First, I wanted to thank everyone that responded with help for my teaching questions. They did help but I have a feeling that this will be one of “those” years. For some reason 8 years old seems to be a hard year – not the child and the parents!
Like the title said this is a catch up with several things put in at once. First there is Mandy’s birthday party. She wanted an art party and it took some drama for me to pull out what that actually meant. As it ended up we had a fun party tie dying t-shirts – splatter painting on the drive way and decorating very colorful cupcakes. Everyone left paint spattered and happy! Now for the pictures – I guess we were too busy to take pictures of the tie dying (Kathie if you have some would you send them my way). The paint spattering was fun -
Lizzie and her picture
Mandy preparing to paint!
Katie her and her painting.
Lydia and her masterpiece.
On to the cupcake decorating - 
Jason looking over all of the icing. At one point, we thought all of the icing was going to blue.
The finished masterpieces. Everyone loved the white flower cupcake that Ms. Chloe gave to Mandy.
Mandy’s cupcake.
Opening presents. How fun!
Happy 8th birthday, Mandy, We love you!
On to football – Nathan has been practicing football since the first part of August. He has practiced through the 100* + temperatures and now we are playing football. After yesterday, we are 5 and 3. I think they must have a fairly good team as there wins have been knock outs like 33 to 0 and 28 to 0. The first game they lost by 6 points in the last few seconds and the second one they also lost by a touchdown. The third loss was bad and the only game Nathan didn’t play. It was a make up game because of the wildfire and they played it on a Sunday.
Here is Nathan in all his glory -
There team is called the Magnolia Mustangs. The coach even went to the extra yard and had their helmets painted gold and a mustang painted on them. It is hard to get a picture of just Nathan playing as he is on the line and usually in the middle of whatever play is happening.
Waiting for the play to start.
I got sidetracked and took a picture of the sunset. It actually was prettier in person.
The boy walking toward Nathan is named Colton and he is 5” 4” and weighs around 150. They have faced opponents that top over 230 and they are 10 years old.
After the game pep talk. One thing I can say for the coaches is that they are sincere about trying to help the players. Nathan has learned a lot about football this season but also about good sportsmanship. One of the coaches lost his temper with one of the opponents coaches and they had a yelling match on the sidelines. The coach apologized to the team and say it was not something he should do.
