Tales of a Fulltime Mom: A Loss and A Win

The weekend of February 2 and 3 was a busy one for us. First up, the regional Bible Bowl competition for the girls. Since the beginning of September, they had been meeting every Wednesday evening (except for the one Wednesday a month when they do Pathfinders) and then even more often recently, to practice for Bible Bowl (which has actually been renamed "Pathfinder Bible Experience (PBE)" but nobody call it that.). There are a total of six girls on their team, which is Team B and then six kids on Team A along with a few extras. Aubree was assigned the block of Luke 10 - 13 and second half of Chapter 24 while Calleigh had Luke 14 - 18 and first half of 24. They spent many, many hours studying and I spent many hours quizzing them. It's amazing how much there is to learn and memorize in only four or five chapters.

On Sabbath afternoon, February 2, about ten or eleven teams from the Central Florida area met at the Spring Meadows Church for the regional competition. To continue, you'd have to score 90% of the score of the team that finished first. The competition is very strict. You audience isn't suppose to speak while they ask the questions. You can't take pictures or videos. You can't walk near the contestants. They ask 90 questions with a break in the middle. The six members of the team sit together and write their answers on a slip of a paper and then have a scorer sitting with them who scores it. This was the first time any of the girls on Calleigh and Aubree's team had done Bible Bowl. In the end, they only scored 68% of the winning team (which was Forest Lake Team A) so they didn't advance. A couple of the girls took it really tough and were crying. But Calleigh and Aubree took it really well. Kind of like, "Oh well. We did our best and that's all we could do." They did say that the lady scoring wasn't very nice and they were frustrated with one of their teammates who didn't study her block as well as the rest of them. But, that's how a team works and I'm glad they got to be a part of it. Next year the books are Ezra and Nehemiah and I hope the girls will be back doing it although at this point they are undecided.

Getting a pep talk from their leader, Karen. The girls love her because she so loose. She doesn't take it too seriously and knows how to have fun but is also firm when she needs to be.

Calleigh was chosen captain by her teammates so she gets to hold the certificate at the end which says "Participant."

Part of the reason the girls weren't so disappointed in not moving to the next level is because they were so excited about the Super Bowl the following day...featuring the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams. These kids have it made! The Pats were in one Super Bowl when I was a kid, which they lost. Meanwhile, Colby was born in 2013 and the Patriots have played in the Super Bowl in 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2019. And won three of them!

The girls had Honor Day at Pathfinders on Super Bowl Sunday from 8:00 - 5:00. We dropped them off and then Duncan, the boys and I picked up Aunt Wanda to go to breakfast at First Watch. About 5:30, everyone started showing up for the game.

This is the same First Watch that we went to every Sunday morning for about ten years. It has been remodeled though and it's so beautiful.

Gotta have the balloons.

The start of the food. We had so much leftover!

We had David, Yully, Karlie, baby Natalie, Ron, Elaine, Bruce & Olivia MacDougall and baby, Brady (yes, Brady!), Sam Aguero, Megan, and the six of us.

David had brought a pie with him from the Village Inn to the Pats/Chargers game. David and I have this thing where we feel like when we watch big games together, our team loses. So when the Pats won handily against the Chargers, we said it must be the pie. Thus, he brought a pie to the Chiefs game and then TWO pies to the Super Bowl. For awhile, I gave him a hard time that he should have only brought ONE pie because maybe two was bad luck. Fortunately, it all ended okay. Oh my word, that pie on the right was so delicious. I ended up eating leftovers of it all week because there was so much dessert for the party, hardily any had gotten eaten.

So yes, the Patriots are Super Bowl champions yet again. In a year that we honestly didn't expect it. They may have won six Super Bowls in the last 18 years but it never gets old.

Colby falls asleep watching post game coverage.

The girls decorated their doors. This is Aubree's. There is at least one shout out there to the Bruins amongst the Pats stuff.

This is Calleigh's.

Close up.

In other news, we are plugging away on the house remodeling. It is a sloooooow process. We recently got our pantry door installed and our kitchen ceiling shored up (it was caving in a little from the upstairs).

We got a swinging door which I am very happy with. This door will ultimately get painted when we do the kitchen.

Added the big beam on the far left here. Now we will have an unfinished ceiling and holes in the wall (where the electrical had to be messed with for this) for awhile. But at least we can finish the guest room above this now.

School is going well. A lot of people complain about the month of February feeling long and tedious but I don't have that feeling, thank goodness. We are enjoying our study of American history, the girls memorizing a good portion of the book of James, and Brady learning to read and write. Despite him being at that level for that, he's doing awesome in math, working on his multiplication tables. He's a true homeschooler in the sense that he's in no one grade.

Aubree's illustration of the germination process. We are studying Botany now for Science.

Brady's Explode the Code work. His handwriting has gotten so much better as the year has progressed.

Some other pictures of things happening with us:

Playing football in the rain one Sunday.

The dogs basking in the sun on a different day.

Jennifer had some free tickets to Wonderworks so we went the day after the Super Bowl.

The girls took the pizza making and cooking honor at Pathfinder Honor Day so one evening they made pizza, making the dough from scratch. Aubree, who doesn't like pizza, even ate it!

They also made the zucchini, carrots, and mashed potatoes one evening. We somehow convinced Brady, my non-vegetable eating child, to try a bite of a carrot. He immediately started choking on the one tiny bite and literally spit it up as if he was gagging. So not sure what's up with that.

Last weekend the girls had a Pathfinder campout at Camp Joy in Apopka (about a 20 minute drive from home). They stayed in their own two-man tent on Friday and Saturday night. They had a great time even though it rained Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Working on the cactus honor.

Meanwhile, Duncan, the boys, and I volunteered on Sabbath afternoon at "Feeding Children Everywhere" bagging meals.

We teamed up with our friends, the Drapers.

Sunday morning it was rainy and dreary but the boys took part in the Miriam Kittrell Fun Run (probably half a mile) at FLEC. Brady had done it last year while Duncan and Aubree did the corresponding 5K. Unfortunately, Duncan's feet are in bad shape at the moment and he couldn't run and thus, neither did Aubree.