Friday, May 27, 2016

Swim Lessons Update

Carter and Rylan finished their week of swim lessons today.  They both made a lot of progress.  Rylan is now able to swim both freestyle and backstroke.  He's not super fast but he looks comfortable.  Carter can swim those two strokes as well as breaststroke now!  Gareth is always yelling out as Carter swims by doing breaststroke that it's legal :)

At the end of the day, each kid does two lengths of the pool to show off their progress.  They are tired by then and their strokes look a little sloppy but you can tell a huge difference from the beginning of the week!  We are excited for this year's summer swim team season!!!

Rylan doing freestyle:


Rylan doing backstroke:


Carter doing freestyle:


Carter doing breaststroke:


Thursday, May 26, 2016

Basketball Practice

Carter is playing basketball this summer with the Flight League.  The league is put together by Brentwood Academy's boys varsity coach.  Coaches put together their own teams and find their own practice space and then play games at BA.  Suzy and I were talking about basketball camps this summer and how they overlapped with swim team so we decided to build a team for Flight who has games at night.  I ended up finding boys to play with Carter and Chase, volunteering Brian to coach (THANK YOU BRIAN!!!), and finding practice space at Franklin Fieldhouse.

The additional team members are Drew (who was played baseball with Carter since he started at Grassland with Chase and Carson), Fisher (who lives in our neighborhood, I coached on Carter's U4 soccer team, played on Carter's first basketball team, and now plays baseball with us), Cade (our neighbor who has played on our soccer and basketball teams before), and Carson (a playdate friend who has also played on Carter's soccer team off and on since I coached him).

Last night the boys had their first practice.  Chase came home with us from swim lessons and we also needed to give Fisher a ride so we took everyone to Sonic on the way to practice.


We were missing Cade (he's in Colorado this week) so Rylan subbed in so we had an even six at practice.  The rules are similar to what Carter has played with EWA and they play 3v3.


The boys did well for their first practice.  From what I've heard, Flight is very competitive.  It'll be interesting to see how these kids do!!!


Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Art Camp

Carter and Rylan went to an art camp at Ms. Julie's house on Monday and Tuesday.  The boys painted with her once before back in October.

The camp was from 9 am to 1 pm and cost $80 each.  One of Carter's classmates and two of Rylan's did the class as well as their friend Carson.  The kids had a lot of fun painting, playing on the trampoline, and playing games like kick the can and capture the flag.

On Monday, the kids did a few drawings and these beautiful bird nests on old barn wood ...


On Tuesday, the kids did these two canvases ...


by Rylan



by Carter

Monday, May 23, 2016

Swim Lessons

Carter and Rylan started their week of swim lessons with Mr. Gareth today.  This is our third year doing swim lessons with him.  We are again doing them with Suzy and Jen's families out in La Vergne.

The boys already made a lot of progress in one day.  Mr. Gareth seems to be focusing a lot more on swimming form this time around instead of starting with survival (the kids only did a couple of minutes of jumping in the pool and turning to float on their backs).

Here are videos of the boys swimming at the end of the lesson today.  I hope to share videos at the end of the week in which they are even better!!!



Sweet Brothers

Watching cartoons together this morning after waking up ...


Swimming

Carter and Rylan start swim lessons today as well as swim team (this week is evaluations).  I signed Rylan up for swim team as well and am really hoping that swim lessons will help him be able to swim the length of the pool by the end of the week (fingers crossed!!!).

I really wanted to see where he was so we went to the indoor pool at the Franklin Rec Center on Thursday and Friday.  We only stayed about 45 minutes each day since it was freezing and everyone started turning blue but it was enough to get Rylan comfortable again so he's not scared to death of swim lessons (Mr. Gareth is a little intense).

Plus he made it about 2/3rds of the way down the pool with an ugly freestyle.  Carter did the length in about 50 seconds the few times I timed him.  They both have a long way to go but this was their first time in the pool this year.


This little cutie LOVES the water.  He keeps trying to get away from me and swim like the big boys (he's moving his arms and legs as I hold him).  He doesn't realize what's going to happen if I let go of him and I couldn't do it when we were the only ones in the pool with the life guard staring at us!


Sunday, May 22, 2016

Bird Update

Our birds on the arbor above the garage are gone.  The mourning dove left about a couple of weeks ago and the robin left about a week ago.  I got the ladder out this weekend and checked in the nests and they were empty - no eggs.

This week though when we were playing catch in the back yard, I notice a bunch of straw below our purple plum tree.  It took a minute, but we discovered a new nest in the tree.


I held my cell phone up and got a picture of the inside of the nest since there was no bird around.


And no egg.

Yesterday Carter said he saw a robin fly out of the tree so I took another picture of the inside of the nest and found this beautiful egg ...


We saw the robin sitting on her nest today.  We are going to try to leave her alone as much as possible and hope we have a baby bird in a couple of weeks!

Rylan's Last Day of OCK

Rylan's last day of kindergarten at Otter Creek was Friday.  They had a short day because they did they graduation ceremony at 9:15 and then were done for the day.



I attempted to get a photo of all 3 boys but Gray was having none of it!


The graduation was a very sweet program.  It last about an hour and consisted of several songs performed by the two kindergarten classes, the kids telling everyone what "love is ...", a few prayers and speakers, and the presentation of diplomas.

Rylan is on the back row in the middle (his class is on the left and Ms. Jennifer's class is on the right).


Rylan was very nervous about speaking into the microphone ...



Getting his diploma ...


One of Rylan's best friends in his class was Keegan.  Keegan's mom was Rylan's speech teacher at Crockett for a couple of years.


Another one of Rylan's best friends was Mason.  They were both being a little shy on Snoopy Day and I got Rylan to introduce himself to Mason.  They were buddies from then on!


Rylan had a great experience at Otter Creek.  We are so happy we sent him there this year.  Ms. Melissa is an amazing teacher with so much patience and energy and love - we all wish we could be more like her!  Rylan is telling me constantly that he misses Ms. Melissa and that he wishes he could go to school all summer.  We are hoping that Gray will get in to Otter Creek in another year for preschool (and then we'll get to visit Ms. Melissa too!).

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Playhouse Slide

We haven't worked on the playhouse since the end of last summer (we still need to paint the inside, build shutters, hang the curtains, and add some fun things like a pulley system and shelves) but we hope to knock those things out soon.  Gray though really loves going up the ladder and down the slide.  He's great with the steps (as long as he doesn't try to go down them) but needs a little hand with the slide (which is super fast) if he doesn't want to fly off the end.





Carter's Last Day of 1st Grade

Today was Carter's last day of school!  The year ended two days early because the county only used about half of the allotted ten snow days this year.


The entire school had classroom end-of-year parties from 9:30 to 10:30 am and then we were encouraged to check our kids out early.

Brian was thankfully able to watch Gray so I could go to the party (there is a very strict "no siblings allowed" rule).  The room mom planned a huau themed party with a couple of crafts, games, and food.  I helped with the limbo and got some awful blurry pictures :)


Who does the limbo with their hands in their pockets?!?!?!


One of Carter's best friends in his class this year was Pierce.  He's a good, sweet kid who can be just as goofy as Carter.


The other kiddo Carter talks about the most is Lliam (the other redhead).  Unfortunately, he's not the best behaved in the class and can be a bit of a bad influence on Carter.  We've been talking about making our own decisions and remembering that we need to be on our best behavior at school!  Carter never got in trouble (as far as I know) but I can just tell by what he's told me that he can be influenced pretty easily.


Carter has already told me he's going to miss his teacher a lot.  He even got a little teary-eyed as we were walking out of his classroom this morning.  Mrs. Hess is very soft spoken (which is the opposite of Carter's kindergarten teacher) and very supportive of the kids.


After we got home this morning, Carter asked if I could take him out to lunch.  Of course!  He picked El Sombrero (which is a Mexican restaurant in the middle of McKay's Mill - the neighborhood that about 90% of the students at Clovercroft are from).  It was just Carter, Gray, and I but we saw several other first graders there as well as some other kids we knew.  The kids took over and it got a little crazy in there!


Carter and I have big plans to do lots of reading, math, and typing this summer to be ready for second grade.  Hopefully we stick to our plan!!!

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Rylan's End-of-Year Party

Rylan has school through this Friday, but we had his end-of-year party last Friday.  I had signed up at the beginning of the school year to help with this party.  No one else really stepped up to plan it so I took the lead.  Someone else though decided we should have it at Granny White Park (which is about 5 minutes from Otter Creek), but I pretty much planned the rest.  Unfortunately Carter's field day at Clovercroft was the same day so I had to miss it (but Brian played hooky from work for a little bit and was able to go - yay!).

Usually the kids just got to the park to play and picnic.  I decided it would be fun to add in some field day games as well.  So the kids played on the playground for about an hour while we set up the games.  Then they had lunch under some trees on beach towels.  The pavilion had already been reserved and there were a couple of other preschool parties at the park.  Brentwood Middle also ended up having their field day on the adjacent soccer fields so it was pretty crowded at the park that day.

After lunch, Ms. Melissa handed out the kids' end-of-year t-shirts they had all signed the back of earlier and they posed for a group photo.


Then it was time for the games.  I met with the other parents after dropping off the kids one morning and brainstormed ideas for the games.  We decided to have five games which would allow us to split the kids up into groups of four which could rotate through the games.

Water Bucket Challenge - Each relay team of two had a large bucket of water and a sponge.  One person from each team soaked the sponge, raced it to another bucket, and squeezed out the water.  That team member then raced the sponge back to their teammate who did the same thing.  The kids raced for a couple of minutes and the team with the most water in their team's bucket won.



Spoon and Egg Race - This is a classic!  We used large serving spoons and golf balls.  This was Rylan's favorite because he won each time he did it :)



Three-Legged Race - Another classic!  The kids were not so good at this but extremely funny.  We tried to teach them to say "inside - outside - inside - outside" to work as a team but they'd just say the words and still be just moving however they could.




Rylan did a little better when paired with Mason ...


Corn Hole Board Toss - I was helping another group and got back to this game after the boys had already started just tossing the bags around.  They seems content so we just let them play around.


Water Balloon Toss - We wanted to keep the kids cool so we had another water game.  Here the kids just tossed water balloons back and forth until the popped them.  Simple but fun!



Rylan had a fun little group that included Hudson, Drew, and Mason.


After the games, there were popsicles and a little more free time before heading home!  We had beautiful weather on Friday and it couldn't have been more perfect!

Monday, May 16, 2016

Littlest Bro

Also from a couple of months ago ...


Gray LOVES his big bros.  He does everything they do.  He learns way more from them than he does Brian or I.

Nightly Reading

This is from a couple of months ago ...


Carter - End of Soccer Season

Carter finished his soccer season on Saturday.  This season was a little different for his team.  In the past, the team would split up and play two games on two adjacent fields.  However, this season, there were significantly fewer kids playing in Carter's age division (as well as the age group up) so the commissioner decided to have smaller teams this year that just play one game.  This meant Brian was going to have to cut kids from Carter's team (we've played with most of these boys for a few seasons now).  He did not want to do this (most of the kids had already signed up assuming they'd be playing with us).  So Brian decided to split the team into two teams (they would still practice together though during the week).  Also, there was no longer going to be a legacy league.  Previously there was a recreational league and a legacy league.  The legacy league wasn't necessarily an advanced division but it played that way somewhat because coaches were allowed to pick their teams (instead of having kids randomly assigned to them).  This was going to make it difficult to keep the kids together even if Brian coached two teams.

Brian's solution was to take the stronger 6 kids and play them an age group up in the U8 rec league.  The remaining 6 kids played in the U7 rec league.  This meant Brian had to now coach a total of 3 soccer games each Saturday (and one of those games would not even have one of his own children on the team).  But we thought that this would challenge all the players and only make them better.

Our U7 team struggled.  They did not really rise to the challenge.  We had hoped that not hiding behind the stronger kids in games would allow them more touches and an opportunity to score goals and make some good defensive plays.  With the exception of two players, the majority acted as if they didn't really want to be there most Saturdays.  It was frustrating for Brian who was missing his own kids' baseball games to coach these guys.  But they won a few.  And Carter got to play a couple of extra games (as well as some of the other U8 boys) when kids weren't able to make games.

The U8 team did AMAZING!  They only lost one game all season.  They 100% rose to the challenge and improved tremendously as the season progressed.  Brian even added a 30 minute goalie practice before our regular practice midway through the season (for both the U7 and U8 boys) and it really helped the U8 team finish with shutouts in 3 of the last 4 games.

On Saturday the boys got their participation trophies (and cupcakes that I made which were just like the ones I did for Rylan's team the week before).


This is an amazing group of boys who play fabulous soccer and are great friends!


I missed the first half of the game because I was at Rylan's baseball game but I did get a video of Carter and Jack working together to score a goal!


Baseball Pictures

I did pictures for the boys' baseball teams again this season.  Here they are!


Spring 2016 6YO Yankees


Front Row (L to R): Rylan, Rocco, Jack, Radnor, Abiy
Back Row (L to R): Maddox, Mac, Eli, Henry, Drew
Coach: Jason
Missing: Ben & James




Spring 2016 7YO Tigers
(I didn't notice the kiddo in the middle making that face in EVERY photo until I got home.)


Front Row: Max, Fisher, Christopher, Drew, Gavin, Riggins
Back Row (L to R): Jack Henry, Carter, Ford, Hayden, Jacob
Coaches (L to R): Brian, Brad, Jeff T, Jeff P, Gavin


This ended up being the better team photo!