June 2021

June 2021 ... it was HOT.  There were some records set (poor Portland/Seattle had it even worse), and news about the water worries. We had a power outage once, a couple of hours in the morning. Quite a few family fun activities, Father's Day, pickleball, basketball, Gray's getaways, Jen messing around with the #voila app, and Keaton has been jumping out of planes!

• Pickleball: We've enjoyed making family pickleball a weekly thing. We don't always get the whole crew out, but it's a lot of fun when we have the Blackham Bunch together. Some are more competitive than others ;) 
• Annual Westra Father's Day Party: We pushed it an hour, as it was so hot! Pulled pork and lots of other eats/treats. Introduced the Westra side to 9-Square. A few days later, there was a smaller group gathering for swimming at the Havenmoor pool. 
• TopGolf: As a pre-Father's Day, the Blackham side got together at TopGolf. It really is a fun place to go hit some balls, even if you're not at all in to golf. 
• Blackham Gathering: Later in the month, Jami and the girls were in town, so we had another get-together. TopGolf was actually the aim, but it was booked, so we just figured we'd have a backyard party ... except then it rained (otherwise we would have introduced the Blackham side to Keaton's 9-Square). Lots of pizza, and Keaton/Milo (the dog) provided some entertainment. Finally as the weather cleared, the kids played some hackysack.
• Moab: Go/No-Go ... Grayson was taking Landon&Co to Moab to introduce them to RZR riding, but there was a big fire impacting the area and it closed the road. They ended up having to turn around and come back home. Gray still made it to Moab this month though ... twice!
• Basketball: Colton had some open gym at the school, then the "WJ Clinic" ... the crew put on a fundraiser carwash, then went to St. George for a tournament (see Colton's write up HERE). Colton's Wolves also had several practices and then the Big Mountain Jam. 
• Skydiving: Keaton did the tandem sky-diving a couple years ago, and he's now taking it a step or two (or three!) further. He spent three Saturday's jumping out of planes this month. No longer strapped to an instructor (still with an instructor in the air near him ... at least for a bit) he's on his own! Pulling his own cord, trying to perfect staying straight in the air, landing. Crazy kid!
• Zumba: Jen has continued to teach Mondays and Wednesdays at a nearby church. She's had a helper, handling almost half the class, but Christa said goodbye (surgery will have her out for a few months) so more teaching time for Jen. She's hitting classes Thurs/Fri with another group too. 
• New Grill: Happy Father's Day to Grayson. He had a smaller Blackstone grill he'd been using a lot, so he upgraded. Got himself a new apron too, in an attempt to stem the grease spots on so many shirts!
• Router Replacement: Our Internet was AWFUL, cutting in and out. Our Xfinity service had actually offered us an upgrade a bit ago ... but, change is hard, until it's necessary. We got the new router set up, and had to reconnect EVERYTHING. The old Aria Fitbit scale would NOT connect so ... new scale (Jen had been wanting one anyway, just needed the justification). 

 Love that in three of the pictures, Gray is hugging (or being hugged)!

Here's the month - One Second Style

 

And highlights from one of Colton's basketball games ...

In the game after this one, Gordy (#4, making a LOT of shots) broke his wrist :(

9-Square in the Air (Blackham Style)

 

Have you heard of 9-Square (in the Air)? It's similar to four-square, where you bop a ball from square to square, but instead of the squares being painted on pavement, these squares are above your head, framed from PVP pipe. There is an official website and sets can be purchased (well, they are backordered as of this posting) but they are pricy! $700. Keaton decided he wanted to make his own. It really IS just PVC pipe and the correct connectors (he found those on Amazon). He went with a sturdier size (1.5 inch) too. It still added up to $250, but he said the hardest part was picking up the pipe from the store and getting it home. A few hours of cutting pipe to the correct length, and he was good to go. Did you know that with the addition of two daughters-in-law ... there are NINE Blackhams in the bunch? We even got Gray to play (grudgingly). Perfect for play.

    

On a different day ... had to stop and snap a photo.

All five Blackham boys in chronological order (the center is the #1 spot)

Next up ... Westra Father's Day party!

As Keaton got quite a bit of feedback (how did you do it, was it hard, how much did it cost, where do you find the supplies) I had him write up a little "how-to" if you wanted to do it on your own.  So here you go!

Get the PVC sticks at Lowe’s or Home Depot. They come in 10’ sticks (you will need 28 total, maybe grab an extra in case you cut something incorrectly). You’re going to trim the pipe (I used a sawzall, buy a chop saw would work too) to 7’ for the vertical legs (you need 16 of these) and 4 1/2’ for the top connectors (you need 24 of these). (Height and width are pretty standard but you can adjust how you’d like. 5’ height is preferable for children under 10.)

Home Depot and Lowe’s most likely do not carry any of the connectors because they may not be frequently used in construction or other places, so I got mine from Amazon. Make sure the fittings match the PVC Pipe size (I used 1 1/2”) and note that some of the connectors are sold in sets, while others are sold individually.

• 4 3 way PVC fittings for the corners.
• 8 4 ways for the sides.
• 4 5 ways for the middle square.

I found the ball  at Walmart for $2. 

Setting up the game is pretty straight forward but does take some time. It's good to have a ladder and hammer. I start with the middle square and 5 way fittings so we can move it to its desired location. Then you start adding on leg by leg to the middle square. I do the corners last. It’s important that you have the center square where you want it because once the whole thing is built, it isn't going anywhere.

You may want to prepare a carry bag for all of the fittings (I don’t glue any of them on to play so that it can be stored easier and it works just fine). To store and transport the pipe, I wrapped the 7’ sticks together with a bungee on both sides and did the same for the 4 1/2’ sticks.

Colton and Crew at the Crimson Classic

I still need to post about the actual basketball season. I did do some updates on the basketball blog, but am still quite behind. Here's a look at the most recent happenings.

Summer often means it's tournament time. Even with a recent coaching change, the Crimson Cliffs Classic was ON for the West Jordan Jaguars. The first weekend of June, they held a fundraiser washing cars, and earned enough to pay the tournament fees. There wasn't going to be a bus this year, so parents were in charge of chauffeuring kids (some of the kids could drive themselves, but I don't know if any did) and getting hotel rooms (everyone tried to book together so the boys could hang out easily). Anyone who knows me, knows I don't really travel. Luckily, Colton was "adopted" by another family. So I dropped him off, and off they went. 

Colton will be a sophomore next year. For this tournament, he and two other sophomores would be playing both sophomore and JV. There were some back-to-back games at different locations, and all three teams played at 1:00 on Saturday for the final games. Colton was good at keeping in touch to let me know how the games were going, and I also got a couple updates from other moms. The sophomore team went undefeated. My sister Wendy lives in St. George and I mentioned Colton was there, so she and Janelle went to cheer him on for one of his games. The boys didn't really have time for a load of laundry ... I can only imagine how stinky they all must have been!

I asked (required) Colton to do a write up of the tournament for me ...

Thursday - On the car ride up to St. George all I could really do is be on my phone. I didn’t fall asleep at all on the way there. We had about a little bit over an hour at the hotel before my first game, I just sat on the bed, explored the room and saw what channels were on the tv. Carter’s family picked me up for our 2:00 game at Pine View. They weren’t too hard and we won by a bit, we went straight from there to the 4:00 game at Crimson Cliffs. We all hung out for like half an hour at the gym before our game started because the one before us went long. We ended up losing the first JV game, next game was at 8:00. Before heading back to the hotel, I went with Colin’s family to Habit to get some food. We went back to the hotel for only an hour where Gage, Jair, and Carter came to our room for a bit. We had another JV game next where Ethan and I had to leave at halftime, the team they were playing seemed really tiny and I expected them to win, but they apparently lost in triple overtime by two points. We had a pretty tough game against Crimson with the sophomores but ended up winning by like 10. Afterwards, Ethan’s family took me, Carter, and Ethan to Wendys. Back at the hotel, I hung out with the varsity team for a little bit at the hot tub while eating my food. I went back up to my room at around 11 and took a shower. Gage and Jair were in my room as well for a bit before they left. At like 11:30, I went and hung out with Elijah, Max, Jaxon, Carter, Steven, and Alex. We went down to the lobby and found some board games that the hotel had for people to play. We played Jenga for a bit, trying to be quiet, then Steven and I went and checked out the weight room, which was pretty small. We all went back to the room that was shared by Elijah, Carter, Jaxon, and Steven and played Uno on our phones. I went back to my room at around 12:30, and went to bed.

Friday - I woke up at 7:00 and got dressed. Colin was still asleep so I went to breakfast and met up with Elijah, Carter, Steven, Jaxon, Alex, Jair, and Max. Some of the breakfast choices were cereal, waffles, small omelets, and fruit. I got a bowl of cereal and a couple of the omelets, which were not that good. We hung out down there for a bit before I went and put my jersey on. Carter and I got a ride with Ethan to our first game at 9:00. We won by two points off of a last second shot by Jaxon. We went straight from there to our next game at 11:00. We also won the JV game, although it was still tough. Since our next game was at 1:00, Ethan’s parents went to get the both of us some sandwiches from Subway. It took a lot longer than they thought it would and our next game started before they got back. Ethan and Carter left at halftime of this game to go to the sophomore game. Which was probably for the best since Ethan got into a little bit of a fight with a kid from the other team since he threw the ball on Ethan’s head intentionally when inbounding the ball with about two seconds left in the half. It felt pretty good when I hit an and-1 three in the guys face quickly in the second half. We won that game and Colin’s parents hurried and dropped me off at my sophomore game with about two minutes left in the first half. The game was pretty close for most of it but we pulled away at the end, going on a 10 point run. We headed back to the hotel for a little over an hour. Gage, Max, Elijah, and Jair came to our room during that time. We just chilled in the room watching tv. Gage and I both got a text that we would be playing in the varsity game at 6:00 because a couple of the players were injured. We won the 5:00 game by a fair amount, then we won at 6:00 too in the varsity game. I did pretty decent and scored five points. I played a bit more than I thought I would. Coach told me I would also play varsity on Saturday at 8:00 in the morning. I got a ride back to the hotel with Colin, where we quickly changed and left to go to Fiesta Fun for laser tag. We all ate pizza and had drinks first at the park across the street, and also played on the playground because it was pretty fun. Even an ice cream truck drove by and I got this Sonic ice cream popsicle thing. We waited for 20 min before playing laser tag then we went in. There were three teams, I was with Carter and the entire varsity team. It was really fun, even though one of the other teams won. I stuck around for another half hour and played some mini golf and just a little bit of the arcade games. Gage, Colin, Jair, Max, and I left and went back to the hotel. We decided to walk to the gas station nearby to get some snacks. All I got was a soda for two bucks. We hung out in our room for a while doing nothing until everyone else came back too, most of them coming to our room. At one point, I think there was the entire sophomore team and nearly the entire JV team in mine and Colin’s room. We went down to the lobby and played more board games, and even did a race on a word search because there were plenty of these little packets provided by the hotel and crayons. We all hung out in our room for about another hour before everyone left at around 12:30. I then took a shower and went to bed around 1:00 in the morning.

Saturday - I woke up at 6:30 today because I had a game at 8:00. Colin and I went to breakfast and met up with the same people as before. Sophomores had a game at 8:00 also so I had to miss that. I got a ride with Colin to the varsity game because they came to watch. It was a pretty close game throughout the entire thing, and I was playing in the final minutes. I ended up hitting a free throw with about 10 seconds to go to put us up by 3 (free throws were 1 shot for 2 points) and we won the game. I had another game with JV directly after in the same place. This was probably the easiest game of the tournament and we won by 30. We had an hour and a half between this game and our next game so we headed back to the hotel to pack our things and check out. Jair came to our room for a bit, same with Max, but they both left early to go pack. I got a ride with Colin to the last game against Farmington. That was a rough game. We went down about 18-0 to start then we brought back within eight points, but they stayed well ahead the entire game. I still scored around 20 points and then talked to Wendy and Janelle for a few minutes afterwards. Colin and I had to change quickly in the parking lot after the game and then we went to this restaurant “Viva Chicken”. I had been there twice before when we went to St. George a couple months ago. We made the long trip back to West Jordan after that, only stopping once to go to the bathroom and get a milkshake at Dairy Queen.