Fall sports and all their chaos

 Well, I can officially say we've bit off more than we can chew this fall with kid activities.  We'll start with Evan.  He's doing fall baseball with GCYBSA.  He has Monday and Wednesday night games and Sunday practice for 2 hours.  So, roughly 6 hours of baseball a week.  He also has soccer that Scott and I coach with Tuesday night practices and one game a week.  He's still playing guitar and does lessons on Saturdays for now when we don't have conflicts with a soccer game.  

While this schedule, particularly the baseball schedule, is completely nuts, he's loving it!  He's had such a great season (a little bit of a pitching slump right now) and has a great coach!  He even worked with Evan on pitching one random evening last week; just him and Evan.  MC9, a travel team, has a 1-2 spots open on their 10U team so we are considering that, but we might just let him continue with GCYBSA in the spring before having him tryout in July for a travel team.  We don't want him to lose his love for it if he's in a highly competitive setting.

His soccer team is doing well.  They lost one game and won the second.  They haven't had a game in a week or so because the other team cancelled due to COVID exposure.  He has a game tomorrow evening on Hines though!  No goals yet this season for Evan, but he's playing mid a lot.  

Sean is playing on a new soccer team this fall and it's a big team!  16 boys U12.  They've had three games and have won all of them by a landslide.  No goals for Sean yet, but he had a few shots on goal one of the games.  I'm confident he'll get a few by the end of the season.  He has practices Monday and Thursday evenings and one game a week.  So, roughly 4.5 hours of soccer a week.

He's also trying flag football for the first time.  We weren't sure if he'd get a spot on the other soccer team, so we picked flag football as a back-up and now we have both to get to.  He has practice on Sundays for an hour and the game right after for another hour.  It's nice that it's all done on Sundays.  His team has struggled a bit at the start of the season and they haven't won a game yet.  But, Sean caught an extra point during one the games!  It was exciting!

He's also doing Cub Scouts for his final year and it's been a busy start to the year with den meetings, pack meetings, and a camp-out.  I'm a den leader so my plate has been very full with that.  He's also taking drum lessons on Saturdays when Evan is there for guitar.  Hoping they can start a band one of these days...

I don't think we will allow the boys to do this many activities at the same time again.  It's hard because they want to try different things, yet continue with soccer.  They will definitely have to make some choices in the spring!  And now the decision comes with whether to sign Sean up for wrestling over the winter...

Another pandemic school-year, 2021-2022

 And we're back!  To school and to work that it is!  In-person learning 5 full days a week with masks on, but we're all thrilled to have more normalcy this year than last.  

Sean's in 5th grade with Mr. Hammond and in his last year at Farrand before he'll move up to East Middle School.  

He's playing fall soccer on a new rec team called the Plymouth Sharks and he's trying flag football on a 4th/5th grade team: Patriots.  He's taking drum lessons once a week while Evan takes electric guitar lessons and he's doing his last year of Cub Scouts as a Senior Webelo.  Busy guy!  

Evan is in 3rd grade this year with Ms. Scott (we love her!).  He's also playing fall soccer on his usual team with Scott as the coach.  Their team name is The Avengers.  He's playing fall baseball on the Cubs Kid Pitch team with GCYBSA.  And he's taking his electric guitar lessons once a week.  

Scott and I are starting our 16th (me) and 17th (Scott) years of teaching!  

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy school year!

Happy 9th Birthday, Evan!!

Evan turned 9 on September 2nd and I'm finally getting around to writing about it!  

We celebrated Evan and his Aunt Mindy's birthday with Scott's family the weekend before Labor Day weekend since that was what worked best for everyone.  Jackie and Josh hosted over at their house in the backyard.  We got pizza and salad from Compari's that Mindy requested and Nana brought her famous ice cream cake that Evan requested.  

On his actual birthday Scott was home with the boys while I had my last day of professional development.  Scott took the boys golfing with his dad in the morning at Fox Hills.  They golfed 18 holes and got lunch at Leo's!  I came home mid-afternoon and Evan was ready to open his gifts.  This year he got the Lego White House set, a hardcover book on supercars, a Hot Wheels pack of exotic cars, and a monster truck that came with kinetic sand. His big ticket item was a Samsung phone with a phone case and pop socket.  We didn't initially plan to get the kids phones, but when we went to upgrade ours, we were told it was cheaper to get on a family plan with four lines and to get them phones that would be $1 a month.  So, we went for it.  Evan was pretty shocked!  Now he can use it for games and calling/texting family instead of his older iPad.

He chose the Texas Roadhouse for dinner where they made everyone in the restaurant wish him a happy birthday and yee-haw.  It was pretty awesome!  Then, we came home to have cupcakes, a water balloon fight, and break open a piñata with the neighbor kids.  I'd say he had a pretty awesome day!

We celebrated with my parents over Labor Day weekend.  We met up with them at Chili's for a late lunch and then came back to our house to open gifts and have cake.  Our cake was a bust from our usual bakery as we ordered marble, but it came out mostly yellow.  Evan loved getting his Detroit Tiger's jersey of Miguel Cabrera and some baseball cards, among other things!  

Speaking of the Detroit Tiger's, Evan has really taken an interest in baseball this year when he returned to playing baseball in the spring after over a year off with the pandemic.  He's pretty darn good!  He wants to learn to pitch this season now that he's doing fall ball and kid pitch and he's learning to play outfield and 2B.  He is obsessed with Miguel Cabrera and listening to Tiger's games updates on Alexa.  

He's playing for the Cubs this season with GCYBSA instead of PCLL.  So far they've played one game and won and he's loving every minute of it! He's also playing fall soccer with Scott as his coach, like always.  He's on a U10 team called the Avengers and should have a good season!  He's also continuing his guitar lessons at the Plymouth School of Music.  

Music-wise he loves AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne, the White Stripes, Van Halen, Twisted Sister, and a little bit of Guns N' Roses.  I never have to ask him to practice, which is nice and he's thrilled that we bought a used drum set off of Marketplace for Sean to start taking drum lessons.  They want to make a band!  

His other interests have him going back to toys he played with when he was younger, but moved on from like Hot Wheels and Monster Trucks.  He has a box that he stores his top supercars in and the rest of his Hot Wheels are in a huge bin.  He's learning all kinds of facts about these cars like their top speed, their price, etc.  

Stats wise he's weighing around 60 lbs and is 53.5" tall.  He's wearing size 2 cleats, but size 1 in shoes.  He's also wearing a size 8 in clothes and a kid's medium.  He's still quite the picky eater and hasn't added much to his "will-eat" list other than Ramen Noodles, which is certainly nothing to write home about.  Oh, he'll eat hamburgers now!  I guess that's something.  

I can't believe he's growing up so fast!  He's pretty mature for his age on most days, he's bright and works hard at school, and he's very opinionated!  But, we wouldn't change him one bit!  Happy 9th Birthday, Evan!