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When a lady from our ward called me a few weeks ago asking if Sam would like to play fall soccer I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend all my weekends at soccer games. But I thought that Sam would love to play with the kids from the ward instead of kids who he didn’t know. Lucky for me also is that in fall soccer they play a weeknight game as well so the season only lasts a month instead of two. Sam does a little better than he did in the spring, he now runs around more and tries to get to the ball, whereas before he just ran and fell down most of the time. The best thing to Sam about playing soccer is that he gets to play with his friends and have treats, who can beat that.

Today was the fourth time I have taken someone for their first day of kindergarten. Samuel was so excited for school to start today he got all ready two hours before he was to go and after that he kept bugging me asking, “can we go yet?” It was a relief when it was time to go. He will be taking the bus to school, but today I decided to drive him because I wanted to get some nice pictures of him at school with his new backpack on. He is now like his big sisters and when he came walking down the street after getting off the bus he had a great big smile on his face and was excited to tell how well his first day at kindergarten.

Sam finally got his Blending Badge at Challenger School. When Nancy picked him up he had a big grin on his face.

The blending badge is given after the student can blend the various consonant and vowel sounds such as *ow (now, pow, wow), *as (has, was), *in (bin, tin, rin), etc. Sam has been a bit behind his sisters in terms of getting his Alphabet Crown and Blending Badge (Alphabet Crown is given when the student knows all the letters in the alphabet and their sounds including the long and short vowel sounds). I don’t think it’s because he’s less smart. Instead I think it’s because he’s generally less interested. He’s more interested in goofing off, being rowdy with his friends, playing cars/trucks/dinosaurs, etc. When he puts his mind to it and concentrates he can read pretty well. We’ll try to work with him more this summer and he should be reading well before he starts kindergarten.

As a reward for getting his Blending Badge, Sam was promised that the whole family would go out to dinner at a restaurant of his choice. With the large number of choices available to him such as Chilis, Training Table, Applebees, etc., where do you think Sam wanted to go? McDonalds, of course – the one with a playplace. I don’t mind McDonalds as much as I used to. They’ve upgraded their menu a bit over the years and there are a few options that Nancy and I like. The kids usually go with the tried and true – Kids Meal Chicken Nuggets – although Emily likes to order from the adult menu now.

We’re proud of Sam for finally getting his blending badge. Here’s hoping that the next time I take the whole family to McDonalds is two years from now when Diana gets her Alphabet Crown.

Sam had is annual Spring Sing at Challenger School today. I worked from home in the morning so that I could go with Nancy to see the program. Sam did a good job of singing and dancing this year. Last year he fell and scraped his knee on his way into school and so he was grumpy but this year he was in fine form and had a big grin on his face.

The only problem is that our camera’s photo quality is degrading over time. It’s getting so bad that you can really only take close-ups while still getting good image quality. I manned the video camera the whole time so maybe I’ll post some clips later when I can figure out how to get them transferred to our website.

We’ve been pleased with Challenger School over the years as all of our kids so far have learned to read before they start kindergarten. Next year Sam goes on to kindergarten so Diana will be the last one to go through Challenger School. For now, we’re all just waiting for Sam to get his Blending Badge so we can go to The Training Table and celebrate!

In addition to soccer, Sam is also playing T-ball. T-ball is even more painful to watch than soccer. Everyone gets to bat during T-ball and, because there are no outs, the game doesn’t really make any sense. Unfortunately, my agressiveness theory of youth athletics holds true in T-ball as well as in soccer and Sam is equally unaggressive in both.

Both his coach and I tell him he is welcome to hit the ball as hard as possible. In fact, we tell him that he can try and hit the ball so hard that he breaks it. Unfortunately, nothing seems to have an effect because Sam merely pokes at the ball and it barely dribbles off the tee. I never had hopes of Sam being a Major Leaguer but I was hopeful that he would at least be able to make the team in Little League. Alas, it appears that Sam is doomed to suffer the same fate has his father and grandfather before him. That’s OK – we love him anyway. How can you not love a ballplayer as good-looking as this one?

Samuel started preschool at Challenger School this week. After spending the last three years in the car while Nancy shuttled Emily, Anne, and Caroline to Challenger School, Samuel knew all about it and was excited to attend.

Ready For The First Day of School

Our kids have really enjoyed Challenger School over the years. Nancy and I been pleased that all of our kids have learned to read at Challenger School before they started kindergarten. Challenger School also has a K-8 program that is very academically rigorous (Challenger 3rd graders are rumored to have 3 hours of homework every night) but the tuition fees are out of our price range.

When I asked Samuel what he did on the first day of school he said that he painted with “kid paints”, sang the “bumble bee song” (“I’m bringing home a baby bumble bee…”), learned about the letter ‘M’, sat in a circle on the floor, and had recess. You can’t beat that for a first day of preschool.

All Smiles After a Fun Day