Farewell 5th and 8th Grade

We were so excited and relieved that the kids got to finish the school year in person and enjoy many of the year end actives.  

Christian was awarded the Outstanding Math Student Award and said Farewell to 5th grade as well as Fuller Elementary School.  Christian had so many amazing teachers at Fuller but his PACE (gifted teachers) were absolutely outstanding and we will miss them so much.  Despite all the challenges, Christian really thrived this year and we are so proud of him!

Last day of school - Christian rode his bike to and from school everyday with the exception of one when I picked him up early to go hang out with cousins.

Hannah received the Female Outstanding Student Award and "graduated" with Honors from Fees College Prep.  Hannah also thrived during the school year.  She was so diligent in her studies, especially Geometry where she made a person goal to get an A.  We are so proud of Hannah.  She didn't just survive the year, but she embraced it and really worked on developing her talents.  

Tempe South Little League - The Bears

You know the saying, "It could be worse"?  Well, I do believe that is true.  However, in the case of Christian's Little League season and first year playing Majors, it could NOT have been much worse.  Out of 18 regular season games, they lost 16.  Yes, it would have been worse if they had lost all 18.  Needless to say, they were eliminated in two games during the play offs.  They were run ruled in 8 of the games.  The worst game's score was 1-23, the second worse was 1-18.  But hey, at least they scored 1.  Little league is extremely interesting because the next time they played the team that beat them 1-23, they kept it close and when they played them in the playoffs, they again kept it close.  And they did beat a team that beat the team they lost 1-23 to.  Looking at the bright side, there was only one game where they score no runs.  

I am not sure what was happening with this team.  Sometimes they played terrible and sometimes they played really well.  But they played so bad so much of the time, it just overshadowed the times they played well.  The number of errors committed was just ridiculous.  They just could not handle simple plays.  They did improved over the season, but it was nowhere near the improvement you would expect to see.  At the end of the season they were still overthrowing balls, hesitating and therefore missing plays, not covering, letting fly balls drop, etc.

Christian had a particularly rough year.  He played mostly in the outfield and did not see a lot of action.  He did spend a little time at second and third base.  He got walked quite often and struck out more often.  I think he only got 1 or 2 hits (meaning he got on base) the whole season.  He got his bat on the ball a few more times.  I really expected great things from Christian because I see great potential in him and usually the level of play in Majors is quite high.  I hope it was just the coach, the year, the team, etc.  Just over halfway thru the season, I called an acquaintance who used to play MLB.  He worked with Christian several times and came to a handful of games.  He gave great advice and encouragement but Christian was just not swinging the bat. Hopefully, he can take what he learned and apply it to next season when he will be bigger, stronger, faster, and hopefully more aggressive.

I am so proud of Christian for hanging in there.  He never complained about going to practices or games.  He always worked hard and gave it his best.  He did get a little discouraged at times, but he talks about playing next year and I hope he does.

Cameron umpired for a 2nd Spring season (he missed last year due to Covid).  He was considered an All-Star Ump and was requested by certain coaches.  He is always confident and consistent in his calls.  He did have parents get upset with him and coaches question him, but he stood his ground and did not let it bother him.  He says they can yell all they want, they do not know what happened. 

Sweet 16

 Cameron turned 16 on the 2nd of May!  What the heck?  How can this be?  His birthday was on a Sunday this year, so on Saturday we went to lunch at the restaurant of his choice, Cafe Rio.  On Sunday we had family dinner.  He requested hamburgers. We had ice cream cake from Cold Stone, yellow cake with mint ice cream with chocolate shavings mixed in.  For his birthday, his dad and I gave him a trip to Las Vegas to attend a Long Snapping Camp (more on that later).  The following Saturday he took his driver's test and passed!  He took the test in my Jeep Wrangler which is a standard.  The girl who administered the test had never had someone drive a standard.  He also had to parallel park.  He wanted his first drive with his license to be alone, so he drove home after umpiring a baseball game.  

At 16 Cameron is still obsessed with football.  He can watch clips, scroll Instagram, and talk stats all the day long.  He also still loves to watch TV and play video games.  He spends a lot of time on his smart phone but he does like to be busy.  We like him to be busy too.  Last year at this time he could be found playing the same songs on the piano or the Ukulele over and over and over.  Or he would be whistling or making some other type of noise which drove Hannah and me nuts.  That has somewhat subsided over the last year.  But it does still go on.  He is currently spending a lot of his time watching Mark Roble and Smarter Every Day videos on YouTube, which are actually very educational.  Cameron is becoming a very responsible, trustworthy young man who is very smart (and gets frustrated with stupid people), dedicated and hard-working (when it is something he wants to do).  At age 16, he is 5'11.25 and 145 lbs.  We love Cameron and are so glad he is part of our family.

As mentioned above, for his birthday Cameron got to go to Las Vegas for Rubio's Long Snapping Camp.  Now in our minds, a camp is where you spend all day leaning and working on becoming a better player.  Well, this long snapping "camp" was more of a showcase.  The kids were split into groups and each group only spent a couple hours a day (Sat and Sun) at the camp.  They snapped at a target for points and did agility drills as well as a little bit of form and technique.  When Cameron wasn't at camp, he and Chuck were pool side or exploring on the strip.  Cameron said there were a lot of cool things to see on the strip but the people weren't very cool.  Although the camp wasn't really what we expected, overall, it was a great trip.  

Spring Sports

This Spring Cameron played baseball.  Last year, they played one game before we were hit by Covid.  So, it was basically his first season playing high school baseball.  He did not get a ton of playing time but when he did, he played center field and he played it really well.  Because he did not get a lot of playing time, he did not get many at bats.  He ended the season hitless but that does not mean he did not get the bat on the ball, which I consider a hit.  

At the beginning of the season, he was made to believe if he had his own catching gear, he would get to play catcher.  So, we bought him the gear and never once did he play catcher.  He lugged this huge duffle bag around day after day for weeks and never got the gear out.  Frustrated, I emailed the coach and asked him to let Cameron know whether or not he was going to get to catch so he could stop bringing his gear.  I did not hear back from the coach, but that day Cameron come home with his gear ready to quit baseball.  The coach told him he was 4th string catcher.  Which is frustrating because Cameron is an excellent catcher.  The same kid caught all of every game and although he was good, he lacked enthusiasm and was not better than Cameron.  We told Cameron we would support him if he wanted to quit but he would have to talk to the coach about it.  We also told him to think about it over the weekend.  Normally we would insist he finish what he started but since the team was so big, we knew that him quitting would not have an impact on the team.  We also have not been too impressed with the baseball program at his school.  When Monday came around, he had decided to stick with it and has even talked about playing next year. 

There were lots of cancellations, reschedules and even umps not showing up this season.  We are not sure if that was due to Covid or just plain ineptness.  But at least there was a season and they got to play 15 games.  I was not able to find their record, but they had some wins and some losses.  Some were close and other's were not.  I am glad Cameron decided to stick it out.

Hannah's best friend, Marley, convinced her to run cross country this year.  Athletics in middle school is a little strange.  They spend extraordinarily little time preparing for the season.  So, about a week, maybe two, after the team started training, they had their first meet.  Hannah ran her first race in 14:31.  (All the races were 1.5 miles.)  The first one was around Kiwanis softball and soccer fields.  Her second race she ran in 14:59.  That course was two laps around Kiwanis Lake.  It was a little slower than her first race, but again, it was a different course.  The remainder of the meets were at Kiwanis Lake.  She ran the third race in 13:25 and beat Marley, which she REALLY wanted to do.  Her fourth was 12:45, fifth was 12:04 and sixth, 12:05.  Marley never beat her after the third race. As you can see, she made huge improvements.  The last meet she finished in 6th place and Fees won 1st place.  I am so proud of her and hope she sticks with running.  It is important to note that many of these races it was close to, if not, 100 degrees.

  

the funny things they say...

Cameron loves to play video games on the Xbox but it's not Christian's (at least not with Cameron).  I hate video games and complain about them when the boys play them.  I often hear Cameron ask Christian to play with him and Christian refuses.  One day I asked Christian to please play with Cameron for a few minutes.  Christian said, "Wait, now you want me to play video games?"

While Chuck was out of town, Christian slept with me and discovered that the clock radio has a radio.  He said, "Did you know this was a radio?!"

One night Chuck and I went for a walk around the block and Christian got home while we were out.  When we got home, I asked him if he was worried when we weren't there and he said, "Well, it is a full moon so I thought that maybe the werewolves got you.  But then I thought a better explanation was that you were walking around the block."

A new sandwich place opened called Knuckle Sandwiches.  I told Christian I wanted to try it and he said, "I hope it's not a scam and after you pay them, they punch you in the face."

Covid - 19 Update

 Well, it has been a full year since the world was turned upside down.  The rate of infections in AZ is very low and the number of hospitalizations and deaths is even lower.  Everyone in the state is now eligible to get the vaccine.  The elderly and teachers got priority.  However, there are quite a few not wanting to get the vaccine, so it is available to all sooner than expected.  I am not sure if the infection rate is down because of the vaccine or due to the fact that a large number of people have gotten the virus.  It has been some time that anyone we know has gotten it.  We are still wearing masks everywhere (even outside at school baseball games) although the governor did take away the ability for cities and counties to mandate masks, private businesses can still require that they are worn.  The kids are still required to wear them at school and they are still required at the Y.  By the way, the kids are back in school!  They started back in person two weeks ago just after Spring Break.  They were planning on going back but just before Spring Break the governor said that all public schools had to provide an in-person option.  That works in our favor because it will make it harder for the school to shut down again. So for us, with the exception of wearing masks, church not being back to a 2 hour block and Chuck working from home, our lives are pretty much back to normal.  The boys are playing baseball.  Cameron is umpiring for little league.  Hannah is running cross country.  I am back to being a taxi driver.  

Spring Break 2021

I really wanted to get out and do something during Spring Break but working around Chuck and Hannah's quick trip to Cincinnati, the boys' baseball practices and scrimmages, and watching Emily's girls, a free day and night was hard to find.  In fact, so hard to find that Cameron ended up staying home by himself (which he said was the best 2 days of his life).  I have wanted to explore more of AZ and since we had never been to Sedona, I decided that would be our destination.

We left about noon on Wednesday. We stopped and took a small nature hike at Bell Rock when we first got into Sedona and went to the Church of the Holy Cross.  We checked into a bed and breakfast and soaked in the hot tub before we headed downtown for dinner.  It had gotten a little late and Sedona appeared to be a ghost town after dark.  But we did find a restaurant that had a large variety of options.  However, we didn't get to do any shopping before everything shut down.

We had a really good breakfast before we headed out for the day.  We started with the Airport Loop hike.  It was about 3 miles and had some really nice views of Sedona.  The weather was a little chilly but comfortable with a jacket.  We even got a little bit of hail.  We only saw two other people on the hike.  After that, we hiked to the Devil's Bridge, which was the place to be.  We had to hike about a mile before the trail officially started.  Once we were close to the bridge the trail did get steep and a little gnarly but it was worth it.  Sedona is beautiful, probably the most beautiful place I have been.  The colors are so bright and vivid.  It was like nothing I have ever seen.  After that hike, we went to the Sedona Heritage Museum, had lunch downtown and did a little shopping.  We had to get home for a baseball scrimmage so we didn't get to stop at some of the Indian ruins as originally planned.  Overall it was a pretty great trip.