Brett had a great birthday in December! On his special day, we had cake and presents with the family. Then we had a "friend" party the following weekend. This was a really big deal because Brett has never had a friend party. He is new to his school this year, so we don't really know any of the families. But his class is so small, so I decided to just let him invite his whole class and see what happened. We ended up with eight kids, including the sibs, which was perfect for games at the indoor dart arena and pizza! They had so much fun! And what a nice group of kids! I cried at the end of the night because it was so amazing to see that Brett has made some really nice friends at his new school.
Brett is 61 inches tall and weighs 90 pounds. Brett continues to do homeschool with me half days and we are working hard on reading, writing, math, and science. His sports off-season came to an end this week with basketball starting. In his free time, he likes playing video games, tinkering, creating, and helping in the kitchen. He is the only one in the family who loves watching basketball and his favorite team is the Timberwolves.
Lydia celebrated her birthday in November! It landed on Thanksgiving Day, so Grandma had a turkey cake for her!
It was fun to celebrate her birthday with some of her cousins. I also took her and two of her friends out on a birthday date. We ate lunch at Noodles, when to see the musical "Beauty and the Beast" at a community theater, and topped it off with hot chocolate at Starbucks!
Lydia is 54.5 inches tall and weighs 66 pounds. Lydia is having a good 5th grade year. It has worked out okay for her to start an hour early with a math class at the middle school. She's not crazy about getting up early, but she almost always gets her homework done at school when her 5th grade class is doing math, so that's a bonus. She is doing her research project on "dreams". Why did she pick this topic? Because she is a very vivid dreamer. She also does a lot of talking in her sleep! In her free time, she loves reading, listening to music, playing games on her kindle, and doing artsy stuff. She says when she grows up she wants to live in Maine and write books.
Lydia joined a kids club at a local church this year and she recently got to go on a fun winter retreat!
We were excited for Lydia's volleyball season this fall. We expected it to be a more challenging year because 5th and 6th grade play together. Lydia didn't know anyone on her team, so when we walked into the gym on the first night and saw all these very tall girls on her team - I thought to myself that this would be interesting. When I picked her up from practice, she reported to me that basically no one on her team had ever played volleyball before and her team was terrible. And it was true.
The way volleyball works, at this age anyway, is teams play "matches" in a "set" of three. The first two matches are played to 25, with one team scoring at least 2 more points than their opponent (25-24 would not be a win). The 3rd match is played to 15 as a tie-breaker if each team has won one match. Usually our teams would play 3 matches regardless. They were already there, so why not?
Lydia's team WAS terrible. They won a couple of matches, but lost every set during the regular season. Lydia was probably the most experienced player on the team and a very consistent server, but the team was awful at volleying. No one at this age is great, but her team just couldn't get their act together at all!
The big day of the tournament came and the brackets were set. Lydia's team was the worst-seeded team in the lowest bracket.
Then something crazy happened. They won.
They won their first match. They won their first set. They went on to win their set against their next opponent. And what we thought was going to be a short morning drew out into the afternoon. They found themselves in the championship game against a team that had obliterated them in the regular season. On that day, one of the players served 17 times in a row, because no one could volley it back over the net. But on tournament day, unfortunately - for the other team - their ringer served the ball out of bounds a couple of times. And Lydia's team won.
What a way to end an otherwise miserable season! The girls were elated! And they had learned a few lessons along the way. Like sometimes hard work really does pay off. Never give up. And some of life's greatest triumphs come when you've been knocked down.
It's taking me a long time to get my pictures and videos together right now because I got a new computer and it doesn't like my files from my phone?
So, here are Brett's flag football highlights from last fall. He had another fun season playing for the Lumberjacks. At the area competition placed 2nd, losing to the other Lumberjacks team. At the state competition, the two Lumberjacks teams were in different divisions. Brett's team placed 3rd in their division! It was fun to see Brett's confidence increase from last year, and he had a lot of fun.
