One last try

Well, Blog 2.0 didn't go so well.   So we will take one more shot at it before giving up on this idea for good.

Might as well go with an easy but well-worn topic.

Wiley

(It may not look comfortable, but, Holly ends up on top of Wiley a lot..)

He's 2 months short of his 12th birthday - he made it to yet another happy arrival of Kevin home.  He's had his bad moments this year.....there are definitely some times where I was worried that he wasn't looking so good.  But as they year comes to a close he seems to be in fine form; looks good, gets around pretty well, relatively active.  Active enough to scarf a pan of fudge off of the counter! 

Maybe the most notable thing about Wiley is that we think he's starting to go deaf (or has gone deaf).  If you call and he's not looking at you, well, you are out of luck for the most part.  This has had one very bad outcome.....he doesn't 'hear' the warning for the invisible fence and has blundered his way through it once or twice in the last month.  The most memorable 'breakout' was Wiley and Bailey trotting their way down the road; they made it all the way onto Sower and were heading towards Bennett Woods before I caught them and even then Bailey came when I called but Wiley just kept trotting.   I (barely) caught him before he made it to Hulett...and that would have / could have been a disaster if he had made it that far.    This was at about 2:40 in the afternoon so I just sat on the curb over near Capeside and waited for Fric and Frac to come rolling home from the high school to take us all home. 

So yeah, he's doing just fine.

2016 - Matthew Lacrosse

I'm not sure I'm going to have any pictures of Matthew to put with this post.  I do have a lot of video....

I mean, as a team they did pretty well.  I'm certain they won more than they lost, and it was probably 2 wins for every loss.  Matthew played almost every moment of every game on defense (in fact, he only came out when he was serving a penalty).  Got some time in midfield, but, for Matthew's taste, not nearly enough.   He was named, like Cpher last year, to the area all-star game and did pretty well there as well.  



(a pic from the all-star game.  I'm sure I've seen another photo from this game but can't find it now)

Don't think he scored a goal....will have to ask him though to confirm.

High school coming up - Matthew would like to be the LSM (long-stick middie) but I think his future, given the lack of defense in the system, is to be back there with Cpher.  And I'm okay with that.



(the last time I'd see a boy play at the Waverly Festival - 2 yrs for Kevin, 4 for Cpher, 4 for Matthew)

Winter Vacation 1 - Toronto and Maui

Oh boy - with vacations it is always better to do the posts DURING the vacation but I didn't....so we will try and catch up with three posts.

Getting there:  We booked flights out of Toronto instead of Detroit because, well, the flights are about half the cost.  That's great, but, it leaves the inconvenient problem of....getting to Toronto.  So we planned on leaving right after school ends on Thursday and do get out of Dodge by 4 pm.  That's good.  There is no snow and bad weather for almost all of the trip.  That's good.

What's bad?  Oh, the stomach bug that made its way through the family right before we left.  Dad got it in the 24 hours prior to departure and made the ill-advised decision to drive.....which resulted in pulling off near Lapeer but not quickly enough and throwing up all over myself (which resulted in the loss of my favorite Penn State sweatshirt - the sweatshirt Suzanne hated).

What's bad?   As Suzanne drove the rest of the way we ran into some serious snow - and the last 90 minutes into Toronto was slow and tense.

That's good - saw Rogue One late late late Thursday night!   All seemed to enjoy it....except Suzanne slept through some of it.

What's bad?  United / Air Canada cancelled the flight out of Toronto that Suzanne/Matthew/Kevin were on.  So we were up from basically 2 am to 4 am with United and Air Canada getting that fixed.....the good news is that they ended up on the same flight as Christopher and I.

Finally got to Maui about 6 pm Hawaii time....

Maui:  Our third trip here - did a few new things but did a lot of old things over again.



(Yeah - that's the view from the room!  Doesn't get much better than that!)

so...highlights

Road to Hana:  Did this again.  Bought an app that had an audio guide that activated as you drove along and that was a new/good feature.  Drove all the way around again - there are lots of warnings to not do this but last time it wasn't bad and this time it wasn't bad either.  Just takes forever - it is a long day.


(wasn't the prettiest of days - showers off and on most of the day and very little blue skies.   Which wasn't great BUT I'd rather have this kind of day on a drive as opposed to when we were out on the water)

(we did the hike at the end again....couldn't go all the way up as the trail was closed for repairs but it was fun nonetheless.  Really REALLY muddy - there had been a lot of rain.  An iconic Hutsell picture is of the boys on the last hike in the bamboo forest - tried to do it again but it didn't turn out nearly as well)



(but the rain did make for some impressive waterfalls along the way)

Haleakala:  Did the one thing we haven't done yet that Suzanne really wanted to do:  got up at 3:30 am (ugh) and drove up to the top of the mountain for sunrise.  Kevin came along; the other two decided to skip and sleep.  Listened to the Hamilton soundtrack on the way up; arrived early and half-dozed while waiting; stood in the cold watching the colors change for about 45 minutes before driving back down (and having a nice breakfast on the way).





Ohai Trail:  Kevin, Matthew, and I went hiking while Mom and Cpher went shopping one afternoon. The hike was pretty, not too strenuous, and will mostly remembered by the varying amounts of insults that were alternatively thrown at Matthew, Kevin and myself.









Everything Else:  Went to Lahaina.  Went to Costco (multiple times!).  Went out to the lava flows and black rock beaches east of Waimea.  Went to Makena beach   Snorkeled near Kapalua.   And did a whole lot of Pokemon hunting (reminder to self:  Do a post on Pokemon Go).

2016 - Spring Soccer

Hmmm - we'll see how much I can remember here.

MSPSP Spring 2016 Scheduling - Ranked until 6/18/2017
6/11/2016	PREMEIR SOCCER GROUP PSG MI NOVA 02 BLACK (MI)	2-2
6/5/2016	MICHIGAN ALLIANCE FC 02 BOYS (MI)	0-1
6/4/2016	CARPATHIA KICKERS 02 BLUE (MI)	2-3
6/2/2016	MICHIGAN RUSH LANSING 02B (MI)	0-1
2016 MSYSA Spring State Cup - Ranked until 6/5/2017
5/22/2016	MICHIGAN WOLVES EAST 02 (MI)	1-3
5/21/2016	LA FORZA SC 02 BLUE (MI)	5-0
MSPSP Spring 2016 Scheduling - Ranked until 6/18/2017
5/15/2016	MI WOLVES-HAWKS EAST MICHIGAN WOLVES EAST 02 (MI)	2-1
5/13/2016	LAKESHORE PREMIER SC '02 (MI)	1-2
5/11/2016	SCOR MEULENTSEEN 02 BLACK (MI)	1-0
5/7/2016	TROY SC TSC STING 02 (MI)	1-3
5/1/2016	MICHIGAN RUSH NORTHVILLE 02B (MI)	0-0
2016 MSYSA Spring State Cup - Ranked until 6/5/2017
4/28/2016	MICHIGAN JAGUARS 02 GREEN (MI)	1-0
4/24/2016	RSC LIGHTNING 02 WHITE (MI)	1-0
4/17/2016	MICHIGAN TIGERS FC 02 GOLD (MI)	2-1
MSPSP Spring 2016 Scheduling - Ranked until 6/18/2017
4/16/2016	MICHIGAN WOLVES-HAWKS MICHIGAN WOLVES 02 (MI)	1-3

Ok - Let's break it into three parts:  

MSPSP Spring 2016 - wasn't the most successful of seasons.   2 wins - a 1-0 win against SCOR where were a man down because one player was stupid(!) and told a referee something with the f-work in it.  But we dominated the game and got a goal.   And a 2-1 win against a very good Wolves East team that was unexpected in how much we dominated the game.   

The back end of the season was a disaster - half the team quit trying and the coach did some stupid things in terms of who played that made it worse.  The 1-0 loss to Rush Lansing was a killer - Matthew has never beat the team he used to play for and nobody on that field wanted to win the game.

MSYSA Spring State Cup - the highlight of the spring....but it certainly didn't seem that way early.   An unimpressive 2-1 win against Tigers - another 1-0 unimpressive win against RSC.   Basically left us needing a win against the #1 team in the state to advance.....not beating up on inferior teams left us in a bad spot with tiebreakers going into that final game.  But the boys really played well - the coach left the kids who were hustling and effective in the game more (Matthew played a lot!) and we won 1-0 to advance to the knockout round.  A first ever for this group!

"Congratulations to the 02 Boys Blue and coach Pavol for a big win in Michigan State Youth Soccer Association, Inc. State Cup play tonight! The team defeated #1 seed MI Jaguars Green 1-0 in a hard fought game to advance first in their group with 3 wins out of 3!"

Won the Round of 16 game convincingly, a 5-0 win that was more noteworthy for the other team's Mom than anything else.  And then a rematch against the Wolves East team that we had just beaten a week ago by outhustling them and we went out and...well, certainly didn't outhustle them and lost 3-1.   And the season really went south from there.

Looking forward: This team won't exist as the same group of boys in Spring 2017 - the U14s were boys with birthdates from 10/01/2001 from 9/30/2002 and due to rule changes it will be only 2002s on the new team.   I think this is a good thing because a lot of these boys need something different BUT am concerned that 2002 only team might not be very good.

Rebirth

Kevin asked me, while we were in Hawaii, if I was ever going to get back to blogging.  He said that he had spent a lot of time looking through the first version of this site and missed that I wasn't doing it any longer.  (I looked at the statistics for the old site and sure enough, Kevin has spent *a lot* of time on the blog over the last few months)

Suzanne also said that it was 'sad' that the history wasn't being recorded any more.

To be fair, I've spent a lot of time (a LOT of TIME) creating sports videos since I haven't been blogging.  But, that isn't doing a whole lot on the family history front.

So - we'll restart here.   A brand new site - a small audience.....no real intent to share this out further than the immediate family at this point.   I'll try and go back into 2016 with every other post and play catch up a little bit.   Try for two or three posts a week....we will see what happens.