The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Hoop Star

Maxwell had his first basketball game on Saturday and it was definitely entertaining! There are only 7 people on his team and only 5 showed up for the game so that meant our 5 superstars had to play the whole game. They did great and were red-cheeked by the end!

Basketball at this age is funny – they try to make it all fair and nice and the defense isn’t supposed to actually “steal” the ball. Ha! They defensive players are supposed to get on the X’s in their zone defense and stay there. They can get the ball if it comes into the box or off of a rebound. On offense, they really want one kid to dribble down and pass it off to another player who takes a shot.

basketball

The first quarter was pretty comical because the kids really didn’t know what they were doing. But, after that they figured it out a bit and had things rolling. Maxwell did great – he dribbled great, hustled after the ball, went in there to fight for rebounds and even made two baskets!! Such a baller!!  🙂

basketball

bsaketball

basketball

Most importantly, Maxwell had fun. After the game he asked if we could go buy a basketball and even went to the Y on Sunday with Robert to practice. I love this kid!

basketball

Their team name? The Bucks. Go Bucks Go!

Last soccer game

A week ago Sunday, Spencer (finally!) had his last soccer game. By this point in the season, Baby just thought she was on the team…

soccer

And Spencer was largely over playing soccer! There were no tears, and he ran out on the field plenty, but he wasn’t super interested in actually playing! What he was interested in was getting a trophy!  🙂

soccer

soccer

So proud!

soccer

soccer

soccer

Go Lightning Bolts!!

Swim lessons

Like last year, we took some swim lessons from Coach Laura to get geared up for summer. This year we did 10 full days! Monday through Friday of two weeks every day. That’s a lot of swimming – and a lot of getting 3 kids suited up and over to the pool every day!  🙂 We made it though and the kids honestly LOVED it and showed fantastic progress.

I’m going to link to a few videos in this post. You’ll have to click over to Flickr to see them.

First day in a little bit of rain. Not the best – or warmest! – of conditions but we made it.

swim lessons

swim lessons

Spencer thought everyone did good!  🙂

Over the next week, everyone kept doing good! They improved every day!

swim lessons

swim lessons

Baby still wasn’t so sure about it all and cried whenever she had to get in the pool for the first 4 lessons.

swim lessons

But, that all changed on Friday of the first week! She decided it was pretty fun and did great. She would stick her own head under water and really started kicking those chubby little legs by the second week!

Samantha swimming and really kicking!

swim lessons

Also, please watch this video of her walking into swim lessons. She’s so cute I could just die.

swim lessons

Maxwell is a great swimmer and was practicing different strokes and swimming from one end of the pool to the other. He also spent plenty of time in the pool practicing his flips and other tricks!

Maxwell running jump and Maxwell swimming

swim lessons

Spencer was working on taking a breath without stopping and keeping his feet kicking. He also practiced what to do if he gets “stuck” in the middle of the pool. Answer? put your head down and start kicking! We still need to work on it but he’s getting there.

Spencer swimming and Spencer jumping in and Spencer doing TIMBER!

swim

I was so proud of all 3 of them! and I sure loved watching how much fun they all had in the pool together!

Here’s to a summer of swimming!

Goooooalll!

Well, not really a goal but still a great soccer game all around! Spencer might not have scored but he’s still a soccer star in my book because he hustled, he played, and he had fun!! Such a big difference from the first games of the season!

soccer

Maxwell was a huge help to Robert getting the balls out the net and grabbing them as they went out of bounds. He got his workout in!

soccer

Samantha was actually very well behaved too! Thanks to a cup of goldfish, she sat in the chair and watched for a long time! When she was up, she was just walking around to everyone making new friends!  🙂

soccer

When the game was over, the team huddled up for one final cheer and baby couldn’t help but get all up in there too!

soccer

soccer

soccer

I’m so, so proud of Spencer! Especially when Robert looked at the roster and realized he’s the second youngest on his team. He’s doing his best out there and we loved watching him run his heart out! Thumbs up for this soccer stud!

soccer

Check mate!

We had a great weekend. On Saturday Robert took Maxwell to the end of the year Chess Tournaparty! Maxwell takes chess up at school one morning at week and has really liked it. I was a little surprised – and very pleased! – when he said he wanted to to go the party. They were supposed to wear their t-shirt and all of the bands they had gotten through the year on their arms!

chess

If you collect all 25 of the bands you get a special black t-shirt! Only 11 black shirts have ever been given out so it’s a pretty big accomplishment. The first hour of the Tournaparty was just for the “Little Genuises” which are the pre-school aged kids. Like in his weekly classes, they played games and sang songs and made chess lots of fun.

chess

chess

Maxwell made it all the way down to the last group in “Chessmaster Says”…

chess

and visited “Junk Food Mountain” a few times too!

chess

He also won his match up! “I wish you the best of luck!”

chess

Maxwell has been lucky this year because the head of The Knight School, Dr. Brooks, has been the teacher of their class at IPC. As Robert was leaving the Tournaparty with Maxwell on Saturday, Dr. Brooks stopped him to tell him how impressed he’s been with Maxwell and said that he is one of his top 3 preschool players in the state! whoa! He said Maxwell really should be playing a level up and competing with 3rd graders to really challenge him. That makes me so proud!! A few months ago I had emailed Dr. Brooks to tell him Maxwell would miss a class and he emailed back saying “He is awesome in chess! Clearly plays a lot at home. Good job!” I wish I could say that was true but Robert had only played about 2 games with him at home at that point! ha! We’re definitely going to encourage him to keep taking chess next year and will do even more of this at home this summer…

chess

Go Chess Master Maxwell!