Sunday, February 1, 2015

But On The Bright Side...

After I got up and stretched out my aching muscles a bit yesterday morning (see previous post) it actually turned into a pretty darned good day.

Petunia's basketball team did well in their first scrimmage ever, although the opposing coach has apparently decided that he is not going to teach his kids about the traveling foul.  (This is the rule that requires players to dribble while moving with the ball: i.e., you may not walk around a basketball court while holding the ball in both hands.)  It got so bad that at one point I actually had to call a huddle and explain to my kids that no matter *what* the other team was doing, they were actually going to observe the rules of the game because they know better!  When they get to real games next year, his kids are going to get a foul called on them every time they touch the ball.  Some of my weaker kids are improving exponentially and my strongest player had a phenomenal scrimmage and didn't knock anybody over this time--his defense is a tad overenthusiastic--so I was really proud.  Love these kids.  They are all first and second graders and an absolute joy to coach.  The icing on the cake was when the awesome second grade teacher at the kids' school (who comes to the school on her own time on weekends to watch her students play because she's just that cool) tracked me down afterward to tell me that she thinks I'm great with the kids.  Considering how great SHE is with the same age group, praise gets no better.

Thing Two had a game right after ours, so we quickly switched sides of the gym and settled in to cheer.  Kid still can't hit a bull in the ass with a basketball (except for free throws, which makes NO sense at all) but darned if his aim isn't getting better...some of his shots could actually have dropped.  He looks better every game.  And he was ferocious on defense, especially with rebounding.  Low scoring game--we joked that it looked more like a baseball score than a basketball score--but his team came out on top and I had one happy boy on my hands.  Grabbed my one cache for the day (streak is currently at 27 days, which is my longest ever by a lot), took the younger two to lunch and then booked it to the school where Thing One's team was playing at 2PM.  The story of my weekends...sports activity to sports activity to sports activity.  :)  Thing One's team also won, and they were playing a bunch of kids who hacked so badly that their star shooter fouled out in the third quarter, so they learned a few things about staying calm when provoked.  (Sadly, they managed that better than your 41 year-old correspondent did on Friday and they are 5th and 6th graders.)  Funny thing was that their coach came over to ours at halftime and asked if kids who fouled out could still play...guess that's how they roll in their town.  Our coach said no, since there's no incentive to play clean ball otherwise.  Kid who fouled out came off crying, and I felt bad for him, but that's a failure of coaching.

Sports finally done for the day, time to redirect focus to birthday celebrating: Himself's birthday is Tuesday but the combination of a BOE meeting and two basketball practices makes that not a good evening to celebrate.  Petunia and I rolled up our sleeves and got to work in the kitchen.  This was the result:

Note the birthday candle in the middle?  :)

Chocolate covered bananas, chocolate-dipped Ritz cracker/peanut butter 'sandwiches,' and chocolate/peanut butter pretzels, per the request of the birthday boy.  Wish I'd taken a pic of Petunia as well...she had chocolate up to both elbows and from ear to ear by the time we finished!






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