Friday 24 February 2017

A Week in Review (February 19-25)

A Week in Review (February 19-25)

Watched: Jack, as he puts it "break the ankles of the best player on their team" with an excellent move during his Saturday basketball game. He got a steal and had a breakaway drive. The opposing team best player tried to block that shot, and Jack had an excellent cut that allowed him to finish driving to the basket. He was proud of himself too!  I'm glad that we found this opportunity for him to be able to play basketball that doesn't interfere with his wrestling schedule. I don't think we'll be as lucky next year when he wrestles in the afternoon. 

Read:  I finished up The Second Mrs. Hockaday this week.  An excellent Civil War novel. It's told in a unique way through diary entries, letters, and some third person. If you liked The Kitchen House, I think you would enjoy this story also. It's a fairly quick read.  I have a couple more books that I need to get to fairly quickly, but I didn't read a lot during the second of half of the week.  Hopefully I will still be able to bring you a review of one of them this next week.

Listened: To Jack excitedly talk about chess. He and Nick have a long game going where they each make a move at different times throughout the day. He always looks every morning to see what Nick has played. We had to take a picture and send it to Nick so that he would know Jack had put him in check. 

Made: A lot of edits to Nick's writing for a presentation that he has coming up for this week.  Everything at work had just piled up this week on him and he spent at least 70 hours at week missing Jack's two final wrestling practices and getting next to no sleep.  Saturday night was more of the same as he sat down to write this out. He is very precise with his words and will spend hours making sure he has selected the right ones to convey his meaning. Since this presentation was for an everyman, I went through it to tell him what didn't make sense and what could be reworded. We worked into the wee hours of Sunday morning, ending up only get a few hours sleep before needing to wake and head to support our club's rookie wrestlers. It was nice, but exhausting, to work through it with him. 

Felt: Thankful to Mindy for a couple hours to run errands on Monday. She took Jack and her boys swimming at the Y since she had President's Day off.  When they were done, she swung them by and grabbed them a pizza before dropping them off.  They played here for several more hours.  It's so nice to have friends to help fill the days off.  Again on Friday, she helped us by taking Jack to practice so that we could help with weigh-ins for state. It ended up going extra long and she took him back to her house afterwards.  Then we went to dinner on Saturday night on their gift card from Christmas. 

Planned: A whole new layout for the yearbook. We aren't getting the parent response that I thought we would for photographs, so we had to take a different approach to the look. I think it will still be fine. I am glad to be working with some people who are flexible and I feel won't let me down. 

Loved: The determination that Jack shows during wrestling. It's amazing to watch him attempt to work through matches even when he is hurt. In his first match he took a hard cross face that caused him to knock a tooth a little loose and bite his lip. Both caused quite a bit of blood and to make him look like a boxer. His second match he just fought amazingly against another talented opponent. His final match was with a guy who worked the upper body. It made him have a bloody nose, opened his mouth wound, and took an impressive claw mark on the arm. Not once did allow these physical ailments to bother him. He just kept fighting through it.  I hope he continues to love wrestling and has a long career with it. I think it teaches him grit, determination, and excellent sportsmanship. 

Here are the pics for the week:


 

 
 

Thursday 16 February 2017

A Week in Review (February 12-18)

A Week in Review (February 12-18)

Watched: A comeback for the ages with the KU vs West Virginia game Monday night. They were down 14 points with just a little under 3 minutes. The announcers were giving all the stats about the last time KU had lost two back to back home games. People were leaving the Fieldhouse before the end of the game.  But they just reached down deep and made the most epic comeback. We were all very amped and had a hard time falling asleep. 

Read: I finished up Our Souls at Night.  The positives for this book were: It frequently mentioned places I was familiar with. It was also very short.  The cons for this book: It was lackluster. It didn't go anywhere. I couldn't really connect with Addie or Louis. The writing style drove me bonkers.  It's not a book that I would recommend unless you are one of the people who has to read the book before the movie.  I hopped back over to The New York Regional Mormon Singles Dance.

Listened: To Jack ask to play a lot of chess. He's really been into it since he joined the chess club at his school, but this week they announced that they are having a chess tournament and the top three kids from each grade get to represent the school. Jack is just sure that he can make it. I'm not sure how he can go from novice to representing the school in a few weeks, but I'll know he'll try which I think is totally cool. 

Made: An appointment with a mobile detailer who came to buff out the paint transfer that happened when a gal was trying to park at school on Valentine's Day. I don't even really mind that it happened as the car has lots of those scrapes from the 11 years that I have owned it. What bothered me is that she obviously hit me, in front of several people, and didn't bother to leave a note or stick around.  Another parent from the school caught it and posted a picture to our neighborhood Facebook group.  I used that information to track her down in the parking lot the next day. She claimed she was so stressed that she just forgot she scraped me. She says she will pay for the buff, but I'm not holding my breath. 

Felt: Excited when our head coach reported that we had made a little over $3000 for our club at our tournament. This helps us to support our Champions with Character gear and have fun parties for the kids. I also am hoping that it gives way to be able to have a larger fund so the Coach isn't having to layout personal funds to pay for our gym rental. 

Planned: Catching up on chores and homework on Wednesday, instead waited 45 minutes for dinner at Tucano's.  Tucano's is the local Brazilian steakhouse and it was quite yummy.  We really didn't think we would need reservations for a Wednesday night but we were clearly wrong. Next time, we will call in regardless of what day of the week. 

Loved: Valentine's Day. I was able to take in pizza and flavored water for Jack and his classmates. Plus, the whoopie cushion Valentine's that we made for his classmates.  His teacher had them each write a compliment for each other on a piece of paper. Jack's love of sports was a common component. I also loved that there were a lot of people who mentioned that he was kind. Nick and I enjoyed a lunch together because we had wrestling that evening. We decided not to exchange gifts because we are going on our trip in March.  We spent the evening at wrestling practice. It's hard to believe that there is only one more week after this week. 

Here are the pics for the week:

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 14 February 2017

A Week in Review (February 5-11)

A Week in Review (February 5-11)

Watched: I got all caught up on my TV shows that our currently airing.  I am really enjoying the new Masterpiece show, Victoria.  It's a British royals documentary, but it's not an era that I am very familiar with so I very intrigued by all.  I know it is a doing a great job entertaining me when I am googling things to learn more about them after the show just briefly covered them.  I also watched the movie Split with Nick while Jack got to celebrate his birthday with his Tio & Aunt Jess.  It had me totally creeped out. 

Read:  I was able to finish up Carry On.  When I first started I didn't know if I was going to be able to finish because it seemed like such heavy Harry Potter fan fiction. It took about the first quarter of the book for it actually take on its own personality. I ended up enjoying most of story. Although when I was trying to think of who I would recommend it too, I couldn't come up with any particular thing to say.  Next, I started a chapter in The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir.  It didn't really float my boat and so I decided to go with Our Souls At Night, which just came off my holds list.  It's a very short book, so I will definitely have a review of next week.

Listened: To the loud boom of the Dart Warz speaker as our school hosted a fundraising night there on Thursday.  We were able to take Landon and many of Jack's classmates showed up.  We got the benefit of the worker's sloppy writing and the boys were able to play for an hour and half for the price of only one hour.  It made squeezing in dinner in the car and wrestling practice extra tight, but luckily I was prepared for that and we squeezed into practice just in the nick of time.

Made: Jack an absolutely amazing Valentine's Day box.  This is the first year that we have gotten advance notice to make a box at home. He said he wanted the theme of Jayhawk's but didn't want to help make it.  After a google search, I decided to make a basketball jersey box. Luckily, Roy and Nick have had lots of conversations about Trajan font, so I was able to download the font that matched the jersey perfectly. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Hopefully the kids like it a lot too. 

Felt: So thankful to be part of such a fun book club that really spends time discussing the book that we read for the month.  There had been lots of talk of reading a classic, so I suggested reading Murder on the Orient Express for our next novel.  It is coming out as a movie again this year and I thought maybe we could all go and see it together too.  It will be my first Agatha Christie book so I am looking forward to it.  She is one of Nick's favorite author's so I think it will be neat to finally share that with him.

Planned: All sorts of meals at home for Jack and I.  Nick was out of town this week which generally means that we will eat out often or eat snack type dinners.  We actually had yummy teriyaki chicken, pork chops, and a couple other yummy things.  I guess the more often Nick goes out of town, the more used it to we become.  He has been gone so much lately, but we are glad to say that, as now, he will be in town for three weeks.  He's gone a good chunk of March, but I guess you take what you can get!

Loved: Seeing all the volunteers come out to make our club ran tournament totally awesome.  It was great working a big event knowing that there were other people that I could count on to make the tournament great for everyone involved.  I didn't hear any complaints and I thought our club represented really well.  I made easy to read concession signs that I was quite proud of.  I also helped Coach upload some training videos and create a mock match.  Our table help really seemed to get it and we impressed the league too.  Hopefully we will be able to get another tournament in next  year.  I am also very glad to say that I was able to make it to each of Jack's matches.  He ended up with 2nd again, losing his only match 0-1 with an escape point.  He was so close to flipping him and I wanted him to know which is why you will here me yelling "You're going to lose."  I wanted him to know how hard he had to push.  It didn't work out, but I super proud of how hard he wrestled.  His opponent has only had wins by pins so I think that it is very impressive that Jack did not let him get a take down on him.  You can watch his matches HERE, HERE, and HERE.  

Here are the pics for the week:

 

 


 
 

Sunday 5 February 2017

A Week in Review (January 29-February 4)

A Week in Review (January 29-February 4)

Watched:  I got all caught up to live on Modern Family.  It is such a fun show and I love just getting lost with the Pritchett clan for 30 minute segments.  If you are looking for a show to watch, I would highly recommend starting with that one.

Read: A lot this week.  I made quick order of our next book club selection, I See You.  I thought this was a really clever book. I spent the entire time trying to guess who was behind it all. I thought it was an extremely fast read. I wonder if it will spawn a sequel. I actually preferred this one to the author's first novel, I Let You Go.  I also wrapped up Dark Matter.  What a unique book! For the first 1/4 of the book, I felt utterly lost. I asked Nick, who loves all things science, to explain some things to me because I was sure I was missing something. Shortly there after, the author started mentioning the things he had told me about. I would recommend this book to others just so that I could have people to discuss it with.  Jack and I also wrapped up Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio.  What an absolutely moving and amazing memoir. I felt all of Peg's aches and pains and struggled with her during her journey. I felt taken back to a time when it was just the radio and books to entertain you. When she mentions in the epilogue that she cried for joy when her kids received the polio vaccine, my eyes teared up a bit. I am so thankful to live in a era where vaccines prevent illness that use to impact the population so devastatingly.  I started on Carry On, which almost feels like Harry Potter fan fiction.  Since I read at such a frenetic pace this week and my coming week is pretty full, I am not sure I will have a review for you next week.

Listened: To Jack weigh all the pro's and con's for a friends birthday gift.  He put everything in the cart and got them all side by side and selected one for his friend.  He ended up with a football that his friend seemed to enjoy immensely.  It was pretty neat looking.  Of course, when we were in the Nerf gun aisle, the money he had in his wallet ended up burning a hole in it and he selected a Nerf gun for himself too.  The packaging was the same size as Jack and slightly hilarious to see.  We made him take a picture with it, just for prosperity sake.  

Made: A ridiculously long trip to Sam's Club buying food and supplies for the concession stand for Jack's upcoming wrestling tournament.  The other mother and I had four flat beds full.  10 packs of 40 water bottles and 12 packs of 24 Gatorade bottles, and 8 36 packs of soda was quite a lot in itself not to mention the items for nachos, meatball, subs, candy, etc.  Luckily, her daughter is away at college without her car and we were able to just load it in without having to unload it before the tournament on the 11th.  The poor suspension on the vehicle will really be taking a beating though!  I followed her home for quite some time and had to grab a picture of her low rider and text it to her with the lyrics "All my friends drive a low rider."  Haha

Felt: Disappointed with Jack.  He really just had an off day in sports on Saturday, where I felt like he wasn't really concentrating on the task at hand.  His bracket only had two other wrestlers in it, which is always a bummer.  He ended up with one win and one loss.  The loss is pretty awful and if you have tuned into his other videos you will definitely see what I mean.  You can watch them HERE and HERE.

Planned: For my brother and his wife to arrive late Friday night for a fun-filled weekend with us.  However, they got about 25 miles outside of town and their car ended up giving them trouble and making weird noises.  They decided it was best not to press on since they were travelling so late at night and in lots of areas without cell service.  The next morning they got on the road again and showed up around 4:30.  Jack wasted no time getting right down to the business of playing.  There was a small wrestling match, a lot of Nerf wars, a game of Sequence, a game of Neighbor, and even a dinner at HuHot.  We also spent plenty of time hinting about what they were going to do for his birthday celebration with him.  It is a surprise trip back to the museum he attended on his field trip.

Loved: The way the snow clung to the trees during out last winter weather.  The weather was really warm early in the week and then a storm rolled in late Wednesday night.  It didn't bring more than 1/2 of snow, but the way it just clung to the trees was so beautiful.  I tried to take an artsy picture of our evergreen because it was just so picturesque.  I didn't like the bitter cold  or lack of sun that came with the storm but at least it provided white frosted scene to look at during those bleak couple of days.

Here are the pics for the week:

So full!
 

Isn't it pretty?
 

Baby Von Miller.  I was the only person I surveyed that found this cute instead of creepy.  I just don't get how people don't see darling!
 

I think the box is bigger than he is!
 

One of my mom's presents didn't make it before she left to come down here, so she sent it down with Kyle and Jess.  It's a perfectly replica of the face her cat makes often.  Too bad it couldn't have been in black and white to match his looks too.