More Basketball and Cross Country

 Another weekend, another tournament.  It's probably as much about the social aspect of it for Annabelle as it is basketball.  A quick trip with her team to Starbucks between games for the moms to recover from the 8am game :).

The girls with Coach Jordan after winning it all.

Another pic with their trophy.

Caden got braces this week.  A before picture.

And an after picture.

After the sport court tile guy ghosted us, we opted to do rubber surfacing.  We finally have it completed.  Here are a few progress pictures.  It took about 3 days for them to complete it.

It's primarily a basketball court, but we also had pickleball lines put on it.

It's one year post op from Laura's knee surgery.  She is happily back on the tennis court competing with her team.  A quick pic before the match: Rena Ramey, Shelly Tompkins, Evi Freeman, Traci Boddie, Katherine Rader, Laura, and Elizabeth McCrary.

Caden had his third meet of the season outside of Denton, the Jesuit XC Classic.  It was miserably hot.  This meet was huge; there were schools from all over the state.  Caden finished 9th with a time of 12:03, which was another PR.  He was the only Covenant logic runner to medal.

Mimi and Tia came to cheer him on.

Both Dad and Mom were able to make this meet.

And his friend Preston Wilson came with us to watch him run.

First Cross Country Meet

 Caden started XC practice the week before school started.  He was excited for his first meet of the season, the 18th Annual Molina Garey Horner Invitational.  Brian had to take Annabelle up to Denton for a basketball tournament, and Laura and Caden headed to South Dallas for the meet.  After some rain delays, they were finally ready to race.  Because of the later start time, it was really hot.  Caden with a few 7th and 8th grade boys waiting at the start line.

And they're off.

Around the first turn, Caden made his move to the front.  He took the lead shortly after this picture was taken, and he kept it.

Here's a pic as he is heading to the finish line.

He ended up winning first place by 26 seconds.  He had a PR of 12:17.7.  He has two goals for the season.  His first is that he would like to break 12 seconds.  His second is to break the Covenant 2 mile middle school record.  What a great way to start the season!  Four Covenant boys received medals.  Here is a picture with Ethan Ormont (20th place) and Maxwell Jolly (17th place).

A picture with Mom.

Nana and Papa were also there to cheer him on.

Eight weeks after Laura's finger surgery, she went in to have the pin removed.  Just a shot of lidocaine, and then the surgeon pulled it out.  The PA assured her it was "easy", but the pain that night was excruciating.  It was more painful that the initial surgery.  The nerve block that lasted the first 48 hours after surgery probably attributed to that.  But advil and alleve with this procedure were not much help.

The second cross country meet was much smaller.  It was just three schools after school on a thursday.  Caden won first by quite a bit again.  The course was definitely a little longer than 2 miles, so he did not improve his time.