Of Basketball and Braces

A very hectic February is coming to a close this week. Both boys have been playing basketball, Faith has had gymnastics and play production classes and Jake has gotten his braces on. 

Faith is really doing well in gymnastics and seems to do new things each time she goes. At some point, once she is ready, she can test up to the next level. For now, she is getting stronger and much more confident on a weekly basis. She loves the gym she is at and is getting better about having different teachers and being in classes with different girls. She is also following up on her Peter Pan experience by taking a class at the library that is taught by the director from that play. She is loving that as well and seems to love the whole drama thing. 

We got Tanner into a different basketball league for a quick, short season before baseball really kicks in. He is playing Hoop Dreams, which is a league way across town, and is in the 3/4 grade group. He is really learning a lot, even tough the games are pretty disorganized. The drills and skills that he is learning will go a long way towards helping him as he continues to play. For 3/4 graders, then run a pretty involved offense and are learning some really good defensive techniques. This Saturday was his last day and baseball tryouts are this Saturday. So back to the Diamond for awhile. 

Jake has been playing on the 5/6 grade team at school. The regular season is kind of tough to watch as anyone who wants to gets to play, whether you have ever played basketball before are not. The rosters are huge, score isn't kept and a lot of the basketball is pretty unwatchable. After the regular season, they cut down to the tournament team, which is kids who have basketball experience and they play the other teams in the district in a single elimination tournament. Jake's grade has a bunch of really good basketball players. They all play in multiple league, multiple times over the course of the year, so this was one of the more talented teams the school has seen. They did not disappoint, mowing down the competition and ending up in the District Championship game tonight. They played Trailwinds Elementary, a team that regularly goes deep in the tournament. It was a really tough, close game but they ended up coming up a little bit short. They were in the game until the very end. Jake got to play some good minutes in the tournament and did well.  He is upset that they lost, but the team did the school and the parent group proud. 

This week, right before the semi-final game, Jake went in and got his upper braces put on. He had spacers for a week and the braces are on a timetable thing, so we couldn't postpone due to basketball. They will put the lowers on in a couple of months and then he'll have them on for the next couple of years. Luckily, there is an orthodontist in the neighborhood so it makes the regular appointments a lot easier than driving across town. In addition to getting braces, he signed up for his middle school electives for next year (computer sciences and Spanish) this week. He's getting old so fast, it's like instant teenager. 

Dad and Joan visited this last weekend. Dad got to come and watch Tanner's basketball camp and game. Joan, Marisa, Faith and Cori did a lot of shopping, both at the mall on Saturday and Downtown on Sunday. We went out to a couple of nice dinners and had a really nice visit with both of them. We are making plans to try to get over to England for Thanksgiving this year. So we'll see if we go international in the fall. 

We seem to be slowing down on the frequency of these posts. Some of it is that life is more complicated, some of it is that it starts to become somewhat repetitive (it's basketball season again etc.) but some of it is just that as they get older it's tougher to figure out what to write about. We'll keep it up, but it will probably be more infrequent as we all continue to grow up around here.