Productive...I think

Friday was our wrestling tournament at Greeley. Matt was second, and Jacob and Kyle were fourth. Brad almost beat a kid, but the score was 5-7 at the end. So close! The boys headed straight from Greeley to Ainsworth (yes, on purpose) for a tournament on Saturday. Very tough competition. The guys realized that they need to step it up and learn how to go 100% more than one day at a time if they're going to make it through State. Poor Cael. I'm not sure if he knows where he lives. Friday he stayed with Brent and Kassidy all night. Saturday I took him to Ravenna while Robin and I scrapbooked all day. He got to play with Elly and Ethan, so he was pretty happy. The productive part was that Robin helped me get the boys' wrestling scrapbooks caught up. We did six tournament layouts for all four boys in 7 hours. Whew!! Four more layouts each, and we'll be done! (yikes!). Sunday we stayed home,(Allen had to work) but Hannah came over after Cael's nap and played while Allen and I worked downstairs (after he got home). Allen got the bathroom tiles up and I got the patch work hung - I just need to mud it. I need a couple more weekends in a row, and I think we might make some real progress! The mountain of laundry that was piled on our bed is slowly being taken down. I can see a small patch of our bed now. Baby steps. When we went over to get Hannah, she had to show us her puppies. Bishons are so fluffy when they're little! Cael didn't give a crap. He brought along his Shrek movie case and kept showing it to Hannah insisting that we needed to go home and watch it. Ya, I don't think we need a new dog for a while.

A great weekend

This is the picture of Kyle winning his first ever first place medal. It was very cool. I was just hoping that he wouldn't break Allen's back.

Our guys: Assistant Coach Jon Pearson, Brad Einspahr (130), Kyle Dibbern (215), Jacob Schwan (125), Allen, Matt Ellis (119).

This weekend we went to the Humphrey St. Francis meet. Ellis got first, Kyle and Schwan got second, and Brad got third. Out of 10 teams, we placed 4th. It was a great day for the guys. Only four guys, but they get along great and are a perfect first team for Allen to coach.

Our cleanup is coming along slowly but surely. The closets are finally patched, but we found new places to patch in the bathroom. Our bedroom floor is mopped, and most dust is up, we just need to wash all of our clothes. It's hard enough to keep up day-to-day washing.

We're watching the NFL Conference Championships. I turned the channel during a commercial, and Cael made sure to reprimand me by telling me "Mommy! I NEED football!" If he doesn't play football when he's older, something is wrong.

Our basement is guaranteed to be dry, now. With cement dust all over everything, upstairs and down, we have a lot of work to do. I have patched some closets' drywall, and we'll start tearing down drywall in Cael's room and the guest bedroom this weekend. We all will be sleeping downstairs again maybe Sundayish. It will be nice. Our pullout couch isn't too bad, but not for a couple weeks at a time. Last week we went to Palmer to wrestle. Our sophomore who has never wrestled before got his first win! It was the most exciting thing I've seen all year. It was even a pin! I think he probably went to bed with a smile on his face that night. He was flying high! Allen's dad came to the meet, too. It was nice for him to come see Allen coach. Even the boys thought it was cool that he was there. My speech kids are not ready for the meet this weekend, so I'll be going to Humphrey with the wrestlers. We'll try the speech meet on Feb. 2. Maybe someone will have ducks in a row. It was hard to get started this year though, because we were doing the play when we usually start speech practice.

A couple videos

Cael decided to wrestle Allen Saturday night. At one point Cael goes over by the door and rolls around. I think he's imitating the wrestlers when they warm up and practice takedowns.

Cael can do a three-point football stance. I swear we didn't teach him this! He started doing it in the store one day, and now he entertains us all. Sorry about the dark videos. I didn't even think about turning on the living room light when the boys were playing because it was getting close to bedtime.

We went to Burwell on Friday. For those of you who don't know where that is...it's cowboy country up in the Sand Hills. We beat several teams that have almost full weight classes. Keep in mind we only have four on the team. Three of our boys went to the championship finals rounds. (1-1st and 2-2nds) The other wrestler on our team got beat out in two matches, but he made his goal of making his opponent bleed! He was rather proud of himself! One of the moms got a great picture of Kyle Dibbern jumping onto Allen after he won his last match to get the gold. It's his first 1st place ever, so we were all excited. I'll put that on once I get it.

Back to school tomorrow (sigh). I just talked to a parent of one of my students. She says it's time for them to go back! A routine will help us all, I think. Thursday we have Thrasher Basement Systems coming to our house to make a huge mess. We have water in our basement, so they're coming to put in a drainage system all around the perimeter of the inside of our basement walls. They'll put drainage systems in our window wells as well. The problem is, they need 5ft. clearance from all exterior walls. Both of our closets are on exterior walls, so we have to take out clothes and all. We'll have to cover vents as well, since cement dust can get everywhere. I think we'll be sleeping on the couch for a while, but in the end, it will be good to have everything dry again. We actually have water down there right now since the snow is melting. We joke that we know that our area got 36 inches of rain last summer because that's what our rain gauge in Cael's room said. We'll be gutting most of the basement drywall because it got wet and is molding at the bottom. Luckily it will be gone soon, so we don't have to breathe it. I have "before" photos. I hope the "after" pictures will come soon! At least we can redo our basement the way we want it. The people who lived here before us were stupid and textured all of the walls. It's such a pain in the butt to paint! It's not even "orange peel" texture. It's more like "Apalachian Mountains" texture. Oh well. Life happens. Hope all is well with everyone!