A New Record?

Aaron had his first basketball game yesterday at Challenger, team 4 against team 2. The first half went really well with Aaron's team hanging in just two points behind team 2. At the half, it was 14-12, but in the second half team 2 really took off and left team 4 in their dust. I was really impressed, though, with the improvement of all the players who have started to put the fundamentals together and play like real teams. Aaron in particular had a great game handling the ball a lot more than he ever had in scrimmages. He dribbled well all the way down the court keeping the ball in good control, passed to his teammates, caught passes using his height advantage over the other kids, and even managed to steal a few balls. He was very nervous going into the game not having gotten much playing time or the ball passed to him when he was practicing, so it was especially nice to see him grinning from the time the game started to the final buzzer last night. He appeared to be having the time of his life on the court, win or lose.

We went to the Prowler hockey game last night against the Crookston Pirates to round out our evening and threw some pucks out on the ice for the girls' hockey fundraiser. They had several friends at the hockey game and I quickly found myself sitting alone in the upper seating next to our goal and when I turned around, I saw Daniel playing an improvised game of "floor" hockey with a buddy on the floor next to the wall of the arena using a black pop bottle cap and plastic spoon as a hockey stick. We ended up leaving after the second period, as the Prowlers appeared to have the game well in hand with a score of 5-1 and it was getting late. We enjoyed the somewhat rare treat of the pep band there too, as they recruited some alumni band members to create a fuller sound. What really cracked me up was sitting right behind them listening to them play an old Husky favorite, "Louie Louie."

As for the title of this blog post, one of the other parents/coaches last night mentioned I seemed to be rather busy at Challenger lately, this week having been there "almost" every night. I hadn't given it any thought up until then, but when I did think back, I actually have been there every single night this week. Monday was Aaron's basketball practice, Tuesday was Running & Reading in the gym and library/media center, Wednesday was Daniel's first basketball game, Thursday was Aaron's game, and today I'll have my usual lunch appointment with Aaron to round out a full week. I was surprised to realize I will have gone to school as many days as the boys have this week. I imagine I probably came close to or even matched the record previously, but this was the first time I really noticed how often I've been out there. I guess that explains the gas needle in the car going down faster than I thought was normal recently.

In other news, we woke up to an outside temperature of 19.4 BELOW zero. It's so cold this morning that my solid wood front door has frost around the lower INSIDE edges and the INSIDE of the double pane kitchen windows are frozen. I'm enjoying my insulated morning here inside thinking it will take a tiny bit more motivation to get myself out onto the tundra again to have lunch with Aaron at Challenger. For that matter, I may need to warm the car up for a while this time. The transmission took about 3 seconds to engage yesterday evening and today is even colder. At least we haven't had any more snowfall or recent rain so we have just the cold to endure.

Now that it's Friday, we've received the majority of the RSVPs we're probably goin g to get for Aaron's birthday party tomorrow afternoon. I think we've easily exceeded the 15 we needed for the water park passes, so there should be no shortage of kids to help celebrate Aaron's 10th. He's getting pretty excited for his big day, which reminds me... I gotta try to get a pirate cake put together in time for the party... Wish me luck.