Derby Run

Carter and Rylan had the Derby Run at school on March 29th.  I was supposed to chair the event this year, and while I still did plenty, the PTO Fundraising chair wanted to handle most of it.  Which was fine with me!  I still had to be at school all day but got to take a break and watch Carter and Rylan fun.

Second grade was the second grade level of the day.  Luckily it only sprinkled while we were setting up and then it was pretty much perfect running weather the rest of the day.  Rylan did amazing and ran 20 laps in 30 minutes (he tied Luc who has run track for a few years already and has a very fast and competitive family).  We think that 20 laps was about 3.55 miles.  Not bad for 30 minutes!!!

Rylan with Luc ...

And a group picture with some of the boys in his class ...

Fourth grade ran immediately after their lunch.  Luckily I didn't see anyone get sick (it's happened before!).  Carter knew how many laps Rylan had done was he probably pushed himself more at the end than he would have otherwise.  He completed 21 laps (about 3.75 miles) in 30 minutes.  I'm wondering if Carter, Rylan, Brian, and I all entered a 5K, who would have the best time?!?!  It would be close!

Carter with his best friends in his class (Harper, Kate, and Eduardo).

NSC 2019 - Game 1

We went to our first Nashville Soccer Club game of the season on Friday night.  We have season tickets again this year and the same seats.

On Friday, NSC played MLS team New York City FC in a pre-season friendly.  Just like the first game last season, it was VERY WET.  It rained the entire game (the boys actually had the day off of school because of all the rain we were getting and the potential for flash flooding).

Carter and Rylan wanted to start the game sitting in our actual seats in the rain. 

We made it about 30 minutes before I suggested we move up to where Brian and Gray were sitting under the overhang several rows up.  It didn't take much convincing.

It was still cold but so much better out of the rain!

NSC ended up losing 2-0 but they had some good opportunities.  The majority of the players who had playing time are back from last season.  Plus we got to see some of the new guys and are excited for the season!

School Valentines

Here is what the boys did for Valentine's Day at school this year.  Rylan and Gray repeated ones they've done before (Rylan has a little different saying though).

Gray had a Valentine's Day party at school that the parents got to attend.  He talks about the girls in his class way more than the boys.  I think he really likes their calmness compared to the crazy boys in his class (he gets enough of that at home).  Here he is with his currently "love", Aubrey.

Clay

Carter and Rylan worked with clay at art class on Friday.  Carter made this creation at the end and wanted me to take some pictures of it.

The Crag

Yesterday was cold and wet so I took Carter and Rylan to The Crag to try out rock climbing.  I had gotten a Groupon so it was reasonably priced (and they have 4 more visits to use).  This was my first time at a climbing gym since college!  If I weren't so cheap, I would have climbed too using the self-belays but $22 for me to only do 5 routes was too much.

Because it was their first time, they just did the self-belays.  That meant they could both climb at the same time instead of my having to belay one at a time.  There were only five self belays but it was enough for their first time.

They both did great!  Neither was scared of the height and they both got better over the hour and a half we were there.  And because we were there right when it opened, we had the place to ourselves (there were only a couple of guys in the bouldering area).

They were both completely worn out by the end.

Here are a couple of videos:

Long Hunter State Park Hike

We took the boys hiking a couple of weekends ago at Long Hunter State Park since we had a warm day for February and late basketball practices.  Long Hunter is a small park along the eastern shores of Percy Priest Lake in Nashville.  We did the Day Loop Trail which we also did the the big boys back in 2011.

Gray is starting to get a little big for the backpack but it beats carrying him on my hip or shoulders when he gets tired.  He was trying to walk around at the trailhead while it the pack :)

Gray did use the pack but he also ended up hiking quite a bit.

We took a side trail to get a better look at the lake early on and decided to stay off the trail and on the rocks for about a mile.  The lake is low for the winter so it was fun to explore this area that is normally under water.

 

After returning to the trail and hiking for a bit, we came to the bluff section.  There are some great views and fun ledges to hang out on my here.

Hopefully we get some more warm days when we don't have spring sports that take over our weekends to get in a few more hikes!

Fire Hydrant

Fire Hydrant by Rylan ...

Travelbugs

Brian is working all weekend so to get the (loud) kiddos out of the house, we did a little geocaching this morning.  We haven't placed our own cache yet but we got a few travel bugs and placed them in caches we found today.

The first one we named "NCSU is #1".  We attached the bug to a NC State jersey keychain.

We placed it in a geocache we found in Liberty Park.

The second travel bug we named "Tuffy".

We placed it in this really cool cache we found in Cool Springs.  We had to figure out how to open the cache and luckily Rylan figured it out right away!

Letterbox Carves

Carter and Rylan carved their first letterbox stamps (as well as a hitchhiker stamp which is a stamp that travels from letterbox to letterbox). 

Here's Rylan's.  He did the state of Tennessee (we wanted something simple for the first carve).  Then he did a dove for the hitchhiker.  We also made first finder cards for the first person that finds the box to keep.

Here's Carter's.  He did the state of North Carolina and a flamingo for this hitchhiker.

We decided to place both letterboxes in Crockett Park since there is only one other box there.  It's a pretty busy park so searched the edges of the park to find places that we thought the boxes would be undisturbed by non-letterboxers.  It took awhile yesterday but we finally found two spots on opposite ends of the park.

Rylan's is in the stump at the base of this tree.  Here is the clue for his.

Carter's is inside this tree with a bunch of baseballs and lacrosse balls we found in the woods here.  Here is the clue for his.

Now the boys are impatiently waiting for someone to find them and log them!

More Geocaching

We're still finding caches!  We are up to 22 now.  This was a hard one that took us about 15 minutes of searching under a muddy bridge!

We found a travel bug the other day which we need to place in another cache (we are waiting until we are out of town to place it).

We also finished the City of Brentwood History series.  We had to do 9 multicaches in 9 parks in the city of Brentwood.  When we finished we turned in our secret code at the Brentwood Library and the kids each got one of these pathtags.  They are pretty cool!