No worries though! It turns out that Minecraft is edu-ma-ca-tion-al.

In the three days since school has let out, I have witnessed my children use their obsessions with Minecraft to build on several very important academic subject areas:

Math: Sam and Quinn spent a substantial amount of time on Saturday doing extensive math problems to figure out how many…somethings they needed to…do something having to do with Minecraft.

Reading: Quinn loves to read—as long as what he’s reading features big cartoon drawings. He briefly began a love affair with the Magic Treehouse Books, but then he discovered Captain Underpants and his non-cartoony chapter books phase ended.

Do you want to know how to get him to read big chunks of text on a page though? Make it a wiki about Minecraft.

Collaboration and family bonding: My kids spend a fair amount of their time acting like they want to kill each other. Yet if you put something interesting about Minecraft on the computer, they will all cram into one chair to pore over it.

Chorus: I wandered past Quinn and Jack playing at a computer today. Quinn was playing Minecraft and Jack was humming the exact same song as was playing on the screen. He does that all the time. It is one of my favorite things about him. No worries that he doesn’t have a weekly music class anymore; Jack is keeping his vocal chords primed and ready.

Art: Every single ding dang day my kids use reams of paper making Minecraft-themed drawings. These are some of Jack’s. He actually drew them at school. I was too lazy to walk into the living room to take photos of today’s art that was on the coffee table.

Also, these are in color and today’s are black and white, so I thought you might like these more.

Writing: The real coup d’etat is ‘Til the End, a group blog written by all three of my kids that they started today.

A couple of weeks ago, Jack said he wanted to write a blog about Minecraft and even though part of me was all, “nooooooooo,” another part of me was all, “Dayum, this is a fantastic way to (a) encourage Jack to write, (b) teach Jack to type more fluently, and (c) entertain the hell out of me.”

It will not, however, serve as a lesson in grammar unless I decide that my editing their work for proper punctuation is more important than their artistic integrity. I’m stuck on that one.

I mean, the kid capitalized “Bloggers,” for the love of God. Clearly he needs to learn a little something about bloggers and how we are most definitely a lower-case “b” group of people.

Jack eventually let Sam take over the typing and he took on more of a “creative mastermind” role.

I figure that by the end of the summer one of two things will have happened: They will have lost interest and abandoned their blog almost immediately or they will be fluent in HTML.

They are welcoming comments over there, so if you like Minecraft, you’re welcome to hop on over. They are also looking for topics that you’d like to hear about in their future blog posts.

In the meantime, I plan on not feeling the slight bit bad about letting my children play hours and hours of Minecraft this summer because of the, you know, LEARNING. You all have fun with your summer homework packets though.

In case you missed the billion photos of me covered in mud that I posted all over Social Mediaville last weekend, I thought I’d let you know that last Saturday, I ran Run Amuck, which is a mud obstacle course put on by the Marine Corps Marathon people and which takes place on the Marine Corps base at Quantico. Also, in case you’re wondering—and even though I have Marine Corps blood passed down from my father—I am nowhere near badass enough to be a Marine.

Yet.

:)

So. Run Amuck. I’ll be telling you about this in detail, because I like to remember details from races like this. This race (and I use the term “race” loosely because it was untimed—and any event where you have to wait politely in lines to reach an obstacle can’t fairly be called a race) was one of the most fun things I have ever done. In case you’re wondering, read the “Obstacles” section on the Run Amuck course page for a rough idea of what we ran through.

Or you could look here. Click to enbiggen.

For a more specific idea, read on here.

The race started with an inflatable obstacle course. In other words, a moonbounce. But this moonbounce said “semper fidelis” on it and featured the Marine Corps logo. I really enjoyed that. I did not, however, enjoy the moonbounce itself as one of its features was an inflatable wall that you had to hurl yourself over, but it was impossible to climb because it and my feet were wet. I mean, it was impossible for me—there were plenty of people who managed to get over quite well. I don’t feel too bad though because I watched a lot of really fit people not be able to get over as well.

My failure here worried me for the only other obstacle that I was worried about, which were the monkey bars. It’s funny that the only obstacles I couldn’t hack were those that are common on children’s playgrounds.

I’ll have to do some thinking about that.

After my failure right off the bat in front of gathered crowds, I hurried away to the next obstacle, the slip ‘n’ slide. Huh. Maybe this race wouldn’t be so tough after all.

Of course, immediately after that fun experience, they made us do a stair climb out of the stadium we’d just slipped and slid into and then run through a tire course, which is more awkward that I had imagined. From there, it was a fun rappel down a steep hill back into the stadium.

The “great” thing about this race is that, in addition to the obstacles, there were also stations where Marines yelled at you to do various quick exercises. The first was a set of crunches. Which I ROCKED, by the way.

Then we had another stair climb back up out of the stadium, but not up stairs this time; rather we had to climb the seating benches, meaning that each stair was 2-3 times the height of a regular stair. I think I surprised the Marine at the top of the stairs when I ran up those bad boys like a pro. I actually really love running stairs. (See also: chubby but tough.) I did stop to stare incredulously at the guy when he told me to run faster, but when I got to the top he said that I did such a good job that he wouldn’t yell at me for stopping for a second.

From there we ran under a firehose that was pouring water onto the road. It was less of an obstacle and more of a quick, intense shower with your clothes on. It was also the last section of the course that took place on pavement.

We headed off onto a muddy trail that presented us with a series of fun little obstacles, such as an A-frame wall, a hay bale jump, a flutter kick station, more tires to run through, and a pipe crawl. Piece of cake, baby.

I like this photo. I think I look jaunty.

I’ve taken enough unflattering race photos to learn that you always smile when there is a dude in a fluorescent vest with a camera near you—even if you are trying to run through tires that are far too wide for a normal stride.

After all of that, we arrived at a water station. They were hydrating us before they tried to kill us.

At this point, I should mention something. It had rained for, like, an entire two days prior to this race. This took a situation where the race creators had planned a route, added extra mud (seriously), then the rain made it even worse. From this point, which was about one and a half miles in, to the end of the race, we ran up and down a series of steep hills that were thick with the slipperiest mud I have ever attempted to stand on.

One highlight of this hilly section was the mud crawl, which consisted of trenches full of muddy water. To get into the water, you had to duck under a tarp, which had the result of making sure you submerged entirely in the water. Then after trudging through the sludge, you had to climb out using a cargo net.

It was…messy.

Then hills. More hills. Lots more hills.

You know how in cartoons, characters try to run really fast and their legs run and run and run but their bodies stay in the same place? It was like that. I had to trample on the greenery on the side of the path to get traction in order to prevent myself from walking in place.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Or, rather, stumble, summit, sigh deeply when you see the next hill.

Along this stretch was a rope spiderweb to pick your way through, jumping jacks, an ammo can carry, and what they referred to as the “low crawl.” The low crawl was a long stretch with ropes crisscrossing the trail a couple of feet above the ground that you had to crawl under. It was not that big of a deal, even in the mud, but for the fact that the dirt was populated by hundreds of tiny, sharp rocks. I’m still scabbed.

At one point, I realized that the thicker the mud, the more cushion there was between me and the rocks, leading me to deliberately crawl through the deepest mud puddles. I then ran the rest of the race with a nice set of mud gloves.

Next up were the monkey bars. The monkey bars were the thing I was most worried about in the whole race. See, no matter how steep the hill, I can get up it. No matter how gross the mud, I can slog through it. No matter how many rocks on the ground, I can crawl over them. If I fall, I’ll stand back up. But monkey bars? With muddy hands? No way in hell.

Fortunately, there were three sets of monkey bars and there were hay bales under one of them that made it so I could just walk across the hay and reach the monkey bars without having to use any arm strength at all. I didn’t feel bad about it one single bit.

Well, I felt a little bad about it when the Marine standing there looked at me and said, “Cheater.”

But whatever.

It was somewhere in this stretch that I started to fall down a lot. With good reason (slippery, remember?), but still. It also started to rain. I have never been less concerned about being rained on in my life. We ran through a mud pit and had to use a cargo net to CRAWL up another hill.

There was a push-up section as well, which I mention only because the sign said, “5 push-ups,” but the Marine there was all, “We are doing 5 two-count push-ups, which is basically the same as 10 push-ups, so do 10 push-ups.” Then he told us that he wished he could make us do four-count push-ups, but “they” wouldn’t let him.

Now, I don’t know what a four-count push-up is, but I know enough not to argue with a Marine, even if what he is saying is in direct contradiction to the sign posted RIGHT THERE. Ten push-ups later, I was on my way.

The most bizarre obstacle was the one they called wrecking balls but that was really just hippity hop balls hanging from more monkey bars. The last obstacle was another low mud crawl, which was more of a mud roll to get under the ropes.

Then it was just down a few more slippery hills and recovering from a few more falls and near-falls and I was across the finish line.

There is NOTHING more flattering than wet clothing adhered to all the contours of your body.

Run Amuck was challenging. I was for sure sore for a couple of days afterward. The thing is, I think almost any of you could have completed that course too. It was definitely hard, but if you have stamina, you could do it.

And you should. Because it was so. much. fun.

There are a lot of gimmick races out there these days. I’ve done a couple of them now and I have learned that I am far more interested in straight running races. That said, I know I will keep doing certain mud/obstacle races because they are just such a blast.

Also, I am going to start working on my monkey bar skills because next year, I am not going to cheat. I am going to be less chubby and more tough.  I am determined.

Oh, I’m sorry. I mean, “He was promoted from 5th grade…”

We headed off to his graduati— promotion ceremony this morning, which I thought would be cool, but no big deal. It totally surprised me when I had to fight back tears. The ceremony was really nice. Each student had written one or two sentences thanking someone who had helped them in their education and the principal read each of them as they got their certificates.

Some kids thanked their parents or siblings. Some thanked teachers or other staff. Sam thanked his instrumental music teacher for helping him to “get the courage to play a solo and become a musician.” The whole thing was really incredibly touching—up to and including the song at the end that was all about being different and being okay. [sob]

(It would have been more touching had the jerk in front of me not held his iPad up in front of me for much of the ceremony to take video. Seriously. People who think they are more important than everyone else in the room are incredibly frustrating. This guy’s phone also rang (loudly) TWICE and then he HAD A CONVERSATION ON THE PHONE TWICE during the ceremony. It was truly obnoxious and a good lesson in why I hate most people.)

Afterward, the school had a “clap out” for the 5th graders where all the other students and the parents gathered and, well, we clapped as each student had his or her name called and they had their moment to leave the school in front of everyone.

Some kids danced across, some twirled, some were super silly. Sam set a land speed record.

The kids in Sam’s program have been all together in the same class for two years, so the group was pretty tight. A couple of the parents were so kind as to host a party for Sam’s class at one of their houses. It was a really nice end to the day and the year.

Plus, there were chickens at the party.

She was soft and nice. I liked her.

It was also at the party that I realized that the top of Sam’s head has reached nose height on me. I find this unacceptable.

To sum up:

1. Sam is a middle schooler.
2. I cry at everything.
3. Sam’s middle school is an overachieving jerk that assigns homework riiiight as the last year ends.
4. Fifth graders don’t graduate, they get promoted.
5. Don’t be a dick at promotion ceremonies.
6. If a group of kids ends a promotion ceremony with a song about being nice to kids who are different, I will dissolve.
7. I cry at everything.
8. Sam is too tall.
9. Chickens are awesome.

* In related news, Quinn won the “Funny Bone Award” in his classroom for “for making everyone smile.”

* Quinn has been complaining lately that his dreams are just “random” and don’t have a story.

* I spent the entire day in Quinn’s class on Tuesday as six different second grade classrooms rotated through different stations, one of which I headed up as the “mad scientist” in charge of leading the kiddos through the creation of dinosaur toothpaste.

I had been worried that I wouldn’t be able to pull off the “mad” part of “mad scientist,” so I decided to dazzle the kids with scientific illustrations that I produced.

See? Scientific.

If the science in that illustration confuses you, perhaps the Facebook status I posted Monday night will help explain things:

Are we clear now?

Basically I just yelled things really loud.

SCIENCE!!!!!!!

It was a lot of fun. Also, I went to bed last night at 9 pm because I was so exhausted. Teachers, you have my respect.

* Quinn ate part of a peanut butter and jam sandwich on Tuesday. This is more groundbreaking than it sounds.

* I’ve taken to looking at Quinn and saying, “You know what I love? Your face.” He tends to blink his eyes rapidly in response and then say, “Hi.”

* I think Quinn is pretty cool.

They totally looked cooler while they did it though.

I do still have many photos. The boy gerbils have a whole bunch of houses in their tank, but they like to sleep in a pile in a corner where I can laugh at them and take photos.

I actually think it’s kind of lovely that they snuggle like that. Although I can’t imagine that it’s super fun to be on the bottom there, like King is.

They also like to prank me. Mouse plays dead really well.

He’s not; I promise.

You should also know that Quinn has been looking out for you gerbil lovers out there. He regularly disappears with my iPhone only to return with blurry photos of gerbils—and sometimes video.

He took the following video the other day and insisted that I put it on the internet. In his defense, I think he might be right about its internet worth. My gerbils continue to use their exercise wheels all wrong, but in all kinds of different and interesting ways. See how Spike (or Jefferie—it’s hard to tell) does it.

I’m going to go feed and give cardboard tubes to the little furballs now. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s gerbil interlude.

Because it’s running day, I figured that today was a good opportunity to tell you a little bit about how Project Stimey has been going. Last you heard, I was Discouraged But Optimistic. Then I ran a couple of races that went incredibly well and I started to write a post called “More Optimistic; Less Discouraged,” but then, as often happens, I lost interest and never wrote the post. Then my distressed hip, which will hereafter be referred to as Pippin the Worst Hip(pin), started hurting again and I started to get discouraged again. So now I’m just what that post title up there says.

Let’s start with the optimism. Remember how I was super discouraged about my running speed? Well, I went out and ran a 5-mile race a couple of weeks ago wherein I averaged 11:58 minute miles. I think you might know how phenomenal that is for me. I went out to that race with the intention of killing it, and I totally did. It was a much needed boost right when I needed it.

Also, I got to see my friend Stacy.

If you’re local to us, you might know that she is the awesome woman who took over AutMont from me.

That 5-mile race was the one I’d been looking forward to and wanted to kick ass at. However, the day after that race, I was registered for a Color Run, which I was taking substantially less seriously—as, I believe, you are supposed to.

The whole point of the Color Run, if you don’t know, is that you run an untimed 5k and at four different stations along the route, people throw colored powder at you.

See how you can see the blue color station from all the way over here?

I was supposed to run it with a friend, but we missed each other and I ended up just running by myself, which was fine, because that is what I do. Plus, according to my GPS, I ran 12-1/2 minute miles, which was good for me, especially considering I felt really slow that day.

I also felt a little bit…dusty.

I blue myself just a little.

There is a race afterparty with a band and coordinated color throws…or color bombs…or color tosses, I don’t remember. What are these things, you ask?

This.

It was definitely cool. I took that photo, crossed Color Run off of my “runs to do” list, and went home.

At this point, I decided that I was going to focus on steady training, increasing speed and distance (not at the same time) and take a break from racing (which I’d been doing to keep me motivated), with two exceptions.

I had registered for a 10k because I wanted to run a 10k as it was a distance I hadn’t run yet. Sadly, it was not to be. (Remember that bastard Pippin?) I had to skip that race. *sad face emoticon* Happily, it was eleven billion degrees that day so I didn’t have to develop heatstroke on mile five and a half. *smiley face emoticon*

My last race that I plan on running before my relay in September is Run Amuck this Saturday. Run Amuck is a Marine Corps Marathon mud obstacle race. I signed up for it with my friend Elaine months ago. I was pretty sure I’d be fitter by now—and I never thought I’d be fighting with my hip.

I went to pick up my packet this afternoon and there were all these fit dudes in military uniforms picking up their bibs—and me.

This is going to be quite something. I actually had a nightmare about it last night. I think it is going to be a blast, but I’m worried. I have decided that I am going to take it slow and easy and not feel bad if people pass me or if I have to walk because although I think it will be fun and challenging, I’m not all that interested in making my recovery harder than it has to be for the sake of one race.

So, that is where Project Stimey stands right now. I’m working on trying to patiently work out on the elliptical while I wait for Pippin the Hip(pin) to calm the hell down. Once I’m back on the road, I want to run more consistently and harder. I’ve fallen off the no-soda wagon, but I’m working on climbing back up. Also, I’m working hard to eat healthier food. I’m still getting to where I need to be.

I may be a turtle in my journey, but I’ll get where I’m going. So I’m kinda hopeful. With a touch of asshole. That sounds about right.

In lieu of that, I will point you over to White Knuckle Parenting. I’m closing up Chocolate Week with a post there comparing the success of our trip to Hershey with the birthday parties it replaced.

I’ll also give you this great photo of Sam’s to-do list for our weekend away:

“Sam’s to -do list:
* get hershey bar
* Be nice
* Devour chocolate
* have fun
* Be mad at mom for making me go on a roller coaster”

It turns out that Sam is a little bit of a smart ass. Where do you suppose that came from?*

*Alex. It came from Alex.

“Chocolate World! Chocolate World! We’re going to Chocolate World!”

Repeat.

It’s too bad no one was excited.

Chocolate World! Chocolate World! We’re going to Chocolate World!

I just learned about Chocolate World within the last few months. It immediately went to the top of my “must visit” list. Because…Chocolate. World.

Chocolate World! Chocolate World! We’re going to Chocolate World!

I wasn’t really sure what to expect there. I knew the basics because I’d talked to a friend who had been there before, but all I really knew was that there was chocolate—like, free samples of chocolate.

Where to find that chocolate, however, was not immediately apparent.

We walked into the building and I didn’t even know what to do. All I could see was people. There was no chocolate. There was no obvious place to go. There was just a mass of people and big signs with pictures and dollar amounts next to them.

That’s when I stopped chanting. My eyes widened and I may have turned around and around in tiny circles until Alex assessed the situation and determined that we had to stand in the long line and decide how much money we wanted to give the people at the front desk based on the icons that represented Chocolate World’s various attractions.

This was the most coherent sign in the whole place.

I ended up leaving Alex to decide what we should do and took my kids over to an empty queue that claimed to be a free attraction. Kids could pretend to be assembly line workers, then you had the option of buying a box of Hershey’s Kisses that theoretically came off the assembly line.

Foreshadowing: Quinn is not wearing his hat.

Only in America will you find small children standing in line to pretend to work on a factory assembly line.

I was all, “We are just doing the assembly line. I am NOT buying you any Hershey’s Kisses.”

Guess how many boxes of Hershey’s Kisses I bought? (That’s rhetorical. We all know that I bought three.)

After our short but expensive excursion to the pretend factory floor, I forced all my children to sit down against a wall as we waited for Alex. I don’t remember what I did to annoy Alex when he showed back up. Maybe I rolled my eyes at one of the attractions he’d chosen for us or I complained about having to corral the munchkins by myself.

He promptly put me in my place with a disbelieving look and the response of, “Yeah, I just stood in the longest line for the worst ride ever.”

He was right. I immediately readjusted my attitude.

Chocolate World has one truly free attraction, which is a little ride that takes you through how Hershey’s chocolate is made. Said ride ends with free chocolate. Said ride, however, starts with a long line in a packed hallway. Eventually we made it to the ride and were able to break loose from the masses of humanity.

Don’t they all look happy and relaxed?

Fortunately, the ride calmed everyone down and we followed it up with the 4D movie they have, which calmed everyone down even more. There is nothing like an hour in a couple of dark rooms to chill out my family. Phew.

I’m not saying the movie is going to win any Oscars, but it made my kids laugh and that is all I ask.

We exited the theater through the gift shop (of course), where we found the world’s biggest Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Peanut butter cups are Quinn’s favorites. I don’t think even he could manage to eat two half-pound versions of them though.

Sadly, we will never know if he could consume a pound of peanut butter cups, as even we decided not to buy them.

From there, we took another trip through the free ride and then headed to the chocolate tasting experience. It probably doesn’t surprise you to hear that we tasted chocolates there. It also probably doesn’t surprise you to hear that all five of us had fun tasting chocolate. Chocolate World was starting to look like a great choice for my family.

We just had one more activity before we headed back to the hotel. We were going to do the make-your-own-chocolate-bar activity where you decide what you want in a chocolate bar, watch the Hershey’s machines actually make it, decorate the wrapper yourself, then go home with your very own candy bar.

This particular activity is the main reason we went to Chocolate World. Sam has a teacher who really loves chocolate and he wanted to make a chocolate bar for her. (She also gave us discount coupons for Hersheypark that saved us a ton of money, so it seemed like an excellent trade to buy her a candy bar.) Everybody was excited to make their candy bar. All three of my kids had been talking about it all weekend.

There was one snag. (There is always a snag.) I knew this was coming and I had talked to Quinn about it ahead of time. He’d seemed okay with it in theory, but when it came down to go-time, he freaked out completely.

That snag? Because there was actual food being produced in front of us, we all had to wear aprons and hairnets.

Happily Sam and Jack were more than happy to wear their hairnets. I was more than happy to take their photograph in said hairnets.

The screaming. Oh, God, the screaming. I still hear it in my dreams.

Quinn could not handle the hairnet. He tried. He tried so hard. He completely lost it. It was rough. I managed to help him calm down enough to watch his chocolate bar get made (he didn’t have to wear the hairnet when making his recipe or designing his package) and we skipped out on the last part of the production process, choosing instead to play Minecraft on the iPad and let Alex, Sam, and Jack pick up our chocolate bars.

Then we were done. We’d pushed everyone far enough. We had a bag full of chocolate. We had just enough time to squeeze in a quick swim at the hotel before our late checkout. It was time to leave the land of chocolate.

We wandered back to the car, Jack telling random people on the way, “You can make your own chocolate bar in there!”

So. Chocolate World. I would call it a success. My kids really enjoyed being there. You know, with the exception of Quinn and the hair nets. We won’t be visiting any other food production facilities in the next several years, that is for sure.

This brings us to the conclusion of Team Stimey’s Memorial Day visit to the Land of Chocolate and Screaming. Although if I’m going to be honest, most of our outings involve chocolate and screaming, so perhaps I should say that this is the end of our visit to the Land of Chocolate and Screaming in Pennsylvania.

I guess if there were one thing I wanted to impart about our weekend, which was both fantastic and extremely challenging, is that I love going on adventures with my family. It is never smooth sailing, but it is always rewarding.

My family exasperates me like nothing else, but those moments when they make me laugh (and there are a lot of them), those moments when they laugh (and there are a lot of them), those moments when they overcome things that are difficult for them, those moments when we experience something new together, those moments when we get to be ourselves with each other—those moments are what make my life worthwhile.

So, yes, our trip to the Land of Chocolate and Screaming in Pennsylvania (a.k.a. Hersheypark and Chocolate World), were not perfect. But I wouldn’t trade those two day for anything in the world.

Jack had studied really hard for the Geo Bowl. I’d emailed the other team parents. I’d made sure Jack’s teacher and para had support plans in place. I’d panicked to all of you ad nauseum. We were as ready as we were gonna be.

I needn’t have worried.

My friend—whose daughter is in Jack’s autism class—and I sat in the front row at the Geo Bowl together today and watched our kids rock the free world.

It turns out that the way it was set up, no one student was put on the spot at any point. The teams didn’t have to compete against each other to answer questions first. The kids didn’t have to sit quietly in a chair behind a table. Honestly, I wouldn’t have had any suggestions about how to better set it up if I’d been asked. It was great.

I considered going into detail about how it was set up, but I don’t think you really care. What you care about is that Jack’s team smiled with him, included him, and made him part of the high-fives that went around when they answered questions right. (His friend’s team did the same with her.)

Every kid in that room was awesome. They all knew so much about geography and had obviously worked really hard.The organizers, who as far as I could tell were all parents, were fantastic and had done an amazing job putting the Geo Bowl together. The whole thing gave me warm fuzzies.

It also helped that the teams had come up with some excellent team names: Purple Eagles, Red Revolution, Yellow Rice Krispies, Blue Sumo Wrestlers (Jack’s team), and the Flying Monkeys—who were green.

The end result was really close. None of the teams missed many questions. But Jack’s team came out on top—by one point.

After the Sumo Wrestlers were announced as the winner, kids in the audience gave Jack spontaneous high fives. I know, right? I know.

So Jack’s team won, but how did he do?

He did great.

He took a break at one point, leaving the auditorium with his fantastic paraeducator. I was actually really happy to see that, because I had told Jack that if he needed a break, he could take one. I love watching him advocate for himself.

His team wasn’t asked any questions about the U.S. Territories (Jack’s specialty), but there was one question that no one on the team knew the answer to—except for Jack. He gave them the answer and earned them the point.

Again, I know.

(Delaware. The answer was Delaware. I can’t remember the question.)

One of the parents who had been on the stage with the kids made a point to tell me right after the Geo Bowl that Jack had done that. Another parent emailed me later that afternoon to tell me the same thing.

I KNOW.

I am beaming just remembering.

I could not possibly be prouder of Jack. (He’s proud of himself too.) I could not be more in love with his teammates. My friend and I giddily walked out of the school after the Geo Bowl, talking about how amazing it was to watch our kids brainstorm and celebrate with their teammates. Our kids are phenomenally awesome, we decided.

He refused to smile for me. I didn’t care.

Once again, Jack has shown me just how much he is capable of. It should come as no surprise to any of us that he is capable of a lot.