Merry Christmas to All!

I’m sitting on our couch as I write this enjoying the sight of our Christmas tree standing in the corner across from me. The house is quiet, all I hear is the clock ticking and the wind chimes outside. A fire in the fireplace would round this out nicely, but I don’t trust the flue to be safe. This is one of my favorite times when most of the busyness is behind us allowing us to coast into the holiday and celebrate with those we love.

I have mentioned before that Vicki rejoined the Chorale at the Willow Oak Center for the Arts in Springfield. They had been practicing selections from Handel’s “Messiah” for several weeks in preparation for their concert back on the 2nd. Mom and I went and were met there by Jenna and three of her friends from school. (The boys were at a birthday party for a friend.) The Chorale did really well and it was a great way to shift gears from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

Jenna has been home from school for over a week now, and she hasn’t sat still very much. Her schedule has been loaded with working at Historic Perk, baby sitting, and making pies and other goodies to sell for her next mission trip. It’s been a pleasure to have her home, but we rarely see her.

The boys took their last mid-term exams on Tuesday. They both seemed confident with their performance on the exams and looking at their first semester report cards they have reason to be pleased.

I had an enjoyable semester. I laugh when I call myself the only shop teacher in the history of the school. I ran a STEM project in my classes where we made and raced pinewood derby cars. Our race was on the 7th and I’ve never seen a bunch of 8th graders more excited about anything that they were with that project. All 54 cars ran well, but of course there can only be one speed winner. I also had some very pretty designs. One car looked indistinguishable from a Wii remote. A couple of other cars were really cute Angry Birds (and we learned that gluing feathers on, while a nice decorative touch, does nothing for speed).

We hosted a Christmas party for Ben two Saturday’s ago (the 9th). He invited several friends from school over. They all got here around 6:00. We fed them supper and they had fun playing Jack Box Games and then exchanging gifts by playing Dirty Santa. The girls all left around 10:00, but the boys spent the night and slept in late the next morning. Ben even made them pancakes before sending them on their way.

Basketball season is in full swing for us now and we are enjoying a 4-2 record so far. We got a rough start in that our season started later than all other schools for some reason and we opened against Goodpasture, probably the toughest team we’ll ever face.

Vicki and I are very grateful that Ben is not playing on the JV team any more. That made for some very long evenings sitting on bleachers last year. His skill and this last growth spurt has earned him a place in the starting lineup as our team’s center. I will admit I took secret pleasure when we played East Robertson the other night and our emcee introduced Ben to the crowd saying, “And at center a junior from Cross Plains, Tennessee, Benton Swannnnnnnn.!” (We won that game, but East made us earn it. Ben and I had fun on the way home speculating how things might have been if we had never moved to DA and he had been playing for East.)

Ben is not a high scoring player. We have several accurate three point shooters so a lot of the strategy is to get the ball out to them. Ben does play a really solid defensive game with several blocks and rebounds to his credit. What’s also fun is to watch as this team is learning to function as a unit. We’re starting to catch where two players will make quick eye contact, seem to know what each other is thinking, and move into action. We see Ben set a lot of picks that way.

While I’m on the subject of sports I want to back up and mention that the Cross Country team had their banquet back on the 1st. Coach Toney recognized Nate as the most improved male runner this year. Not too bad for a kid that had to be talked into participating in the summer conditioning back in June.

We didn’t get to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi until yesterday as that was the first opportunity we had when all our schedules lined up. I will say that we all felt it was probably the best Star Wars movie we’ve seen. After that we took care of the last of our Christmas shopping. Vicki made the final grocery run today and this evening we go to Kenny and Lori’s annual Christmas Eve Eve party.

So, as we head into Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the final week of the year I hope you have a very Merry Christmas.

Joe