Soccer

Declan really enjoyed playing soccer here in Mountain Home for the first time. He played on the "Farm Bureau Insurance" team. I advocated for them to name themselves the "Riders" but was outvoted. The team was co-ed, which was fun. Declan also got the chance to play goal one game, which he really enjoyed.

When the photographer took this picture, he tried to elicit a smile from Declan by saying something to the effect that "aren't girls icky?", and Declan replied that that was a very sexist thing to say. The photographer was quite flummoxed and told me he must have said that a 1000 times to different boys and this was the first objection. My boy is woke!

4th Grade Spelling Bee

Let me tell you, I think I discovered why Canadians have a longer life expectancy than Americans, despite spending much less on health care: spelling bees. It was so tense, I can't even tell you. It reminded me of the strongly unpleasant feeling I had watching Shane compete on Jeopardy. Your brain knows this should be fun, but there is still some adrenal . Declan won his class spelling bee, thus earning a spot at the grade final. At Hackler there are more than 300 kids in 4th grade, and they all came out to watch. The thirteen finalists represented each of their classes well, battling it out well into the the 6th grade word list. There were many tense moments for me in the audience, as they started with 2nd grade words which we had not reviewed, and I white-knuckled it when Declan got words like "cheddar" which I wasn't sure if he had ever seen written. He cruised through 12 rounds, making it to the top 3 when he stumbled on "regents". One of the other finalists also stumbled on his word, leaving a championship opening for Yasmine, on the word "bulletin". Declan and Isaac battled it out for second place, as two people were to go on to the County bee. Declan managed to earn that spot in the spell-off, when Isaac misspelled "cypher". 

                       Onto the County bee next year!