March 2018

I just thought this was funny - like having them labeled in case they get lost in the big store.

Regular season basketball is over, but now it's time for  AAU (ameature athletic union) Basketball. Both Cole and Heather have joined AAU teams.  Since it's not a school or community based organization, parents have to pay - unless you have a good group of parents and players who are willing to do some fundraising to help offset the costs of uniforms, registration fees, and tournament entry fees.  Heather's team organized a Spaghetti dinner held at Glover Town Hall, Saturday March 24th.

 There were tons of deserts.

 I used Mary's recipe for Maple Walnut cake.

 There were two seatings. The girls took a break in between to have their dinner. 

 The dinner raised about $800.  They also have been selling raffle calendars, visiting local businesses asking for donations, and had a silent auction.

Here they are in their first AAU tournament game in Cabot, wearing their nice new uniforms. Saturday, March 31.

 They lost this game against Cabot...

 but in the same tournament, won this game against Lamoille at Berlin Elementary.

 After this game we had a little time to visit the Berlin Mall and found the Easter Bunny.

 And have silly pictures from a photo booth.

Saturday March 24th, Cole has his first AAU tournament. They lost their first game and won the 2nd.

 Cole looks like a giant compared to his teammates.

 Also on the 24th, winning this game.

 On the 31st, 2 games in Hardwick (so do you see how this went: Heather a game in Cabot at 8:00 am. Then in Berlin at 1:00. Cole 2 games in Hardwick 4:00 and 7:00. Somewhere in there, I also managed to get Wayne to his girlfriend's house in Westmore.) Anyway, true to their pattern, lost the first game, won the 2nd.

Feb 2018

Another basketball tournament - this one put on by the Lyons Club and held at Lake Region. Cole's basketball game, did not have a stellar year, only winning a few games. Below, they play Barton in the "consolation" game.

This was probably the most exciting "consolation" game in the history of the Lyons Tournament. OUr Glover boys really battled their hearts out against Barton (Wes happened to be substitute coaching this game) The scoreboard says it all - they went into double overtime, each overtime 3 minutes. They ultimately lost by one point, but it was a great game.

And these last few photos depict Cole's last home game as a 8th grader on his home court at Glover School. Again against Barton and luckily this one they won!

Basketball never ends though! Now that Jr. Hoops and the Middle School teams are done for the season, Cole and Heather have each joined AAU teams.  Cole's team is called The Rangers (as in Lake Region) and Heather's team is called the Northeast Kingdom Tar Heels.

January 2018

Cole, and his 8th grade class trip, has kept us very busy with fundraising all year long. Especially in January when the 8th grade hosted 2 huge basketball tournaments. The class needs to raise $20,000 for their trip to Boston at the end of May. 

The first tournament was the middle school basket ball tournament Jan 5-7 and the second was the Jr. Hoops (Heather's league) Jan 19-21. The tournaments are an incredible amount of work. Planning ahead requires contacting all the teams, acquiring their registration fees, making the game schedule, finding refs for all the games ( which happen continuously from Friday evening to Sunday evening), not to mention volunteers to run the score board and clock. Sometimes we can get high school students to do it for their community service hours. We also sell food all weekend - crockpots filled with mac n cheese, shepards pie, chili, beef stew, etc. There are baked goods, candy, soda, water, sports drinks.  The 8th grade families make all the food and the families and 8th graders are scheduled all weekend long to run the food tables, take money at the door (spectators have to pay to get into the tournament) All in all, these tournaments bring in around $5000 each so they are the biggest fundraisers for the class trip.

A snippet of some fun on the court for the few minutes between games during the Jr. Hoops tournament

Check out all this food.

Here's Heather and her Glover Jr. Hoops team playing in the tournament.  Jr Hoops is for kids grades 3-6 who are too young to play on the school team.

No photos of Cole's team in the middle school torunament, but here is a little clip of Cole at a game in Coventry with a foul shot.

On a different note, but also news in January, the Chinese restaurant in Barton burned down. It happens to be extremely close to the insurance office where I work. So that made for an exciting Friday afternoon!

Christmas 2017

More photos to be added later, but these photos represent our Christmas card attempt. otherwise known as the-only-time-I-can-get-all-3-kids-at-once photo.