Middle school chorus

Briggs was able to take chorus this year. It sort of went along with him singing with the band at church at our early service. The holiday concert took place at our church, but there was a fall concert before that at the school. The picture above, I think, is some of the boys (Luke, Zack, Jason, Neehar and Ayden) that night. That one may be from 2015-2016. After the start of the new semester the director (Katie Stephens) asked Briggs to participate in all-county chorus, which he did. He took ill the first of the two day-long practice sessions (First Baptist, Asheville), but was able to attend the second, and be part of the closing concert. Definitely 2017. The picture below is from that event. Pretty cool.

Christmas outside 2016

Some years it gets done; sometimes not. This year we had outdoor decorations for Christmas. Libby did the old basketball post as a giant tree. Pretty stunning actually. The boys got in on the act with an abstract creation that required the ladder and numerous tools to install. Somewhere I have a picture of the product at night, but I can't find it at the moment.

Sous chefs

Eli has done plenty of cooking away from home, especially at Rockmont. But he has never done much here. I can't remember exactly what led to this shot, but here he is in the kitchen. I seem to recall that he was being very precise with everything as a beginner would be.

This is Briggs a few nights ago. Out of the blue he wanted to bake a cake. We had a box of cake flour around with three possible recipes on the back. He chose one and charged in. The result was dandy.

It will be interesting to see if and when the cooking bug bites Calvin. Funny how both boys wanted to bake something (sweet). The first thing I recall trying was ratatouille!

Changing basketball

Briggs has evolved into a year-round sportist: basketball in winter; baseball in spring/summer and football in fall. That last one was the last to be added. Above is a shot of him in his last year of rec league basketball a year ago. The school won't let 6-th graders play, so he did one more year in rec. The picture below is this year playing school ball. The school team has had a rough patch of several years with a really poor showing in our county. We were hopeful with new talent they might fare better this season, but it was not to be. The only question was "how bad" was it? Briggs enjoyed the glamour of it all though as much as anything.

The day I fell in

This was December 2015. I took Briggs and Calvin to Cawtawba Falls, which is near us in Old Fort. I seem to recall it was a fairly warm day. We were all wearing shorts. We had a great time and made it all the way to the top of the falls. We had exercised caution on the way up when we had to cross the creek: uneventful. Not the case coming down. I slipped on a rock and the left side of my whole body landed in the creek. I happened to be holding my new phone/camera in my right hand. Luckily we really were on our way out and I didn't suffer very long with the cold water on me. Still a fun day and lessons learned.

2017 Soccer

Calvin has played both soccer and basketball in years past during the winter season. This year it was soccer. This year he seemed to believe that soccer was "his" sport. He had a good team with friendly kids and a decent mix of abilities. They didn't win much, but still had a good time. Instead of professional team pictures his team opted for in-house photography mid-season. This was the result: one silly, one serious. Last year Calvin's team was the "Speedy Turtles." This year somehow it was "Turbo Turtles." Hmmm. The day of his last game a couple of weeks ago was the same day as the training session for summer baseball!