Last night was the Valentine Dance at the Ninth Grade Campus. Lindee & Mallory picked me up, & we headed over to the house of one of their friends. Another mom was picking the girls up from their after-school soccer uniform pickup, and they went to a couple of different houses to shower, and then all met up at the house where we were to get dressed for their big evening. Mallory was there to help with hair, too. She’s working on Brooke’s hair here while Brooke’s mom is doing her makeup, and you can see Clara in the mirror doing her makeup, too – Mal had already finished with her hair.

Clara looked absolutely gorgeous, and the report when they got home was that everyone had an absolute ball.

Jeff has been doing a great job with his walking to start exercising his foot and leg, and to build up his strength. Last week he found these sweet little crocuses popping up beside the driveway. So pretty!

Last Saturday Jeff & I went to Rock Hill to watch Charlie and his Woodland teammates in action at Mount Holly UMC. It was the first game we had been able to get to all year, and the first time Jeff had been out of the house to fo anywhere other than a doctor’s appointment since all of this hoopla started. Char’s team got beat pretty bad, but it was fun watching them, and I got this picture of the guys after the game.

Last week I was finally able to get to another program at the auditorium here in town, to see Ventriloquist Steve Brogan. He was really entertaining, and it was great fun seeing something different. I don’t believe we’d ever had a ventriloquist before. This was one of my favorite dummies he used – he said it was made entirely out of wood, like old Charlie McCarthy and some of the other famous old dummies were. Fun evening.

We are really staying busy with jigsaw puzzles this winter, and are so thankful to have some on hand to get us through these days when Jeff is mostly stuck inside. He can get up and work on one for a little while, and then lie back down on the couch & elevate his foot. My friend Evelyn gave me this one for Christmas.

Mason made the 7th grade team at Clover Middle School this year, and we went to watch his first game, but then he told his parents we made him nervous and he didn’t want us to come any more. He wouldn’t even let Addie come. But his final game of the season was last week, and for some reason he agreed to let me come – Jeff still wasn’t feeling great. Mason played a great game – scored some, got some rebounds, blocked a couple of shots. We were so proud. He’s #32, boxing out in this picture 🙂

The Clover Blue Eagles had a rough year – they only won one game, and this one came down to the wire, but they pulled it out by one point. It was so exciting!

Jeff’s foot was still pretty painful, so he decided not to go to watch Adam in his final middle school wrestling event. It was the county-wide wrestling tournament, so eight or nine schools. Adam did a great job – we were so proud. Here he is in action against one of his own teammates, which I had not seen happen earlier. Adam won this match.

I got this picture of him sitting in the stands with his second place medal. He thought he should have beat the guy that came in first, so was kind of disappointed in himself, but we were so proud. And Sullivan ended up winning the entire tournament to come out first in the county, so that was really exciting.

The night before Jeff went into the hospital for his bypass surgery I left him at home & headed to Rock Hill just long enough to watch Adam in action on the wrestling mat. He did a good job but came up short, and this is the only “action” photo I got the entire evening.

We have worked a disproportionate number of jigsaw puzzles this winter due to Jeff’s invalid status, and even before all of the doctor’s visits began, since his foot was hurting him so much AND it’s been a really cold winter. This is the one he got me for Christmas this year.