Happy Patrick's Day!!

DATELINE, MARCH 17, 2010:

So, one of the perks of having a super small class size is that Patrick benefits from the teacher's sense of humor! On March 16th, I received a call from the teacher asking if it was OK to play a little joke on my guy. Well, of COURSE it would be OK! Turns out we had all been teasing him about the same thing....how March 17th was Patrick's Day, not St. Patrick's Day. I had even toyed with the idea of "x"ing out the St. on his festive green holiday t-shirt.

Patrick arrived at school to find his teacher sporting this schnazzy attire:

His assistant, Michael, had a similar shirt--check out this cute group pic:

As he walked the halls of the school, Patrick spotted his friends wearing green shamrock stickers with his face on them, too!! Patrick spent the entire day grinning from ear to ear...and came home full of himself and funny stories about his Patrick's Day at MSD.

*sigh* How am I gonna top that one next year???

(Thank you, Shannon, for the pictures--and for giving him a day to remember!!)

Just Chillaxing with BHS JV

Along with high school comes the move from rec league lacrosse to the “bigs”—high school sports! Yup, that’s right…my girlie on the Junior Varsity lacrosse team! She is fortunate enough to be playing with some of the girls she’s been with for the last 3 or 4 years, so we are hoping for great things from them!! The team had their first games last week.

The first was an away game and must never be spoken of again. To quote her former coach, “It was ugly, coyote ugly.”

The second was a home game against the Frederick High Cadets. What fun it was to sit in the stands and watch them play on the big field!! (okay, I confess that I’m a doofus for thinking it was cool, but she’s my oldest and therefore I get to be a little weird about the new experiences!!) The BHS girls looked like they knew what they were doing, running plays and keeping the ball near the FHS net. The Cadet goalie did an awesome job, because I’m pretty sure we had at least 3 times as many shots on goal as we had points. Katie scored twice!

Check out the photo album here: BHS JV Lacrosse 2010 I'll be adding to it over the season, so be sure to visit from time to time!

The BIG Snow x Two

Winter got off to a crazy start this year—since when have we had snow in DECEMBER? Just when we thought things would mellow out and go back to “normal,” along came Snowmageddon! Y’all know the basics of that thanks to the news, so I won’t bore you with the details. But I WILL bore you with some pictures! So here’s what happened to the Zoo Crew:

Upward Basketball x THREE!

This year the Zoo Crew’s THREE youngest played Upward Basketball at the local Baptist church. Ben and Matthew have played in seasons past, but this time the Abbinator was able to join the fun, too! We had wonderful Saturdays watching the beasties bloom into real players of the sport!

Abbey played on a co-ed kindergarten team. No weekly practices, just weekly game times. For the first half hour each Saturday, the kids did drills designed to give them great fundamental skills. Some of the drills were as easy as follow the leader around the court boundaries to learn the lines. When the drills were over, the teams gave game play a go. WHAT A BLAST to watch!

We called it “Riverdance Basketball” because the kids would prance around using their best dancing feet. Some of them would forget to dribble and just race to the basket with the ball. Wonderful fun, truly! Abbey’s best trick? Stopping on the court to engage in deep conversation with her friend & teammate, Lewis. You can check out more pictures of Abbey’s team by following this link: Upward Penguins 2010

Ben was fortunate to play under the same coach as last year. The Lions are a rowdy bunch of 1^st and 2^nd graders, but thanks to Coach Mike, they managed to come together to play fairly well! Ben is, I think, grasping the basics of the game and starting to be able to really see the game as a whole. He’s a great dribbler and FAST, too….when he wants to be!

This team played tough and kept their spirits high, even when faced with really tough opponents.

Based on this season, I’m really looking forward to watching the Benster next year…it’s all gonna click and he’s gonna make one heck of a ball player! For more Lions action, follow this link: Upward Lions 2010

Which brings me to Matthew Man. WOW! This was HIS “light went on” year. Defensively, my boy-o managed to shut down a couple of the league’s high scorers, keeping his opponents to uncharacteristically low scores. He learned better ball control and gained a greater degree of accuracy with his shots. We’re still working on mastering body control, but this kid AMAZED us all with his “come from nowhere” mad skillz. He was a wonderful example of genuine compassion and sportsmanship, too. As one coach put it, "he takes 'em down, then helps 'em up!"

As for his team this year…what a wonderful bunch of young men. Seriously, we had the nicest team on and off the court! I sincerely hope we are able to get them back together again. And the games? It was so much fun to watch these guys play—win, lose or draw! At this age, they keep score and put it up on the big board. We had a couple of crazy close games, including the last one! A serious nail-biter, I tell ya! Going into the final period, the Wolverines were down 20-27; the other team needed to bench the one player our guys hadn’t been able to stop. After a whole lot of back & forthing, multiple shots with multiple rebounds, a set of free throws each, the game came down to the last 30 seconds…all tied up at 27-27. We spectators were out of our chairs, cheering and encouraging; parents from the other court were even watching our game!! And there it was, with 7 seconds left, a Wolverine basket….final score of the final game…29-27 Wolverines. WHEW! I tell ya’, I was drained! Want more Wolverine Action? Click here: Upward Wolverines 2010

I’m already getting psyched for next season!!!

Matthew B and the History Bee

Matthew-man had a chance to step up and show off his knowledge of all things historical at The Frederick County History Bee. Three students from each grade—3^rd, 4^th & 5^th—were selected to represent Valley, along with an alternate for each grade level. After weeks of early morning team practices, it was time to put his intellect where his mouth is!

Mom & Matt set out on Friday, March 19^th with the intent of arriving early enough to settle in and collect ourselves before the competition began. As with many Zoo Crew best laid plans, well, that just didn’t happen! Now, Mommy *knew* that the event was sponsored by the local community college and Mommy *knew* that the directions provided by Matthew’s school didn’t take us to the college, but who is she to argue with the teacher? (learned THAT lesson during her own school career!) Sponsorship doesn’t always = locationship, right? So we parked and dashed into the Parks & Recreation Office in downtown Frederick, only to find that they’d never even heard of the History Bee. (They have now, though!) YIKES!

Fast, frantic and fabulous driving across town--crazy mad dash across the college campus--Matthew made it to the registration table with a mere moment to spare. (Literally—we arrived at 11:39 am and registration closed at 11:40 am!) WHEW! (Do you know how rotten I would have felt if we’d been too late for him to participate? As it was, I felt HORRIBLE for being so rushed!) We parked our hineys with the rest of a very relieved Valley team and started a quick review quiz. Imagine my surprise to see that every other team member had a nice little folder with study materials and notes. Apparently, Matthew has kept his at school and has studied at recess and such. This Mom never saw any of those papers! At that moment, I will admit to feeling a wee bit nervous for the kiddo, since he was taking a somewhat lackadaisical approach to this big event.

Students were called to the floor for Round One. Each table had at least one Proctor, who asked each student, in turn, a wide variety of American History questions. When all students had responded to 10 questions each, scores were tallied and the two with the highest scores moved on to Round Two. Matthew responded correctly to 8 of 10 in the first round and moved on!! Two other Valley students also qualified for Round Two—more than in the last three years!!

Round Two: same game, tougher questions! Matthew managed to answer 6 correctly, but was bested by another student with 7 correct answers. Since only one child moved on from each table, well, Matthew was done for the day. He was a little saddened (more than I thought he would be!) at this turn of events, but we stayed to watch the Final Round.

Finals took place in front of the whole crowd. Questions were randomly selected from a large cage (think bingo or lottery) as each Finalist stepped forward to the microphone. Talk about nerve wracking! Questions in the Final Round were details from the history of Frederick County…really tough stuff!

An example: “On his way back to Washington from Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln took a detour into Frederick to visit with a wounded soldier. What was the name and rank of that soldier?” (If you don’t know, don’t feel bad…that one eliminated the student to whom it was asked!)

Matthew admitted that he probably wouldn’t have made it beyond the first round of Finalist questions…but says that he is now better prepared to go back for the win next year! You can see more pictures of this year's event here: History Bee 2010

In the end, we decided it was much better this way because they would have misspelled his last name in the newspaper anyway. Who wants to be famous with the wrong spelling? (On his paperwork for this event, our last name was spelled 3 different ways, NONE of them right!!)

We celebrated his incredible feat with waffle cones at Bruster’s, where he proved once again, that he is my “Ice Cream Charm” because they had my favorite flavor, Graham Central Station. Only one of the MANY reasons we are so proud of him…

Way to go Matthew!!!