Parker- Basketball!

Parker's first basketball season has come to an end!  For someone who was kicking and screaming about having to play basketball, he has absolutely fallen in love with the sport.  I think the fact that he had two amazing coaches and that his team went undefeated in the regular season helped.  ;)

Parker had a kid on his team (a fellow 1st grader at his school) that is a stud player.  The first game they played, our team won 24-0 and Abe scored all 24 points.  He's a beast!  But he is also the NICEST kid!  He and Parker have become great friends, as have Stephen and I have with his parents.  Abe continued being a beast all season, but Parker started stepping his game up... he scored 2 points in the next game, then 4 points, then 8 points... and that's all I remember specifically. ;) But even more so than his scoring game, Parker played a huge role in defense!  He would block passes and shots, and rebound like crazy.

He comes home every day from school and plays basketball in the driveway.  He didn't want to play baseball this spring (?!) and only wanted to play basketball, so I was lucky to find a spring basketball program not too terribly far away.  He's obsessed!

Here are some pictures and videos of his season!

Parker's first basket of the season!

Parker's teacher and Jackson came to watch Parker's game!

Christmas Tournament:
This was outside of the rec league- most teams who played in the tourney mixed players from different teams to form stacked teams.  Our little rec team, including 3 Kindergartners, played like normal.  We lost our first 2 games (one time getting killed 35-9 by a certain team) and ended up winning 2 games in the "bracket" round, including beating that 35-9 team with a buzzer beater!  (That team should've gone all the way!). We ended up being runner up, losing in the championship game by 4!  It was very exciting.

This is really awful video of the buzzer beater shot... one of the dads got it on film (and I recorded from Facebook ;) 

Back to the regular season:

Snow day games!

This is after our last regular season game, where we were named Region Champs!  

This is after their first playoff game!

We lost in the Final Four game... ironically to the team we beat in the Christmas tournament with the buzzer beater!  (They were totally out for revenge, you could tell).  There were lots of tears, but that team really was the "better" team.

Being rewarded for being Region champs and Final Four participants!

Parker and his two coaches!

So proud of this sweet group of boys!  I'm going to miss this team.

Chattanooga!

The kids had a whole week of in February, and Stephen had to be in California for most of the week... so I decided to take the kiddos to Chattanooga!  We spent 3 days and two nights there, which was a perfect amount of time to be away and get to do a good amount of activities.

Monday:

We drove up that morning and went downtown.  We hit up Cardboard Hill, grabbed lunch at a local deli, did a city scavenger hunt (through an app- it was really fun!), got some ice cream, checked into the hotel, went swimming, did Door Dash for dinner (Chili's to the hotel!), watched some tv, and called it a day!

Scavenger Hunt

We had to take pictures as "sculptures"

More scavenger hunt fun

Tuesday:

As beautiful of a day Monday was, Tuesday was the opposite!  Cold and rainy.  We hit up downtown again, but this time we did mostly indoor stuff: children's museum, IMAX theater, arcade and the mall.  We got Subway to go from the mall and headed back to the hotel to swim!

Writing letters to school children in Kenya!

Looking out to the river

Wednesday:

Today, we packed the car up, checked out of the hotel, and headed to Ruby Falls!  In all the times I've been to Chattanooga, I'm not sure if I have ever done Ruby Falls (unless I was just too young to remember).  I can't lie, my fear of being confined/claustrophobia has gotten worse as I've gotten older, and I wasn't sure how I'd like knowing we were so many stories underground!!  Thankfully, it wasn't too bad, minus the elevator ride down where I just tried not to think about it.  It was cool- the falls were beautiful!  The kids got a little antsy after awhile- the tour guides are great and funny, but they drag the .5 mile walk to the falls out for over 30 minutes by stopping and talking.  A lot! ;)  But the falls were worth it, I thought.  We then headed home- it was a really nice little getaway!