We met Gung Gung, Nana and Aunt Courtney at the Botanical Gardens in Richmond, VA on Thursday morning.  The drive was about 3 hours both ways, but was well worth the trip as everyone had a great time.  We got there around 10am, stayed for lunch and then left around 2pm.  Sam had a birthday party to go to that night so we had to be back by 6pm.  We were able to take quite a few photos, below are just a few of them… Sam even got in the act and took a couple of really good photos too.

Alex and Sam, circa April 18, 2004

How many eggos do you think Sam has in his mouth??  🙂

  The TCU Tigers won another soccer match on Friday beating the school from Bethel 6-2.  Alex is continuing to perform better in almost every game and is finally starting to get a little physical out on the  field.  He had at least 4 attempts on goal and one was a header!  Lis keeps getting kudos for his play from the other parents too.  Most importantly he is doing all of this and keeping his grades up!
All of the photos below were from Friday, last year it would have taken 3-4 games to get this many photos!  🙂
  On a side note, Sam started soccer today – he has practice next Sat/Sun then his first game will be the 22nd.  The photo below is from the sidelines at Alex’s game.

This year’s school photos are in and both boys took good photos – some of their best ever.

The Tigers played an away game on Friday (still in Greenville) at the Catholic high school.  Might as well have been against a bunch of Navy recruits because those boys played rough and cussed like sailors.  Anyway, they lost 5-3 but Alex did get a lot of playing time.  Unfortunately they didn’t play very well together, more like a bunch of one man teams running around out on the field.  Hopefully by the next game on Tuesday they will get it together again.

After losing the first game of the season, the Tigers bounced back yesterday and won 5 – 2 at home.  Alex went from playing 10-15 minutes last year (80 minute game) to playing about 70 minutes in the first two games this year!  Lis had several people come up to her and tell her how good Alex is this year and how much faster he is compared to last year.  Considering he sat on his butt must of the summer we’re not sure where the extra speed came from, but we’re sure the 4″ he grew last year had something to do with it.  We are definitely very proud of him as he is becoming more aggressive getting to the ball and he has been making some good passes.  Now we just need him to keep up his grades.  🙂

So we tried out a new beach today, Pine Knolls beach – just a little south of Fort Macon beach.  It was very nice and the waves weren’t too big but they did have a lot of shells so Sam and Lis were both doing their own thing.  Alex decided not to make the trip and stayed home and made a Minecraft video.

Flashback to a more simple and shorter time….. July 2005.  Here are our 2 boys back then, but this year they both grew like a beanstalk.   Sam added 2.5″ and Alex added 4.”    How tall do you think they will be in just a couple of more years??

Somehow we misplaced the Birthday Cone of Shame, so we replaced it with something out of a really bad Sci-Fi show and stuck it on Alex’s head??   Reid and Drew came over to spend the night, play Minecraft on the computer, eat a little pizza, watch the new GI Joe and try to stay up as late as possible.  🙂  Everyone seemed to have a great time.

Alex and Sam sleeping in the back seat on the way home last night…. looks uncomfortable?  Of course they somehow managed to keep their headphones on the entire time.  🙂