Youth Basketball

We have just finished up our youth basketball season. It's a fast 6 weeks. This was Grayson's 4th year playing.

He's become much better at ball handling and being aggressive on the court.

He's got great hustle and is really fun to watch.

He's starting to get more serious about the game, and goof around with his friends less. But thankfully he's still having a good time. Next year he'll start playing full court!


This was Rowan's first year playing. Last year he said he was "too short" to play, even tough we assured him he was no shorter than the other first graders.

He LOVED it!

He remembered to dribble some of the time, and even made a basket or two.

He proved to be a tenacious defender, even if his tactics were sometimes a bit "questionable".

I think he mostly just liked hanging out with his friends though.

He says he wants to play every year from now on.

Now we get to enjoy a couple of sports free weeks before Fuller's middle school basketball season starts.

Here come the HAWKS!

Last weekend we had a night of family fun at the Winterhawks game. Paul's union is a sponsor of the team so once a year we have the opportunity to go for free. This year the kids all got free Winterhawks hat as well.

We had really good seats this year, about 12 rows up. Close enough to really see the action. I love how active hockey is, and how it's such a weird combination of grace and violence.

We ended up being there on their "Teddy Bear Toss" night, where they collect stuffed animals for local childrens' charities. When the Hawks score their first goal of the night everyone starts throwing their animals down on the ice. We weren't really aware that this was going on, so we hadn't brought any, but we met a nice older couple on the way in who gave us a large bag of stuffed animals for the boys to throw.

It was a pretty amazing sight to see animals flying for a few minutes. At the end of the night they announced that they had collected over 12,000 stuffed animals.

We were also treated to a really ridiculous fight at the end of the game. After spending the whole night stopping fights the refs let a couple players throw their gloves off and punch each other a few times at the end of the game. The kids were impressed, but it seemed a little contrived to me.

The highlight for Grayson and Rowan was meeting Tomahawk, unfortunately some yahoo decided to jump into our picture. Oh well, it was a fun night. Even if it did take 3 hours to play 3, 20 minute periods.

Trimming the Tree

Searching for Perfection

Last Friday afternoon we took advantage of the break in the rain, and the fact that the kids got out of school early, and went to get our Christmas tree. We have a favorite little U-cut place we like to go to. We were the only ones there that afternoon, so we had the run of the place. The road up to it isn't very fun to drive, but the trees and the prices are perfect.

You just can't beat a beautiful $20 tree, plus free apple cider and homemade chocolate chip cookies to boot!

About 2 minutes after we got there we had found a beautiful tree, but I guess it didn't seem like we had hunted enough because they were determined to look around for another 20 minutes.

I love how opinionated everyone gets!

Last year Grayson was determined that we get a particular tree, which was a not so good one. So we told him that this year he could pick. I was really hoping that he would either forget or that his taste would improve. Lucky for me, it did.

He picked a lovely tree! Now Fuller has determined that he gets to pick next year, and Rowan has sadly proclaimed that he won't get to pick until he's 9!