Too Much Information

I was watching a video I took of Tristan wrestling in a match that I took during Wednesday night's duel.  I heard the coaches telling him to use a "power half."

I asked Tristan what that was and he said, "Come here."  He then proceeded to "show" me what a half is and then what a power half is.

Uhm, yeah.  That is what I call a little too much information.

Bronco Wrestling

Tristan wrestled in his second duel last night against Comeaux High.

He wrestled exhibition again, against a boy named Patrick.

Tristan lost 3-0, but it was a good match.

Tristan had him pinned right outside the circle.  They had been wrestling close to the edge and over the edge for a bit, but as soon as Tristan got close to pinning him, the ref blew his whistle and called them back to the center of the circle to start again.  Dang it, he was so close.

That's Not How it Works

Ethan came through the door this afternoon and got started right on his homework.

I was in the kitchen washing dishes when I heard him call out to me, "Mom, I have lots of homework tonight. Can you give me the answers?"

I Confess

There's gotta be a cute boy on that bus.

It's the only thing that makes sense.

Why else (for the first time in nine years, might I add) would she be so comfortable, almost excited, to get on the bus, that she is ready almost twenty minutes early, and denying rides to school that she is usually begging for, even shedding tears over.

She kept asking what time it is, how much longer before the bus is here.  Three time in five minutes. She went outside to wait, ten minutes early.

She freaked out when two little boys escaped the house and went running in their undies, something that has happened every day since they could walk.  Was never such a big deal, but today, she quickly herded them inside so no one would see their naked selves.  

 She tried to deny.  She tried to hide the smile.  I did not believe her.

It's the only thing that makes sense.

There's gotta be a cute boy on that bus.

District V Honor Band

This weekend was also District V Honor Band Weekend.

Tristan had to be at McNeese State University early on Friday morning for the workshop and was there until almost 4 pm.  Because I was so sick and could not take him, Zac Goad's mom came to my rescue.  Zac also plays trumpet and made third chair in ContraBand, the highest trumpet from Sam Houston. We had originally agreed to car pool, she would take and I would pick up, but she ended up picking up too.  

Tristan said that he had fun, but that the music they were playing was really boring.  In one piece, he rested for the majority of the time.  Their guest conductor was Dr. Derle R. Long, the Director of the School of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. He is the conductor of the ULM Wind Ensemble and teaches courses at the University as well.  

Their second day of rehearsal was shorter than expected.  They were there in the morning on Saturday by 9:00 and were done by 11:30, a whole hour early.  Because they were done so early, Zac's dad picked them up and took them to Lake Charles Music, where they got mutes that were needed for the performance.

I was feeling a little better by the time we needed to leave for the concert, so I got to go, which I was very glad about.  I also got to hear the High School Buccaneer Band play.  They sounded so good and played some fun songs that I really liked.

Tristan getting dressed in the parking lot.

I can not believe that this handsome young man is my child.

I sent my good camera with Allen so I just have these grainy pictures

from too far away without my good zoom.

Tristan is on the back row, left side.  Fourth from the left.

They sounded so great.

They played Salvation is Created by Tschesnokoff, arranged by Houseknecht;
American Elegy by Frank Ticheli, which was a beautiful piece written after the massacre
at Columbine High School that Dr. Long decided to have them play
 in honor of the Sandy Hook Elementary community;

a selection of music from Le Miserables;
and one more that was not on the program.

In these pictures, he is third from the left on the back row.

The ContraBand had 17 kids who went to the All State festival in either the 

Band, Orchestra, or Jazz Band..

After the first two pieces the director stepped to the side and had the first chair clarinet 

come to the podium to lead the band in some various warms up and half scales.  

I thought it was weird to stop the performace to warm up, but to each his own.  

When they were done he announced that was their performance 

of the Oriental piece "Tu Ning."  Hilarious!  Really, it was!

Leaving the stage.

Only three boys from Sam Houston made the top band, ContraBand.

Tristan and Zac, who are both Sophomores and Nathan Burt, 

who is a Junior, was 6th chair, just ahead of Tristan.

It's been our tradition to take Tristan out for lunch after Honor Band, so he chose to go to his favorite Chinese buffet in Lake Charles, New King Palace.  I was not so sure that eating Chinese food was the best course of action for me after two days of eating nothing much, so I played it safe with two bowls of Egg Drop Soup and a few sauteed green beans.  We had a nice meal together and of course saved our fortunes.

Because of his participation in the District Honor Band, Tristan has now been chosen to participate in the Calcasieu Parish Honor band, which we think starts in March.  They practice once a week at night and will perform in April at Festival.  He should be 7th chair again because everyone above him in District Honor Band was from Calcasieu Parish, so unless they choose not to participate, he will remain in 7th chair.

Steel Soccer

 Ethan started playing tournament soccer in November for the Moss Bluff Soccer Club.  Their team is the U-10 Steel.  They practice on Monday and Thursday nights and again on Saturday mornings.

This past weekend was their first tournament in Thibodaux, Louisiana, which is southeast of Lafayette.  Ethan and I had scheduled to travel down on Friday with his friend, Landon, and his mom, Monet.  We were going to share a hotel and the boys were so excited about it.

The team had three games scheduled for the tournament, two on Saturday and another on Sunday.  We had plans to get up on Sunday morning and leave to meet everyone at church in Jennings.  The tournament directors knew how far we were travelling to play the games and moved all of our games to Saturday.  That made us very happy because that meant that Ethan got to play with his team in all the games.

I woke up Friday morning sick.  I hoped and prayed that I would get better so that I could go, but it was not to be.  Allen and I decided that he would take Ethan and go to Thibodaux, so they headed out Friday after school.  I was very disappointed to have to stay behind.  I was really looking forward to hanging out with Ethan.

One of the boys on the team had a birthday and the team celebrated with pizza and cupcakes in the hotel lobby after everyone arrived.  They woke up bright and early on Saturday for an 8:00 game.

Ethan is #22.

I do not know what he is doing in these pictures, but everyone around him is a bundle of energy and he is standing still.  He chews on his fingers all the time, but especially when he is nervous.
He chews a lot during games.  We've been trying to break him of the habit,
but you can see that he appeared nervous while they warmed up.

Warming up.

Talking with the head coach, Andrew Martin.

I love this picture of the soccer balls left on the field.

They lost their first two games, each 6-0.  Ethan told me they were so close and that they almost won.  

Ha!  I think he is delusional.  Allen said that the other teams had been playing together a lot longer than our team had been.  The Moss Bluff Soccer Club and the team is only one year old and all our boys are required to play recreational soccer during the season, which the other teams they met are not.  

They stay together all year and play.

Ethan is the far right purple player.  He has been playing a wing position.

I'm not exactly sure what that entails yet, but I believe it is more mid-field than he played in rec.

In rec though, they were just beginning this year to play positions and be more man-on-man.  Ethan played offense and the forward position.  So now he is learning a new position.

Ethan throwing the ball in.

Their last game was supposed to be played against the first team that beat them earlier in the day, 

but somehow they ended up playing a U-12 team in a friendly match, while that other team played for the Championship or something.  I'm not really sure I understood it the way Allen explained it.

Not sure he really understood what had happened either.

The Steel with the U-12 team.

They got home on Saturday night around 9:15 or so.  

Ethan was exhausted, but said that he had a great time!

The next tournament is supposed to be in three weeks in New Iberia, but apparently we would play the same teams we played this weekend.  So, they are trying to move us to a tournament in Monroe for the weekend of February 16-17, but we will be out of town.  They have two more tournaments planned after that for March and April in Alexandria and Shreveport.

Jackson-isms

~ "Why does Dad have such a square face and the rest of us have round faces?"

~  "My underwear goes in the drawer next to my wand."

~  "I don't like the grass lands.  I much prefer the beach, the jungle, and the mountains."

~  "I really like watching Jesus Lance."  (What???  Had to go to Ethan for clarification.  Jesus Lance is actually DJ Lance from Yo Gabba Gabba.  HAHAHAHA!!  Really got to fix that speech impediment.)

~  "Why won't my rocket wish ever come true?"  (He apparently wished a rocket to take him into space, because he wants to go to both the moon and to Pluto, and he is still waiting for that rocket to show up.)

~  Overheard talking to Holden, after being caught conspiring to do something naughty:  "How does she DO that?  She.....always.....knows.....EVERYthing!"

Quotable Quotes

On the way home from church today, I was reading Great Expectations out loud to Tristan, who was trying to catch up on some of his reading for English.  He was driving.  I was reading.

Jackson shouts from the back seat, "When you play baseball on the moon it's called moon ball."

To which Savannah responds, "Uhm, no.  It's called where'd my ball go?"

Then later, as we were closer to home, Savannah saw a sign advertising a store buying gold, and started ranting about them "always asking for people's gold coins.  Okay, jewelry I can see, but coins?  What do they think we are?  Pirates?"

Oh, The Irony

Today during sharing time at church, we were talking about how every choice we make has a consequence.  Some good, some bad.  Just like our choices.

Sister Wilson had prepared little slips of papers, each with a choice that the children might make during the week.  Then we would discuss whether we thought the choice was a good choice or a bad choice, and what consequences might come from our choices.

Jackson got to pick the last one from the jar.  It must have been specially written with him in mind.

It said, "Drawing on the walls."

Bronco Wrestling

Wednesday night was Tristan's first wrestling match.

It was a duel held at Barbe High School in Lake Charles.

Barbe was wrestling Lafayette High School and when their duel was over, Sam Houston wrestled both Lafayette High and Barbe.

Tristan's match against Lafayette High was over quickly. 

In less than 40 seconds to be exact.

The guy got a hold of his leg and flipped him over and pinned him so fast.

Tristan tried to get out of it, but just did not have enough experience to hold out on him.

The boys were expecting Tristan to have a good chance with him.  Tristan was his fourth match of the night and they thought he would be tired.  I guess not!

Tristan said he was not the least bit discouraged by losing his first match.

He did not have too much time to think about it though, because he was up again in the very next match against Barbe.

Tristan against Josh.

(I heard people cheering for him.  That's how I found out his name.)

Tristan was expected to do well in this match too.

Josh had only been wrestling for one year and had not won a match yet.

I guess this was good news for Tristan, but being his first match ever, 

I expected it to be more in Josh's favor.

The boys were wrestling exhibition, so they were not scoring points for their team.

There are three periods in an exhibition match.  The first one is for one minute.

Then if there is no pin, they wrestle for two more periods, each two minutes.

Each boy wears a band around his leg.  Tristan had green and Josh had red.  The referee wears a band on each arm and raises his hand with the number of points the boy wearing that color has scored.

I found the match to be fairly humorous, for several reasons.

One, the T-Rex hands Josh has in this picture.

They are in several other shots I took and they crack me up.

Not much happened in the first minute and before I knew it the time was up.

Starting the second period.

Another reason I found the match quite funny is that Josh spent most of the time curled up in a ball waiting.

I guess that is his technique.  Stay still and tire the other guy out.

Tristan said that Josh also kept his right arm pinned underneath his right arm so that Tristan could not move.

Some of the other matches I saw were fairly physical and almost angry.  I could tell that some of the boys were getting mad at each other and they were sorta violent matches.  Tristan's matches, especially this one against Josh, was all arms, legs, and elbows flailing.  Neither one of them were very experienced wrestlers and I could not help but giggle at how funny it all looked at times.  I later told Tristan that I was sorry for laughing, but I really could not help it.

Tristan finally got Josh nearly pinned, but could never quite finish the job.

 If you look closely at the picture above, you can see that Tristan's hand is in the way of Josh's shoulder touching the mat. At the time, Tristan did not realize that he was keeping Josh's shoulder up.

And did not realize how to move his body enough to make his shoulder go down.

Josh finally wiggled enough to get free of Tristan and roll over.

Josh in a ball again, holding onto Tristan's arm. Tristan scoring two points for whatever he did to get Josh into this position.  The coaches kept yelling for Tristan to let Josh up but Tristan could not get his arm free of Josh's grasp.

I knew that there was a clock on the wall counting down the time, but I did not realize that it also showed the points.  Someone said that Tristan was about to win the match by getting the maximum amount of points allowed, which they thought was 10.  They told me that it was 9-1 and showed me the points on the clock.

I was shocked and surprised.  I do not understand the first thing about wrestling and had no idea Tristan had gotten so many points.  But the clock kept ticking as Tristan scored two more points, so they guessed the match ended at 15 instead of 10.  I did not know this, so I have no idea how many points, if any, Tristan was able to score on the boy from Lafayette.

Tristan was able to let Josh up a couple more times when they ended in a stalemate with Josh in a ball underneath Tristan, which allowed Josh to score a point each time he got away from Tristan. 

Josh scoring a point.  Towards the end of the third period, Josh got the upper hand for the first time, I think.  

There were not too many seconds left and the coaches were yelling for Tristan to stay flat on his stomach so that Josh could not go for a pin.

Tristan survived this match to win 11-5.  He was so excited to get a win in his first match.

I missed getting a picture of the referee holding his arm up for the win.  Dang it!

He had the biggest smile ever and said that he loved every minute of both matches.

He was not even all that disappointed in his quick pin in the first match.  He was just so happy to be there.

The team is in Lafayette at a tournament today, but Tristan could not go because it is also Honor Band weekend and Tristan is required to be here for that.  There is another duel next Wednesday.

Sleep Over

 I went into the boys' room to check on them and I found Holden on his bed with all his friends.

Two elephants, a pig, Caillou, Santa, a polar bear, and Foofa peeking out from under the bear.

All helping Holden have sweet dreams! So cute, I just want to eat him up!

Spin Art

For Christmas, Holden got Jackson a spin art craft.

Jackson has been waiting patiently to get a chance to make some cool art.

Actually, I think he forgot about it until Tuesday, 

which is when his patience wore off and he started talking about it 24/7.

We finally broke it out this evening after dinner.

Jackson was kind enough to share with his brother and they made some cool designs.

They thought it was so much fun.

Too bad we ran out of the paint before we ran out of paper to color.

These were all the ones they made.  

I wasn't so sure that the box was not a piece of art work of its own.