Pool Time - Bike Brigade

Yesterday was great weather turned by over all the boys that are part of the daily bike brigade to school.  Because it's a holiday weekend, 12 boys were able to make it over to the house in the afternoon. They swim, shot water guns, hit baseballs, and ate lots of Popsicles!  Most importantly, they had a great time.

 

    

New Do

Collin has needed a hair cut really bad for about 2 months now. Yes, we were busy with school, baseball, drums, and scouts but we could have found time to cut his hair. However, he was not ready because he was stewing over how he wanted his hair cut. He did not want to just get it trimmed and was ready for a change. One of his teammate's older brother had this cut that caught Collin's eye. After thinking about it for two weeks, Collin decided that's the one he wanted but a little longer in the front. He really likes his hair flowing when he runs. 

Here's the new do. What do you think?

 

 

Collin's Writing Collection

I look forward to the end of every school year for some reason but, one of them is because our school creates a book of either stories from each kid in the class or, like this latest book for 3rd grade, a collection of a sample of Collin's writing throughout the year. 

The first example was Collin describing himself at the beginning of the school year. I especially liked that he included he loves to eat at Lunt's. I had to laugh because I would have thought Chili's would've made a list  but Luby's must've made an impression on him at times that we've been there. 

The next story, Jellyfish, was about a trip I totally forgot about until I was reading it. The story was fun for us to read together and talk about what happened.

  I especially enjoyed reading Scary Story because I had not read it before. The story never came home in any of his homework.  What impressed me was The vivid descriptions included in the story, writing a story that was three pages long, and the different characters he included.     

Triathlon #2 for the Weekend

Boy, Collin is a trooper!  With the day that he had yesterday, he struggled a little to get up but, once he was up, he was ready to go!  

After he set up his transition, he was impatient and ready to start the race. He found his buddy, Owen, which distracted him until it was time to start. Dad and I got in our places throughout the course to get some good pictures of him racing. He looked good but tired coming out of the swim. He took a little while getting his bike but made up for it by quickly getting on the bike and averaging 14.1 mph for the 3 miles on the bike. His run was a little slow but he stayed up front with his group. He ended up being 26th out of 89 boys. Super impressive!

 

                 

Triathlon, Championship Baseball Game and Birthday Party

What a busy day for Collin today!  It started at 4:30am when we woke him up to tell him she could do the triathlon that he went to bed thinking not able to do. Surprisingly, he was fine getting up and getting dressed. He was very talkative like he usually is early in the morning driving to a race. Even though it was painful to get up that early, it was with it because we did not have to wait in a long line when we got to the race. They were expecting 3,000 kids to show up. Collin was racing as part of his school team of 76 students. 

The was he was able to race it Dad called the race director and got him moved to the experienced group which started at 7:30am. That meant we could still make it to his 10am baseball game. Collin was excited about racing with kids that had experience knowing that he would not have to dodge around kids that were much lower than him. Finally at 8 AM, they started his division of the race. He was one of the last ones in the pool and struggled during the swim. I am not surprised because he has not swam much since last June. He did make it out of the pool and ran toward the transition taking his goggles and swim cap off as he ran by us. Knowing he is fast on the bike, I ran to the finish line to get there before he did. I had about 5 minutes to spare until he ran by. He looked tired but kept running. 

Once he finished, the plan was for he and I to head straight to the car so he could make it to the baseball game. Dad would stay so he could get his bike when the transition area opened. Collin want dbto head back to the school team tent to see his friends .. and probably show off the medal. It was a nice one so I could not blame him. We stayed for another 10 minutes before we had to leave. On or way to the car, we saw a volunteer we knew that was driving a cart. He was nice enough to drop us off at my car. Collin was happy about this because he was really tired and did not want to walk. 

He ended up being 47th overall and 27th in his age group for his division. That's great!  He went around telling people came in 4th. Your mother felt that way to him. He said it's because he passed a bunch of people up on the bike and on the run. Well he did, because he was 66th  on the swim and ended up 38th on the bike so he did pass up a lot of people. 

               On the way to the baseball game, we stopped to get breakfast because neither of us had eaten before the race.  He choose a large hamburger. I bet he was hungry!

The Astros played a good game but just could not get the hits they needed for the win. They ended up losing by 2 runs.  We were still proud of them for coming in 2nd place in the bronze division. During the trophy ceremony at the end of the game, the coach announce to our team and the other team that not only did Collin play a baseball game today, he competed in a triathlon this morning. That got him more tears than most of the other boys on either team. He was pretty excited about that!  After the game, the entire team headed to a local Mexican restaurant to celebrate. 

 

         It did not stop there!  We all came home a rest before Phase 3 of the day. Ha!  Collin headed to a birthday party that turned into a swim party. He looked like he has a great time. Don't you think?

 While Collin was playing at the birthday party, went to a flight museum gala with friends. We had a great time last year, so we were both looking forward to it. Don't we dress up really nice especially for the day that we had?