Freshman Basketball

Alex had a great basketball season this year. It was capped off with a banquet last month where he was awarded the MVP of the Freshman team!! Good job, man!!!

Here's Alex with Reagan and Coach Chapman.

And here is Alex with the Varsity coach, Coach P.



It was a lot of fun watching Alex play ball this year! Keep up the good work!!

My how you've grown!!

Alex has had a huge growth spurt lately ..... 

See for yourself ..... here he is with BigPa ......

Being tall makes him smile so big!!!   :)

Hard to believe, you say???

Well ...... maybe!!

Ooook .... here's the real deal!!

Pretty funny though!!!  

Ewwww!!!

Someone in the family has just learned firsthand the benefits of wearing deodorant!!!  Yaaay!!

When this someone got in the car today, he reminded me that he had put on his deodorant that morning  and asked if he smelled bad.  Other than smelling like he'd been playing football outside, which he had been, there were no traces of the dreaded B.O.!!!!   Yaaay!!

He then says, "Does B.O. just come from your underarms ...... or does it come from other places too?  Like your underlegs??"

Ummm ... let's just go with underarms!!!   :)

What the heck happened here??!!

At the risk of copying my good friend, Deneise .......

how did we get from these cute little cowboys . . .

  . . .  to boys that are DRIVING???

Time is flying faster than it's ever flown!!

Love these guys!!

The Golfer

Alex decided to play golf this year and managed to get a spot on the Varsity team.  He played in the Fall, switched to basketball during the Winter, and picked golf back up in the Spring.  There were definitely some ups and downs along the way, but overall, it was a good experience for him.  These were all taken with my phone so the quality is not so good!

At one of the tournaments, their team came in 2nd place (maybe) and Alex came home with a  trophy.  Here's our special boy with his little trophy!!

DORK!!!

Way to go, Alex!!

A couple more ......

 I was looking through my pictures and came across these.  I couldn't forget this guy . . . he is DA BOMB!!!

Soo sweet, kind, funny, and a big hugger!!



He was sick on the day of the actual competition, but he played hard in our qualifiying event!! 

Great kids!!

Upward 2012

The 2012 Upward Season was an awesome success and LOTS of fun!!  The pictures were few but here's what I got!

Landry at the end of the season party!



Luke's fun team!




The 3 Stooges - Luke, Will, and Ryan

Good times!! :)


The Special-est Olympics!

Last winter, I had the awesome opportunity to help coach our district's Special Olympic basketball team! I jumped at the chance and am so glad I did!!

Several of these amazing kiddos are in my building every day, working hard in our Transition Center.  The boys and I had so much fun practicing with these guys every week and then, after many weeks, we got to go to the competition in March.  Here's our crew, minus one sick boy. 

These three made up our 3-on-3 team and they won 2nd place!!  Way to go!!!

This guy got so excited when he made a basket or rebounded the ball, he would squeal with excitement!!  It really worked to our team's advantage at times!!  :)

Practicing the self-portrait .... can't get too much practice with that!!

Proud Winner!!!

Sweet girl ..... makes me laugh every time I see her!!!

 

The team and their medals!!

Their teacher, Mrs. Jenkins, does and AMAZING job with these kiddos.  I have been so impressed with her and with these incredible kids!!   Gooooo Jets!!

All in a day's work

Anyone who has spend any time around me at all knows that I have an amazing job that I really love!! It really is the best job in the district and I am very, very thankful for it!!

Along with getting to get to know some really neat kids and teaching them some really crazy stuff (Transformations of Square Root Functions is my current nemesis!!), I get to be out "in the real world" everyday and see some really interesting things. At the beginning of this school year, I started taking pictures of things that I found cool, weird, or downright head-scratchers!! Here's a small collection:

Let's start with the sweet and innocent ......

A mama and her babies!! Awwww!! Yes, I'm assuming she had twins ..... probably not reality, but let's just go with it!!

Beautiful horses ...... I get to drive past these beauties everyday.

There's a ton of road construction being done around the high schoool and it has cut into the land that these guys used to roam. One day, as I was pulling into the high school, I noticed this lone horse on top of a huge pile of dirt! It totally cracked me up!! I wish I'd witnessed the King of the Hill game he/she won to have that privilege!!! :)


This fella lives in a field close to my house so we get to see him almost every day as well! He's been around a while now, but when he first appeared in a field of horses, it was a bit of a shock!! The day that I took this picture, I slowed way down and he stopped eating and stared right at me. The second I took the picture, he immediately started screaming at me ......I saw his teeth and everything!! Totally cracked me up again!!!

Now for the weird ones ....

This car caught my eye a few months ago. First off, who puts magnetic flowers all over their car?? Second, as this car sped past me, I noticed that it was a Lexus!! A Lexus covered in brightly colored magnetic flowers ...... you don't see that everyday!!

This fun car was parked next to me one day ...... it had a nice zebra paint job but even better than that was this fun sign on the window! Well darn ...... I guess I'll have to find another car that DOES have some drugs!

This last one goes in the Serious Head-Scratcher category. This sign was one of two or three in a normal, suburban neighborhood!!

Ummmm ........ ok??!! I guess we all need to have something we can be proud of!!?? Thanks for feeding the birds?? I wish I knew the story behind this sign!!

So, not only do I have a great job, I get the added bonus of seeing fun stuff like this!! And if it weren't for some very strict privacy laws, I'd have lots of fun stories to tell too!!

Alex and Reagan

These 2 boys turned 15 last month and they've been friends almost since their days of birth!!

I thought it would be fun to look back at some happy times with these two .... especially since they rarely smile for the camera anymore!!

Here they are at Alex's annual Spring Creek Birthday Dinner ...... so happy to finally be 15!!


After their first official game as high school basketball players!!

This was at basketball camp last summer. Alex had already enforced his no-smile policy while Reagan had not yet decided to commit to that line of thinking.

At the 14th birthday dinner at Spring Creek ..... all smiles!!
Game faces .... 7th grade football ...... the only picture ever to have these two playing football together. Long live #88 and #89!!!

Teenagers!!! Yikes!!

Twelve year olds!!

Halloween 2004 ..... 7 years old!!

5 years old!! Nice smiles, guys!!!

Three year old Soccer players!! These guys were THE cutest ..... so funny to watch!!

In my scrapbook, I have all the pictures of them in their first attempt at team sports. I had written that Alex started off the season and was really excited about playing but as the season went on, he began to lose interest. By the end of the season, he only wanted to play when Reagan was playing so they could play together!!

Love the friendship these two have .....it's a great thing!!

Baby Luke

The big NINE year old was known as Baby Luke for a long time!!!

Here's the 2 year old version ....

The 3 year old baseball player .......

Graduating from The Grace Place at 5 ........

And just for fun, look at these little goofballs!! I'm thinking they were about 3 and 1 ..... and probably weighed about the same!!!

Sweet babies!!!

Luke is NINE!!

The sweetest, most huggy boy on the planet turned 9 last week. Coincidentally, his birthday fell on the same day as the first game of the Upward season. I'm honestly not sure which one he was more excited about!! Throughout the week leading up to the big day, I would hear he and Landry doing the countdown ....4 more days .....3 more days, etc. Invariably, they would follow that with ...until Upward starts, not "until my birthday!!"

Luke is such a great kid. He's very kind and sensitive. He works really hard to keep up with his 2 big brothers and also stays busy bossing his little brother around too!! He's thoughtful and considerate, always quick with hugs and "I love you's".

He had been wanting an ipod touch for forever and had waited patiently for it. This Summer, his good buddy, Kaleb, had his old ipod for sale and Luke really wanted to buy it. I was a little hesitant for him to buy it, as Kaleb had bought it in used condition, and I was worried that it might not last too long. Luke reeeealllly wanted it and could not WAIT to get his money and exchange it for the ipod.

Before the decision was made, I gave Luke a piece of paper with a line drawn down the middle. On one side, it had a + sign. On the other side, it had a - sign. I told Luke to sit down and list all the good reasons to buy Kaleb's ipod under the + and to write all the bad things about buying it under the -. After a few minutes, he had one thing in the + column and several things in the - column. I asked him what he wanted to do and he calmly said, I'll wait to get a new one. When I asked him if he was sure, he said ... Yes ... there are more bad reasons than good ones, so I'll just wait.

And that was it .... he waited patiently and finally got his ipod for his birthday!!

I thought at the time that it was so simple for him once he saw the pros and cons in black and white!! Wouldn't it be so nice if all decisions were that simple?!

Here he is with the beloved ipod touch!!

Mom and the birthday boy!!

Legos!!!

The cake that pretty much took care of my sprinkle collection!!

A few days before Luke's birthday, I was in Central Market and noticed these cinnamon rolls!! This is the same brand of bread that we really like so I was so excited!! We have not had cinnamon rolls since Luke was diagnosed with Celiac almost 4 years ago!! I made regular cinnamon rolls for the rest of us (from the can, of course, and ohmygosh .....they were sooooo good!!! It's been a long time!!!) and I made Luke one of these. He was kind of excited about it except he's always so nervous on the first day of Upward!! So, he might have eaten half of it before reminding me that he just can't eat much before the first game!! Silly me .... what was I thinking!!??

Happy Birthday Luke!! You totally rock!!!

Sharing the Christmas Love

Oops!!

These should have gone in the Christmas Day post ..... a little family love in Granbury!!






How can I fix those darn red eyes?? I even tried on Picnik and couldn't get it to work!!