Happy Birthday Julia!

 17 years old...my time with another girl in the house is slipping away.

Grandma Susan made her a nice cake.

She was hoping to see Hadestown but man were those tickets expensive.  Hopefully Hamilton in April.

We love you Julia!

2nd half of Philip's Wrestling Season

So these pictures are in reverse.  End of season to the middle of the season.

This is how Philip celebrated the end of wrestling season.  A nice carb-filled lunch at Olive Garden on our way to watch State Wrestling!

After Christmas he wrestled 120 and did really well at that weight.  He had a great season for his freshman year!  He had over a 50% win record and did a lot of growing.  Not body growing- mind set growing, which is pretty much more important than any other kind of growing in wrestling.  He has always been our most emotion wrestler on the mat.  He made really great strides keeping it together on the mat no matter how the match was going.  I'm so proud of you Philip!

I must have taken pictures at districts on Jeremy's phone.  Philip wrestled really well but went out in the heartbreak round.  There were four ranked wrestlers in his bracket and top four go to State.  He was happy to get a couple mentions in wrestling commentaries about being in the running  in our district- even if they all said he'd have to pull off a big upset in order to make it.  

This was parents night at Neumann's dual with Public.  The dual only had three matches *insert eye roll here.  But Philip was one of the three and he won!  Neuman won the dual for the third year in a row I believe!

Somewhere along the way Philip introduced us to a part of wrestling we'd managed to avoid for over 10 year...cauliflower ear.  Stupid.  And yes, he was wearing hear gear.   He's not sure how it happened.  We'd noticed his swollen up ear but I didn't know anything about cauliflower ear so I figured the swelling would eventually go down.  Nope.  You have to get it drained.  The sooner the better.   Our small town doctor didn't want to do it because he had no experience with it.  So off the ENT Philip went.  Since we weren't too quick on the uptake it needed drained and scraped out and then he got one stitch to hold the hole the space where the blood had been together.  And no wrestling for a week when you feel fine but have this stupid ear you can't bonk.  He had to miss the Neumann tournament.  Oh well.

The ENT told Jeremy how to take out the stitch so that we wouldn't have to come back for a two minute procedure.  Imagining fussing and cussing in our bathroom as the stitch came out, I opted to ask our PA friend Laura to take it out instead.  So Philip had another first- stitch taken out in the bleachers at Neumann.  I'd like to say that was the last of the ear but it wasn't.  It immediately flared back up after his first match back.  By then it was time for districts so he just wrestled and then got it drained the following week.  No stitch this time because there's little danger of it getting hit while sprinting.  And now he has a lovely wrestling souvenir- a slightly deformed ear.  It's really not that noticeable.

He came in fourth at Arlington which I think was the first time he broke into medals!

Congratulations on a great freshman season Philip!