Well the 37th Annual British Shenandoah Valley Car Club show is now officially over and the results have been tallied.  Sam entered his old Rover (2003 Freelander SE3) in the competition for the 1st time ever this year.  Of course Sam is only 16 years old and this is his first car . 🙂   Fun fact: Sam’s car was first sold on January 24, 2003, just 6 months before Sam was born.  Unfortunately though Sam did not bring home any hardware for his group  (Open Entry for 1968-On, Sedan – Coupe), but then again he was up against some stiff competition: a Bentley, a Rolls Royce, a Lotus, a Jensen and one other car.  We didn’t have too high of hopes going into the competition, it was really just for fun and Sam did seem to have a blast.  Not only he did get to show off his car, which he worked very hard to get cleaned up, but he also got to see some other great cars and take a LOT of photos.

All was not lost however as Gung Gung also entered in the competition with his 1934 Riley Racing car.  To say it was the hit of the show would be an understatement.  We had a hard time even getting some good photos of the car because there always seemed to be a crowd around the car and/or around David.  David has been working on this car for 7 years and 11 months if we remember the story correctly, so it was a long time coming but well worth the effort – the car looked stunning.

Overall it was a great weekend and everyone had a lot of fun, plus the weather was beautiful and we got to see Aunt Becky’s new house as well.

Sam attended his first Prom last April at John Paul II High School.  Trinity Christian School didn’t allow boys and girls to dance so this was his first chance to attend one.  Poor Alex unfortunately never got the chance as he went all 4 years to Trinity.  Sam took, Madison, a girl he met from church.   Madison didn’t attend JPII but was really excited to go to the dance.  She is currently at another high school about an hour away, but taking college courses in coordination with her high school as well.  She hopes to be a Occupational Therapist like her Mom.

Sam’s school photo came in the other day… we’re not sure we will get any though.

Due to the hurricane and other recent weather events the JPII Saints Soccer team is having to get caught up on all their matches.  Unfortunately that meant that Sam has had 3 matches so far this week and another one coming up on Friday night.  Luckily Thursday is open house at the school and they have a reprieve from both matches and from practice and boy do they need it.  They lost all 3 matches so far this week and all were by a lopsided margin, by at least 5 points.  By tonight’s match you could tell they were mentally and physically exhausted and it showed on the field.  The other teams were better teams, but not by the margins they lost by.  The team’s problem is passing and communication – there is really none of each, hopefully a days rest will do them some good and they can bounce back on Saturday.

Tuesday’s match and Sam is in hot pursuit.

Sam rough housing to get to the ball.

Sam and Lis spent a few moments enjoying nature yesterday… then they killed a spider.

We think she’s poisonous?

She’s dead now

Sam, along with a bunch of his friends from JPII, ran his first 5k race today.  The event was held in Greenville and was for a charity to support Pediatric Cancer.  A couple of Sam’s friends were pushing jogging buggies with handicapped kids.  Sam was just running on his own with some other friends.  The BIG news is that Sam earned a 1st place medal in the 16 – 19 year olds range.

On Saturday, Sam and a bunch of his classmates spent the day helping friends and family in New Bern, NC clean up after the hurricane from a couple of weeks ago.  Many people have just been getting back to their homes and starting the clean up process this week.  Photos below were from the school’s Facebook page.

Also just another fun fact, JPII Men’s soccer team lost on Thursday night  3-2.  The game was away so there aren’t any photos, but the exciting news is that Sam scored his first goal!!  Apparently a shot from the left side of the goal that he extended out to the right side of the net.  We were very excited to hear the news and we are very proud of Sam as he continues to improve each year.  Hopefully the coach will give him so more time at midfield as the season progresses.

Sam had a cross country meet tonight at Saint Gabriels Church (Home Meet).  The meet was 3 laps around the Rec Center Socccer/Football field and then around the baseball field, while each lap was 1 mile in length. Sam finished somewhere in the low 20’s out of 38 boys so not too bad.  His first mile was just over 8 minutes which was pretty good.  There are only 5 boys on the JPII team and all of them are also on the soccer team, so when the Meet was over they went over to the soccer field for practice.  Weather permitting they should have a game tomorrow at home.

Sam  and  the JPII Saints were out on the pitch today after an almost 2 week delay due to the hurricane.  Sam played some pretty good defense as JPII picked up 2 goals in the 2nd half to win the game.  Today’s game was played on the Greenville Soccer pitch as the most of the fields were still saturated from the hurricane – this is a pretty nice complex with several fields and really good drainage.  One of Sam’s friends, Blaze, didn’t even make the game today because he was down with his parents trying to clean up/repair their house in Morehead City.  Hopefully things will dry out by next week and we can make up a couple of games.

Since we missed the last 2 years, we thought we might go ahead and pick one topic each Thursday that happened since then and post a couple of photos.  Today’s Throwback Thursday is from October 8th of 2016, when we decided to make a trip up to New York to pick up Lis’s car, stop by Comic Con and grab some NY style pizza.  Ohh, and on the way back we had to stay in a hotel in Richmond, VA due to Hurricane Matthew… quite a trip!

Almost immediately they drove our old car off the lot 🙂

Jaguar/Land Rover of Huntington, NY (Long Island)