Snowy Day in December

We had our first snow day on December 9th. Rachel loved playing in the snow.





She made snow angels.




She even played basketball in the snow. Allbeit, she used an old soccer ball!




After a while she decided that the wind was too much and came in. I guess she didn't want any more pictures either.

Sarai's a Lady Colonial!

Sarai's passion has been basketball since she was little. This year she made a travel Hoops team and plays for a Worcester League team. Last week she spent two days, a total of 3 1/2 hours, trying out for the Oak Middle School team. This team is designed to provide good basketball players for the high school. Sarai found out Saturday afternoon that she made the team! She is extremely happy. This means that she is playing for three teams and has basketball at least once a day all week long! I'm glad she loves basketball.

She worked hard to make the team. Twenty-two 8th graders and thirty-six 7th graders tried out. Only 13 girls were chosen. Three 7th graders are managers. This means that they keep stats, practice with the team and possibly play in a couple of games.

If you read this, congratulate her.

District's Place Sends Team to States

I posted earlier that Tobin's cross country team won Leagues. This enabled them to race in Districts. The top 3 teams that place in Districts go to States. The team's goal was to run in states, but it was going to be a tough race to make that happen. Shrewsbury ran well. The top 7 runners for a team are the only ones who run for Districts. Tobin is one of them. Shrewsbury tied for 2nd based on the scores for the top 5 runners. Officially you cannot tie in a race like this, so they look at the 6th runner. Our 6th runner finished behind the other team so we scored 3rd. Regardless, we made it to states as a team. The girls cross country placed 3rd as well. Both teams were going to run in States! It was the 1st time in over

Tobin's story behind running in Districts is interesting. Districts was scheduled to be held on Saturday. Thurs afternoon Tobin's coach drove him home because he "seemed" sick. Tobin stayed home from school on Friday, which concerned most of his friends. He also slept for 20 hours! Tobin was all worried about not being able to run on Saturday. We found out that when a meet or game is held on a weekend an athlete's presence or absence in school doesn't affect playing time for a weekend event. So being out of school on Friday would not stop him from running on Saturday.

Saturday was forcasted to be torrential rain storms. In cross country you run in anything, but this weekend things were on Tobin's side. The organizers for this race decided to postpone the race until Monday. Athletes did have to leave school early, but the weather was much better then. this was beneficial for Tobin since he didn't really get better until Saturday night. The team was all worried about how he was feeling. It would have been hard for the team to win without him.

Tobin at the 1 mile mark.

Here are Curtis, CJ and Tobin. These three have been running together as a pack for the past few races. Their performances have enable the team to win their post season races.

Tobin finishes in 15:48. It was a 2.9 mile course race. This was just a day after he had recovered from the flu. Not too bad, although Tobin was disappointed with his placement in the team. He finished 5th for the team. We are still so proud and impressed with his speed, sportsmanship, team effort and leadership.

Pumpkin Creation

Ok, it’s catch-up blog time!

I work at Beal school in town. During the last week of October, we had a pumpkin carving contest as a team building activity. All of the teachers and aides were randomly placed into 6 different teams. There were fun rules written up and we had 4 days to create something with the pumpkin given to us. My team decided to turn the pumpkin into Rainbow Fish (from the book Rainbow Fish). I forgot to tell you, Beal School is a kindergarten and 1st grade school.

The pumpkin was painted blue and turned on its side. We had a bubble machine behind it to blow bubbles. There were plastic fish hanging from the ceiling above. We had fun.

The creation of the pumpkin was to be done after or before school hours. I spent a couple of hours Thurs. after school and between multiple taxi drives to help finish the product.

Here are the other pumpkins:

The pumpkins were judged by parents and the 1st graders on Friday, October 30th. My team won! We were given D and D gift cards. We all had fun doing this activity.

Win for Shrewsbury at Mid-Wach A Leagues Meet

The guys were pumped for Leagues. I hosted the pasta night for this race. Leagues was held on October 27, 2009 for Mid-Wach A. Shrewsbury wanted to keep their dynasty alive. They had won Leagues for 4 years in a row, this year would make 5!



It was impressive for me to see this race with the number of runners. I didn't go to last years race so this was all new to me.



John Murray set this course record too! He ran this 5K in 16:38.8. He is amazingly fast.




Tobin finished 7th in the race. He ran it in 17:21! By finishing in the top 10 he was awarded League All Star. He improved his running by 59 seconds from last years race. He is running very well.



The team stayed together as a pack again. There was only 9 seconds between our #3 guy and #12. Our top 6 guys finished within the first 12 runners. We were racing against 6 other teams, 47 guys total in this race.

There were 4 races that day: boys varsity, girls varsity, boys junior and girls junior. It is impressive to see that everyone, girls and guys, cheer each other on. They run throughout the course (even after their own races) to cheer the others on to win. The boys and girls xcountry team is a great group of teens.

Impressive Running at Shrewsbury XCountry

Tues, October 20th was the last home course race the seniors would run. Coach Smith read all their names outloud before the race. I believe there are 10 seniors.

They seemed a bit anxious to run. In the far right is the number one guy, John Murray. Number two is Chris Favuli and Tobin is number three on the team. The first 5 guys for each team are paired up together along the front line. The rest of the team members file in behind.

I love this picture. Notice John Murray and Chris Favuli setting their watches as the gun goes off for the start of the race. John had said that he was going to set the course record during this race.

Tobin ran well. He was a bit tired and finished 5 seconds slower than last home race. His time is still very good at 18:15.

This is at the first mile mark:

I wanted to get different pictures from the course. This post features the sand climb up to the grass field. Notice how steep this hill climb is. It is short, but your thighs burn once you do this part. (I ran the course one evening and have great respect for what the team does often.)

Tobin is pushing it at the finish of the race. The team finishes on the track. Behind him is CJ. CJ is running extremely well. He has been finishing right behind Tobin. He is a freshman.

John set the course record today. He ran the 3.1 course in 16:27! Wow! John did finish over a minute ahead of the reat of the runners. Shrewsbury did get places 1-5. They also finish as a solid team. #2-5 were all within 26 seconds of each other. They were hoping to run as a pack and finish as one. They did! This made the guys really happy and excited to look forward to the Leagues race a week later.

Back to Blog

I know that it has been almost a month since I last blogged. I promise many posts are coming. Keep reading and looking. I will try to have a new post every couple of days. Keep reading, I won't disappoint!