You can no longer fit your big butt on the railing….  🙂

 

After 14 years of watching Alex play soccer and basketball and about 10 years of playing soccer and a few years of basketball himself, Sam decided to try a little baseball and swimming.  He started swimming this past Fall and joined the team that had a couple of years together and did pretty well for his 1st year out.

He actually started playing baseball last year as it was the 1st year JPII had ever had a baseball team, unfortunately as it turns out they didn’t have enough players to actually compete in a game.  This year they just barely had enough players, but not necessarily enough of the right players (definitely not enough pitchers).  They have been playing away games for about a month now and unfortunately have yet to win a game.  This is probably to be expected since everyone has about the same level of experience and years playing as Sam.  We got to see our first game on Friday as the team played their first ever home game at the new sports complex.  The field was done and in pretty good shape, but there was still a lot of construction work going on – including no concession stand, only one set of bleachers and lots of dirt everywhere.  The team lost another not so close game (10 run rule was invoked in the 7th inning), but they all gave their best effort and looked really good in their uniforms.

 

We started taking photos of they boys on the mountain for Lillian and Henri back in 2011.  This year we had a rare opportunity to take another one as they seem to now be few and far between.  Do you think the boys look any different??

 

For Gung Gung and Rod’s birthday we decided to do something a little different – we decided to go on a little adventure.  The adventure was the Rovers At Wintergreen event (https://www.roav.org/events) and to say the least we all had a blast!  The event was held at the Wintergreen Ski resort in the Blue Ridge mountains, up near Waynesboro, VA.  This was the first time that we ever tried anything like this – in fact it was the first time Lis’s car ever saw dirt other than maybe once or twice when we parked it in the front yard.  Since it was our first time out and we had zero experience, we decided, after much discussion, to take the ‘Easy’ trail first.  Unfortunately  our idea of ‘easy’ and their idea of ‘easy’ were clearly not the same.  To be fair it had rained about 2″ the day before and the trail was very wet, muddy and slippery – if this hadn’t happened it probably wouldn’t have been nearly as difficult.

Anyway, the first and only trail started off pretty good, Lis was driving the LR2 with Alex and Rod, while Gung Gung was driving the SE3 with Sam.  Lis was super excited and swerving around showing off a bit… at least for about the first 5 minutes.  After that pure panic set in and Alex and Rod feared for their lives as Lis was close to having a panic attack while driving. 😄 As mentioned previously the rain had made it very muddy and slick and the we were having trouble staying on the trail.  Of course the trail was only really wide enough for the vehicles so if we were to slide off the trail it would probably be down a 45° embankment… at least until the trees would have stopped us.  Luckily that didn’t happen and Lis muscled through until almost halfway when the trail leader stopped us to explain that we were going down the next hill and making loop back up.  While this was going on, a few people got out and stretched their legs, and we decided to switch drivers…. Alex declined to drive so that left Rod for LR2, while Gung Gung was still driving the SE3.  While talking to Sam and Gung Gung we noticed that they had a flat tire – well to be fair it was pretty much shredded by that point and the rim was chipped away… we’re not exactly sure how long they were driving on it, but hey it’s not a party until something is broken.  After talking to the trail leader, we all decided we needed to change it where it was and a couple of the other drivers came over to lend assistance.  One had a flat hydraulic lift – which was far superior to our jack and another had a compressor to blow up Sam’s spare which only had about 15 pounds of pressure. 😃Everyone was super nice and supportive and really thankful that it was us and not them. Well after that was all over, we all made it down the hill and re-assembled for the ascent back up and back to the parking lot.   Of course, again the mud proved to be a major factor in the journey back because everyone was having a super hard time getting back up the hill.  Each car had to go one at a time, to give each car plenty of time and space to make the ascent…  a couple of them got stuck and had to back down a little ways before trying again.  Fortunately, for us we had now figured out how to use the ‘Sport mode’ on the LR2 and we made it in one shot.  Gung Gung and Sam, kept in low gear and also made it without incident.  After us, there were only 4 more drivers to make it up – the last being the trail leader – who effortlessly made it over the top in his D90 Defender – in fact you will see in the last video that he easily travels over the boulders that we were so desperately trying to avoid.

Sam did a great job taking all the videos – forewarning, each one is about 2 minutes long.  Also, the videos really don’t do the trail justice because for us this was a white knuckle affair – see Lis’s expression in the rear view mirror of one of the photos. 😬

 

 

 

 

 

 

So this is what happens when Alex and his friend Jeremy get up at 7:30am to watch FIFA. 😴😴😴

So Sam and 3 other classmates from JPII entered the 2019 Sheppard Memorial Library Public Library Quiz Bowl a couple of weeks ago and came in 2nd Place!  They were competing against quite a few other teams from the Greenville area and the questions ranged from History, Math, Science and other topics.  Surprising to us, this is the 2nd year Sam has participated – see article below.  If they would have won, the team would have moved on to the regional bowl.  We are very proud of Sam for always trying new things!

Michel Phelps doesn’t have to worry just yet, but Sam won his first race a couple of weeks ago – a 100 meter freestyle!  Sam typically competes in the 50, 100 meter and the men’s relay but this was his first individual win.  The team practices every Monday and Wednesday morning at 5:45am in the Aquatics center (same place as the dive shop) and Sam manages to make it to almost every practice.  We are very proud of him for trying out something new this year and for making it to all of those early morning practices.  Of course, he still needs to work on his form – especially his turns and of course his physical conditioning and stamina, but he is making great strides.   The photos below were from Saturday when the JPII team competed against other Pitt County schools.

 

 

Sam’s self portrait for art class.  This was from the 1st quarter, but we just got to see it today – apparently he got an ‘A’ on the assignment.  He finished the semester with an ‘A’ in the class.  🙂

 

Well another year has passed and we all survived the chaos of Christmas.  Gung Gung and Nana came down for a couple of days and we were all able to spend some together.  As the boys get older and everyone is working it does get harder to get everyone in the same house, much less the same room but we managed to do it to open some gifts, have some nice dinners and even watch a movie.  Although, trying to get 6 people to agree on a movie is almost impossible with this group but we finally settled on The Meg, a good sci-fi flick about a megladon shark. 😃