athletic scene); they have 10(!) teams in the 4/5 age group; we have two.
Boys are a little subdued on the car ride there; they’ve admitted to a little nervousness about facing GL. I thought that we would fare pretty well; we’re a big team and a fast team, and that’s really 80% of it at this age level. And, as opposed to last year, I think we’re really well coached.
We rolled to a 36-0 win. We were up 28-0 at the half; GL did not have a first down in the first half.
Pre-Game:
Even though Cpher’s jersey says XL; it turns out that it’s smaller than Matthew’s, and there was a little bit of unhappiness about the fit before the game. When asked at the end of the game, he said it was just fine, so, we won’t be switching….but his unhappiness may be reflected in this frown of a photo.
This is the first photo showing the cleats; he wanted black and gold. They are great for one thing; never mind that he’s the tallest on the field or the only Okemos player with a maroon facemask (he needed a special helmet to fit his big head!)……you can always find the cleats, especially when he’s on the ground in the pile!
Matthew has black and blue cleats and, as youl’ll see, is a little harder to spot in the fray.
First Half:
All of the boys were assigned positions for each half; Christopher started the game as Right Tackle on offense, Matthew started as one of the two middle linebackers on defense.
Two videos have been uploaded for your perusal; I’ve clipped out some of the video as pictures to talk about here….one video for each half. You can click on any photo to take you to the video (but, sadly, not to that exact spot in the video).
First Play of the Game: Highlighted here to show just how far Cpher was pushing kids off the line of scrimmage. This play was the first good chuckling moment for Mom and Dad of the game….
Second Play of the Game: More of the same for Cpher
The third play on this video is Matthew; for the first two drives he hung back at MLB and held the fort….the coaches finally got around to encouraging him to charge forward and make the play, and this is the first time he does what he had been very good at doing at practice, shooting through the line (even though he’s not there in time to make the tackle this time)
Fourth play on the video is Matthew’s highlight of the day; he recovers the GL fumble because he was charging forward….
Last play on the video; Matthew’s one tackle of the first half, even then, he shares it with a teammate.
Second Half:
For the second half, Matthew moves to offense as Left Tackle, and Cpher is playing defensive tackle and defensive end.
First play of this video is Matthew on offense. He’s a little more about his technique than Cpher is on the line….shooting his arms out repeatedly to keep the opponent away
Second play is Cpher located almost in the middle of the line….and taking a double team and standing them up at the line
Cpher is now playing defensive end….and this play leads to his first tackle of the game as he moves down the line and hits the ball carrier.
Fourth play is almost the same as the first…but he doesn’t get enough of the running back to bring him down.
Next play is the other Mom and Dad chuckling moment…double-teamed again, Cpher literally tosses the second guy behind him and to the ground to end the blocking
Cpher’s last tackle of the game
Was checking this out tonight; I expect our address to show up shortly since the google-mobile was sighted in the area
Anyway……
If I didn’t enter the address I wouldn’t have believed it was the same house. I remember the house across the street to be nothing but bushes and shrubs….not so much anymore.
Looks mostly the same…..
How long ago did they come through here? That’s the most amazing part of this picture, that Google was in Niceville so long ago…
I could waste a whole lot of time here tonight…..
Football starts Saturday….but the pictures were handed out at practice today
The group mug shot. Both boys didn’t fare so well here…..
Almost never takes a bad picture…..complains that his hair was too long for this one though
A surprisingly good picture of Matthew….while Christopher wanted to be 43, Matthew wanted 26 but in the end only had Dad to choose his number from the five jersey’s that were available. Can’t see it all here, but, gave him a good Steeler number…
Glad we paid extra for the “buddy” shot….also purchased buttons for Mom to wear on game days!
The work-at-home thing has been good, but, man, it’s been tough this summer trying to get stuff done and shuttle boys here and there and, most of all, have them keep their activities to a dull roar while I’m working and especially while I’m on calls.
So, hooray, today is the first day of school!
Matthew: Last year at Bennett Woods; he’s the big man on campus. Doing the safety thing, so, he has to be there thirty minutes early to keep the little kids safe and wave the parents through the drop-off line. First time he has a teacher that no other boy has had before either…..
On Friday in Michigan we had a heat advisory; today they are talking frost advisory, so, the boys are decked out in shorts and sweatshirts.
Christopher: Going where no boy has gone before, Kinawa. Kevin never attended that school and only the recent reorganizations have moved Christopher there for 5th and 6th grade. We missed all of the orientation activities; missed any chance to have Cpher go over and walk around, so, we looked at a map of the school and headed off to the bus this morning. I think that he’ll take the bus in the mornings (there are only four more stops before the bus gets to the school) but, he’ll get picked up in the afternoon most days (since if he takes the bus it will take almost an hour to get home with all of the other stops….)
Suzanne and I are more than a little curious on how today will go for him; there’s a whole lot of ‘new’ today for the big guy….
Kevin: Not much to report here…..sophomore days at the high school. He had two books to read for AP World History; he’s completed those (with only a moderate amount of nudging from his parents) and seems to be ready to go. Don’t think that the class, even though it’s AP, is going to prove much of a challenge for geography-history boy. Still have him signed up for the upper-math track, and Pre-calc honors will be the challenge this year.
Boys: The usual day of school pictures…..
The fishing went so well that Matthew gave up our trip to the park (either the water park or to Hollywood Studios) to continue the aquatic removals. Of course, Christopher wasn’t entirely on board with this new plan but said OK after a promise of eBay Jedi acquisition and a commitment by Dad to spend the next two evenings miniature golfing.
Mini golf is a good choice; we don’t ever do this in Orlando and the golf course, like everything else around here, is dead dead dead. Wednesday’s 18 holes of mini-goodness was at Pirate’s Cove (which it turns out has more than one location around here…these pictures are the location near I-4.
These pictures are also on Holes 10-18….because these two were fairly serious about the golf for nine holes but turned decidedly silly for the last half
Very silly, with lightning and thunder in the distance as we finished….
Thursday morning…back at it. His casts got a little too close to the dock in the background and he was chased away from this location by the staff for a few hours. Very sad about this, as most of the fish hang out in the shadows in the day when it’s hot…..
Mini-Golf Day 2: Congo Golf? completely blanking on the name now, on I-Drive just north of the hotel…..
The goofiness was on earlier in this round…..too many chances for the ball to hit the water and the boys seemed to invariably find their way to the waterfalls and creeks…
Highlight at Congo Golf is purchasing little pieces of hot dogs to the small alligators….just another waste of a few dollars….
Went to Dave & Busters for dinner. That machine in the back ground? You can see the “The”….it’s “The Giant Claw”. We universally believe that claw games are a complete waste of money (as opposed to the arcade games and ticket games, which are just partial wastes of money). But Christopher won this blue monkey there in the shocking move of the night…….
The last picture of summer; on the sand at Cocoa Beach. The waves here weren’t as large and weren’t as frequent as the Gulf earlier this week, but, what they lacked in height they made up for in ‘mass’….they were some big waves!
You can see the nice blue skies and clouds in the first picture; you can see the gray in the background here….that’s the rain shower that blew through while were on the beach and in the ocean. Rained pretty good for a while; the drops were hard enough that Matthew thought it was hailing.
We’ve done the Disney/Universal shuffle; I’ve been at the park as it’s opened and watched the firework as it closes. This trip was planned to NOT be those trips….we *might* go to one park one day, but, most likely, that would be a water park. The rest of the trip was planned to be activities at the resort or trips in and around Orlando.
The main pool at Cypress Harbour; there is actually a pool that we spent more time at closer to our room. We only came over here once; played some volleyball but then had to cut the visit short due to lightning and thunder…
Went to the activities center during the rain where Suzanne and I continued our long-running Ms. Pac Man battle. I thrashed her this go-round. We don’t play Galaga….that’s only for me when I have more than 30 minutes to spend….
They wouldn’t let us play basketball during the light rain, but, would let the boys play shuffleboard. Christopher seemed to grasp the concept and the strategy quickly and was getting the best of Matthew early….Matthew finally got the right touch and the game was more even near the end
On Sunday, we drove out to Tampa/St. Pete to hit the beach…..we made sure to drive over the Skyway Bridge; this picture is from the south side.
The Pink Hotel, the Don Cesar, near St. Pete Beach.
The plan was to go to Fort Desoto park and North Beach, ranked America’s best beach in 2005. Suzanne and I came away very underwhelmed; there wasn’t a lot of beach to set up your ‘stuff’ on…..
Matthew set up his towel in front of us to ‘soak up the sun’. Here he’s being kind of stupid, trying to drink his Mountain Dew while lying down…as you would expect, he sat up quickly after choking and spilling blue liquid everywhere.
The water was warm, the waves were a little rough, but not bad. Shells were few and far between, but, when you did find them, they were huge. A lot of big shells are coming home to Michigan with us…..
Left here mid-afternoon and drove up and around St. Pete Beach for a while. Had dinner at Dockside Dave’s, and then headed back to St. Pete Beach in the evening for more swimming, and, more importantly, to be there for sunset.
At St. Pete Beach….this boy didn’t do a great job of applying sunscreen and is a little red at this point
The sunset pictures are Suzanne’s; I’m out in the water with Fric and Frac. The waves here were a little rougher than at North Beach, and, they were a heck of a lot more frequent. Very hard to find shells in the water with that many waves coming in…..
The beach here had layers of small shells on top of the sand, and we found more than a few big ones out in the water, but, no shells were as big as we found at North Beach. Ended up giving a lot of the smaller big shells to some girls colleting shells along the shore….
Sunset was kind of a bust….these clouds wiped out the show about 15 minutes shy of actual sunset.
Suzanne flew home Monday evening leaving me and the boys here for the rest of the week…Monday night was drinks, chips, and Risk. The boys brutally eliminated me from the game (reluctant to attack each other, but gleeful in attacking Dad).
One of the big reasons we chose this resort as opposed to another Marriott property in Orlando was that you could fish…and Matthew has been dying to fish all summer. Tuesday morning, bright and early, he’s over renting a pole and purchasing some nightcrawlers and doing his thing.
I could not have done this when I was little, I certainly don’t have the patience to do it now. He spent ALL DAY Tuesday fishing…I had to walk over and bring him lunch! Christopher had fun at times, but, this was not the do-all-and-be-all thing for him…we watched The Price is Right together while I worked in between Cpher’s fishing breaks.
So what did he catch? Some tarpon, some baby bass, some large-mouthed bass. And when he went back at night, he pulled a catfish out of the pond as well. Yes, he went back at night after dinner
Turns out this boy pulled the biggest fish out of the pond……Matthew probably caught 15 to 20 fish over the course of the week and Cpher caught less than 5….but Cpher at the end of the day Thursday pulled two almost foot-long bass out of the pond.
Matthew has some pictures of his fish on his Itouch…I’ll grab them at some point and post them here.
