6th season of basketball

Nadia has been using this for a month to measure her vital lung capacity for her science fair project.

This is Nadia's sixth year of being on an Upward basketball team, Ian's fourth year, and Oliver's second year (although he only completed half of his first season last year due to his fractured skull). Yesterday they had their first games for 2019. Nadia's game was at 9am. Although her team is definitely not as dominant as last year's team, the Suns had a decisive win. Nadia *almost* got a basket. The basketball rolled around the rim, but then it bounced out. Their game had more jump balls than I think any game I've ever watched before. We came home for an early lunch and then returned for Oliver's 12pm game and Ian's 1pm game. They don't keep score in the K/1st grade games, but it seemed to me that his team (Cheetahs) didn't win. His friend, Isaiah, who is 5 years old scored more than one basket. Oliver has a long way to go (such as even being able to dribble the ball down the court), but he definitely was more "in the game" than he was last year. Ian's team (Cyclones) won their game; theirs was the highest scoring game (by far) of the three games our kids played in that day. Ian was fouled once, and he had his first free throw attempts. He missed the first one, but he made the second one, which means he's our first child to score at least one point for his team this year. Way to go, Ian! He did a great job of playing defense.

Paul's parents came back to our house after Ian's game. We played three different games - Suspend (I won and Grandma came in second), Blokus (the team that included Pop Pop and Nadia won), and Rummikub (Nadia won). Pop Pop and Ian also played a Mario game on the Wii. Grandma treated us to pizza for dinner, and I made chocolate peanut butter chip cookies.

I had called a plumber on December 31 asking him to fix two toilets. He came on January 11th and fixed one and partially fixed the other. He said Paul needed to install a new fill valve. We picked one up after Ian's game. As of Saturday afternoon we now have three functioning toilets. The kids and I got a little extra exercise for 12 days as we couldn't use the toilet on the main floor of the house. I was thinking of asking for an estimate on finishing the repair of the bathroom floor (so that we could resume the usage of the shower in our master bathroom), but Paul says he's almost done with the repair. 

We had our cable turned off a few days ago, so we aren't watching any of the playoffs this year. Going into the playoffs I said I didn't really care who won the Super Bowl as long as it was NOT the Cowboys or the Patriots because the Steelers are currently the only team to have won 6 Super Bowls, and the Cowboys and Patriots have both won 5 Super Bowls. My wish came true in that the Cowboys lost yesterday, but the Patriots won today. I'll be rooting for Kansas City next weekend! 

This is my last week off. My semester resumes next Monday. Even though I've had five weeks off, I honestly don't feel ready to go back in the sense that I've been so busy it feels overwhelming to think I'll be adding a FT job to my load in a week. I've been working to prepare for the spring semester so it's not as if the job was completely removed from my load all of the past 4 weeks. The two biggest events on our schedule this week would be Oliver getting two teeth pulled at the dentist tomorrow afternoon and Nadia participating in the science fair at the Children's Museum in Bloomsburg on Thursday night. The director told us that only three fifth graders entered the competition (it's for grades 4-8) and they give 3 cash prizes per grade level, which means Nadia is guaranteed to win a prize (presuming we succeed in completing her project between now and then!). We didn't see Paul at all Monday through Friday, but he was at home for two days this weekend, which was wonderful. This afternoon I took the kids to see a musical about James and Giant Peach. When the cast came out to take their bows, Oliver gave everyone a thumbs up except for the two aunts. He gave Spiker and Sponge a big thumbs down. It cracked me up! They are certainly very repulsive characters!