Scott's 39th Birthday

Scott is not big on parties for his birthday but I wanted to celebrate it in someway.  We had done an escape room back in January with the girls and Scott's parents and it was a lot of fun.  I thought it would be fun to do a harder one with friends.  I invited several of our friends including Jen Lynn and Larry, Mike and Kim, and Amy and Clay.  Everyone came except Mike who had a basketball obligation that day.  I chose The Deadwood Saloon for our escape room, the description read, " Back in the 1800's my uncle Cyrus was known to have mined a bunch of gold.  However he disappeared one day and he or his gold was never seen again since.  He was known to frequent the Deadwood Saloon and we have just gained access.  But, the building is about to be torn down.  Can you discover where he hid his fortune in time?"

This escape room was rated 8.5 out of 10 for difficulty.  I wasn't sure if we would be able to figure it all out in time but it turns out we had a great group and everyone worked together or sometimes by themselves to figure out the puzzles.  We ended up getting out with 7 minutes to spare which we were told was very good.  For that room only 10% of groups get out on their first try.  We were excited and proud of our group.  We then went to eat at 521 which is a local chicken/burger place, it sure isn't healthy but it is delicious.  I think Scott had a good birthday and I'm glad we did something fun to remember it. 

Of course we also celebrated with the kids at home.  My parents had watched the kids for us so we could go out on Saturday for the escape room.  We invited them back on Sunday his actual birthday for dinner and cake.  It was another good day and he even got a nap!

Basketball

This year the girls signed up to play basketball at their school.  The school is part of IFBL which is a faith-based organization with some church teams and private schools (most seem to be catholic).  I volunteered to be an assistant coach but they had so many girls sign-up that they created 2 teams and needed me to coach a team.

This season was very different from Upward especially with the rules.  The girls were shooting at 10ft instead of 9ft and all the rules applied including back court, lane violations, free-throws, etc.  I had a team of 8 girls on my 4th grade team 4 were 3rd graders and 4 4th graders.  Of the 8 girls only 3 had played before (yes only my girls had played) and even they had a lot of rules to learn. Also they were allowed to play any kind of defense were Upward had only done man-to-man and had a method of matching players to make the games more even.

We obviously had a very rough season playing teams that were much more experienced and older than us.  The girls all learned a lot and they had fun but were pretty discouraged toward the end.  It was very time consuming to coach as practice was 2 times a week 1.5 hrs each and then games on Saturday but I would probably do it again just to help the girls.  I think next year we could have a good team as the other girls from 4th grade were playing on the 5th grade team.

When we started the season I didn't have anyone that was a strong dribbler and after evaluating everyone I decided to have Olivia try bringing the ball down.  It took a few games for her to get the hang of it and she had the ball stolen a lot as she learned but she became confident and was calling plays and telling the other girls what to do by half-way through the season.  She really became our star player and I think she has a lot of potential.  Emma is a great defender and super fast we used her to help team-up on their better players, we could use her too for fast breaks but didn't get too many of those.  Savannah has a good shot but didn't get the ball much, she is good but not as confident and doesn't fight for the ball as much.

All 4 teams (2 girls and 2 boys) practiced together so it was chaotic at times but I got to know a lot of the kids.  I really enjoyed my team of girls and there are a few that have real talent.