Christmas in Mandan

We had our family Christmas Friday night, since we will be in Park Rapids for Christmas.  It was pretty low key and non fancy.  Eric's first gift opened was a new bathrobe, which he promptly threw over his shoulder Ralphie style.

 Megan playing with the sticker book Jonathan gave her.

 Megan did not get to visit Santa this year.  When we went to see him, the line was horrendously long, so I bribed her with $10 to skip it.  She didn't even have to think about it.  Eric, being the great brother that he is, used Jonathan's Santa suit from the 5K last weekend to surprise her.  She was laughing too hard to tell "Santa" what she wanted.

3rd Place

J's team played Minot Sunday am for 3rd.  The game was close the first half, but the Mavericks were able to win by a safe margin in the end.  The Moorhead team that beat the Mavs won the tournament.

Mandan Tournament

The Mandan Boys club is hosting a tourny this weekend.  J's team played 2 games yesterday.  First game was against the Sheyenne Skyhawks.  This is apparently another WoodLake team.  The monstrously tall boy from the GF tourny was on this team.  I think he's grown since then, too.  The Skyhawks lead early.  One of their players plays in the NBA when he's not attending 6th grade.  Rumor is he was playing with a broken toe.  I'd hate to face him with 10 healthy toes!
 Hard to focus on picture taking when the games are tense.

 Our best strategy was to get #32 to foul out, which he did.  This boy don't need to jump.  He just needs to keep his hands up.   

Kind of a blurry shot, but Jonathan completed a reverse lay up about 1.2 seconds after this shot.  It was cool.

The next game was against a Moorhead team.  They shot and made a ton of 3 pointers.  Swish.  Swish.  Swish.  They are coached by Bismarck native Kevin Feeny, who played QB for the Bison in the mid 90s.  This was during the time that UND prevailed over NDSU, so I will take glory in that, as the Moorhead team but us by 1 lousy point.  The boys were down by as much as 11, but were able to take the lead briefly in the second half by as much as 4.  Our lack of an effective press breaker hurt us bad.  The boys have played from behind quite a bit this year and have kept their cool, but did get frustrated this game and had a harder time settling down.

3rd place game is at 10 am this morning, against the Minot team we beat for 1st at our last tournament.

newsboys

A friend of mine from my St As days had extra tickets for the Newsboys concert tonight and offered them to me.  megan and I had date night!  As with most Christian concerts, there was a message

Along with a charity they were promoting.  This portion was quite lengthy, and Megan was getting restless (it lasted 45 minutes).  We ended up leaving at intermission, as I felt it was better to get her to bed.  Once we got int the car she states : "I'm a Christian and all, but that guy talked way too long about God".

BHS tournament

The Mavs played in the BHS tourny this weekend.  First game was against WoodLake-the team that brought 5th graders with facial hair to the Grand Am last year.  Close game, but Mavs won.  Next up was the Dickinson Heat-the team we beat for 1st place two weeks ago.  The Heat were a bit off their game and Mavs won.  Championship game was against Minot.  They only had 5 players due to a conflicting choir concert.  They were tired because of their previous game.  Mavs won by 25 or so.  Great tourny!