Nicholas' Wrestling Season

Nicholas's season started in earnest in January.  He had good meets and bad meets but overall had a good season!

At the Neumann tournament.

He came in first at Raymond Central!

 Jacob and Nicholas were taking turns doing well.  It seemed like if Jacob had a good meet, Nick lost all his matches and vise versa.  It teaches you to be a good teammate.

They did finally manage to come in first and second at their respective weights one meet!  I've forgotten which one though and don't seem to have a picture.

Nicholas went into Districts really hoping to make it to state this year.  He hadn't ever made it and he knew his brothers all had by the time they were in 6th grade.  Also his buddy Jacob is small so he's never had more than four in his bracket so he's gone every year.  There was a little debating about what weight to enter Nicholas in.  He and his teammate Turner both weighed in at 88 pounds- and Nick has yet to beat Turner.  In the end they both entered the same weight class which worked out just fine.

Nicholas came in 3rd and Turner came in 2nd.  Both headed to state as well as most of the other 5/6th boys in Cavalry.  They were all really happy!

He had a good time at State and got two wins before going out.  Not close to medals but still goal achieved- he got wins at state.

Congrats on a great season Nicholas!

Pops Concert

The Pops concert was big band themed this year!  Right up my alley since I did a big band marching show and winter guard show to big band music!

Mr. Kellett had room for dancing.  It wasn't exactly the Jitterbug but people danced.

This was the best we could do for dressing to the theme.

 

Nice concert Julia and Philip!

Speech Season

 Julia did speech again this year and liked it a lot better.  (She tried it her sophomore year and ended up quitting part way through the season.) They have a new coach who has lots of experience coaching speech which helped but most of all she had friends doing it too.  She did a solo serious prose about Nora who had run away from an abusive dad with her sister but then her sister got stung by a bee and died.  She also did Oral Interpretation of Drama which is a group that puts on about 15 minutes of a play.  It was about a family whose kind of estranged son died in a car accident and his heart was donated to a girl who was struggling to want to live...  Julia likes dark themes!  I was feeling guilty that I hadn't been able to see her perform but then I went...and decided once or twice is enough.  Watching dark, depressing serious prose and OIDs over and over is not for me!  I did go with her to watch a couple of the more humorous ones which helped lighten things up.

She did very well for her first full year of speech and enjoyed it a lot!

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!  

 

Happy Birthday Nicholas!

Julia made him a Twinkie inspired cake.  Julia went with candles like me...use what you've got and try to get them to add up to the right number.  8 candles + the 4 = 12 years old.

(Still had some tall Grandma Carlson candles around.  She always had them- where did she get them?  I've never seen them in a store.)

Nick was easy to shop for this year.  The unused part of his Christmas list was still a mile long.

Happy to do some living room farming with his new gear.

 Here's to our last year with someone younger than a teen in the house!

We love you Nick!

Christmas Break Adventure

Christmas break felt nice and long this year.  I was done on the 17th and the kids were done on the 20th.  So we had a few days to finish getting ready before Christmas, a few days of celebrating and a week and a half afterwards too.  By the last Friday of break we were ready to get out of the house so Philip, Nicholas and I decided an adventure was in order.  They picked a rock climbing gym I'd seen advertised this summer but we hadn't made it to.  

When we walked in it didn't look like much but it ended up being challenging and fun.  I say that as if I tried climbing.  I didn't.  I watched and encouraged.  Now that I've observed I'd be willing to try it but boy, you need a lot of arm and hand strength that I'm sure I don't have.

The gym didn't have too many other climbers that day so there was no waiting.  There were a couple groups of people who seemed to be regulars, and one little boy, maybe three or four who was climbing with his dad and took a minute to make sure I was admiring how incredibly good his dad was at climbing.  If I was four and my dad was that high off the ground, I'd be impressed too!  :)

The first wall was just vertical.  Obviously you can climb however you want but they do have color coordinated paths that are labeled by difficulty.  The grey pyramids are free game to use while climbing any path.  VB is for beginners and it quickly gets harder.  I think the red path Philip was on was a V2 and Nick's green path a V3-4 (probably because there's a big gap between where he is and those big green grips by Philip).

The second wall was also just vertical but it had a place you could climb up on top of and a corner you could make your way around..

The last one had an inverse incline so you would be hanging upside down.  It was by far the hardest.  Philip finally gave up on climbing UP the incline, climbed up next to it, crossed over a bit and then climbed DOWN the incline.

Up

Over

Down

Nick tried too but it was so much harder than it looked.  He ended up just grabbing what he could.

It's super tiring but there's also a lot of chairs facing the wall so you can sit, rest and plan your next climb.  The planning part turned out to be really important.  Also the pass is good for all day.  The boys climbed for about an hour, we went to lunch, did some errands and then went back for an hour and a half.  They did more sitting and planning when we went back because it turned out their arms were still tired from the morning.

It was fun and I think we'd go back.  The price wasn't too bad but I saw they run a special on 1st Fridays so I'll have to see if we happen to have any off of school!