Valentine's Day Parties

I wasn't able to make it to school for the parties this year but thanks to Amber and Meredith, I got some good pictures of the kids.  I told Josh thank for letting Mrs. Amber take his photo.  He said he wasn't really excited about it but I do appreciate that he let her get a few.

Valentine's Box

Fifth grade has a yearly Valentine's box competition.  There were several different categories and Emma chose to do sweetest treat.  She decided to do a two layer cake and Brad pitched in a great idea to make tissue rosettes as decoration.  Evidently he has a lot of practice from when he was in high school.  I was totally unaware of this talent! 

Night at the Museum

For the second year in a row, Josh and I attending the Gladney Night at the Museum.  This year, Josh immediately ran into Thomas and spent most of his time with his friends.  Josh was excited to volunteer me again for the science experiment.  I had to eat a cheese puff that had been frozen in liquid nitrogen.  It looks like I was breathing smoke.  I only managed to get one photo the entire night although I did force him to get pictures at the photo booth before we left.  It was another fun night for a good cause.  We also showed up in the High Profile section of the paper, which thrilled Josh.  He is pretty sure he's famous now. 

PSL Championship Game

Our girls met LRCA on February 9th to battle it out for the championship.  We came out and gave it all we had.  Ultimately, we fell short by a score of 17-13 but we did not give up until the buzzer sounded.  It was a great season for our Lady Wildcats and I couldn't be more proud of how tought they played and how they came together as a team.  Can't wait for next year.  There was a little controversy as the "star" player for LRCA played the entire game.  Conveniently they only had nine girls that day so she didn't have to come out of the game.  Emma and others said that the other girl was sitting in the stands. As I told Emma though, this is a team sport and eventually, relying on one player is going to hurt them.  I like that our girls are learning to be a team.  Champions in my book!
We had great support from school friends at the game.

 

Supportive Teammate

Josh did a great job supporting his team the second half of the season even though he desperately wanted to be out on the court.  Looking forward to seeing him on the court next year.

Another Cast

Josh's four week follow-up did not go as we all hoped and anticipated.  For the first time, Brad said Josh was disappointed but I think that is because we were all convinced that the cast was going to come off.  This time around, he chose Carolina Blue for his momma. 

PSL Seminfinals - February 7th

We were so excited that our 5th grade girls defeated Conway Christian to move on to the PSL semifinals so we could have another crack at CAC on Thursday.  Emma stayed home from school on Monday and Tuesday since she was still running a low grade fever.  Fortunately, she started perking up on Tuesday and the decision was made to send her back Wednesday.  It turned out to be the right decision as she was definitely feeling better and came out ready to play on Thursday.  Our Cats started out strong and never looked back.  Emma played a fantastic game and scored five points.  With that, it was on to the championship game against Little Rock Christian. 

Not So Fabulous February

It's been a month so far and we're only on day 4.  Our February woes actually started at the end of January.  Brad and I spent the last week of December and most of January furloughed thanks to a government shutdown.  While Brad spent most of his days working (without pay), I did get a lot done around the house.  There was a lot of purging done around the house, this blog was caught up, costumes were inventoried at school, etc.  That being said, five weeks was a little long especially since there didn't seem to be any end in site or any indication of an end until the very last moment.  Surprisingly, on January 25th, a resolution was reached to reopen the government through February 15th.  I'm hopeful that there will be an agreement to fund us through the end of the year and we will avoid another shutdown but we'll see. 

At any rate, after five weeks of furlough, we were set to go back to work on the 28th except that Josh woke up with a headache and complaining about his stomach hurting.  He had been talking about his stomach and not had an appetite since Saturday so even though he didn't have a fever, we felt like he should stay home.  Fortunately, he didn't get any worse so it was back to the normal routine for everybody on Tuesday. We all made it through the week but when Brad picked up Emma from practice on Friday, she said that she had a headache and wasn't hungry.  She woke up Saturday morning with a fever of 101.3.  Since the flu has been going around, I took her to the doctor where she tested negative for flu.  Unfortunately, she has not been able to kick the fever and has gone up to over 103 several times.  Emma had to miss Saturday's win against PA and will miss the first tournament game tonight.  Hoping that we can get her better and on the court Thursday assuming the team beats Conway Christian tonight.  I know Emma's ready to feel better too! 

Emma Basketball - January 26th

We played against Conway Christian at Baptist Prep.  The girls were down quite a few but the girls that were there brought their A game.  Emma played great defense and made some nice moves to the basket.  Conway Christian has one girl that is several inches taller than Emma.  Leading up to the game, Coaches Raina and Bo made a decision to have Hali jump knowing that Conway Christian would win the tip.  They purposely lined up Emma and Bijou behind the Conway Christian girl with the idea that they would steal the tip, turn and score.  The plan worked to perfection with Emma snagging the tip, turning and putting up the first two points.  Emma and Bijou also played some point, which made Emma happy.

MLK Day Service Project

Josh came home from school one day and the first words he had were, "I'm not going to the Food Bank on MLK Day".  I had no idea what he was talking about but then I looked in his notebook and found the letter from Dr. Bailey and Mr. Daniel about a service project for 3rd-5th grade on MLK Day.  I read it and then told Josh, "yes, you are going to the Food Bank".  We all met at the Food Bank at 9 am and they assigned us to bag and weigh sweet potatoes.  The parents helped weigh; they wanted the bags to be 10 lbs with a tolerance of 9.9 to 10.1 lbs.  There may have been a couple of 10.2 lb bags that got through.  In addition to our students, there was a group of girls that are part of the G.E.M.S program with the police department.  Both groups worked so hard and bagged over 15,000 lbs of potatoes in about 2.5 hours.  Emma and Josh had a great time too and enjoyed working alongside their friends.

3rd graders ready to work (missing Thomas in this one)

5th grade girls working hard.

Episcopal and G.E.M.S.

Episcopal Crew

Lunar Eclipse

A total lunar eclipse occurred on January 20th.  It was also the blood moon.  Emma really wanted to see it but peak was around 11 pm.  We decided to send her to bed with the idea of waking her up to go watch.  Around 10:30, Brad came back and got me and Emma.  I tried to wake Josh but he was having none of that (he was mad the next morning but I tried and tried).  The three of us went out, I looked, said it was really cool and headed back to bed.  Meanwhile, Brad and Emma stayed up and watched the eclipse. 

Emma Basketball - January 19th

We had a doubleheader on the 19th.  The first game was against LRCA who were undefeated and stayed undefeated.  That being said, we played tough defense and lost by a score of 11-7.  We had some good shots that just didn't fall so the game easily could have ended the other way.

We had a break between games so the girls ate some snacks and switched into their green uniforms for the game against CAC NLR.  We beat them easy earlier in the season and had another big win against them.