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. 😃

It’s been a little while since our last post, but everyone has been quite busy with work, school and of course, life in general over the last couple of months.  Sam however has probably been the most busy of all of us.  Below is just a little taste of what it’s like to be the socialite Sam Payne…. these are probably not posted in chronological order though.  Alex has been just as busy, but nothing quite as fun.  Alex finished up another semester at PCCC and has been working quite a few hours at Best Buy each week.  Since Alex will be taking a pretty heavy workload next semester he has been working quite a few shifts this holiday season so that he can bank some money for next year.  He has already told him that he wants to cut down to 15-20 hours (he’s been working over 30 hours almost every week since starting.

Sam racked up 2 Participation Awards today at the Fall Sports Banquet for Cross Country and for Soccer.  Of course every student athlete received a participation award, so it wasn’t so much that he received the award but what the coaches had to say about him at the event…. see the videos below. 😄  Each year Sam continues to improve and we are very proud of him for giving his all every day both on and off the field.

 

 

Halloween a few days early as Sam tries on his new costume.  Sam originally wanted to be Bumble Bee from the Transformers movies… there is a new solo Bumble Bee movie coming out next month, but most of the costumes were for much smaller tikes than Sam’s size.  We did find a couple for adults on Amazon, but way out of our price range.  Luckily Dad found this at Sam’s Club today for half price.  Sam was upset there wasn’t a T-Rex but he’ll just have to make do – some boys still love their dinosaurs.  Sam’s big plans are just to go to ‘Trunk or Treat’ at the church to help give out candy to the little kids, so we thought we better snap a couple of quick photos while we had time.

 

JPII Soccer suffered a couple more tough defeats this week.  Originally they were supposed to play their last 2 games this week, but due to a rainout they scheduled another game on Wednesday.  They lost both their games on Tuesday and Wednesday to the same team, by the same score 9-0… actually it was a mercy rule for both days.  The last game is scheduled on Thursday, but due to Hurricane Michael it is has already been cancelled and we are assuming they won’t bother to make it up because it won’t change the outcome of the season.  They didn’t qualify for the tournament so tonights game was probably their last of the season.

In other news, Tuesday night was senior night for JPII and this year we only had 1 senior and that was Sam’s friend, Blaze.  Blaze is also on the cross country team with Sam and he was nice enough to take Sam to practice during the summer before he got his car.   Well anyway, part of Senior night is that the Seniors get to pick the following year’s Captain.  So can you guess what happened next?   Yup – that’s right Blaze picked Sam to be next year’s Captain of the Soccer team!  Sam got to wear the Captain’s armband for tonight’s game and he was pretty excited.  Unfortunately it didn’t change the outcome of tonight’s game, but we have a whole year to get ready for next season.

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.