Battle of the Books

Back in December, Trevor joined his middle school's Battle of the Books team. Every two weeks, all of the Battle of the Books participants received a new book, which they needed to read and study. On Battle days, Trevor's school (B. Gale Wilson) and the other 5 middle schools in the district competed against each other in dual meets. After each team had competed against all the others once, there would be a championship meet between the two top teams. The BGW team met twice a week after school to discuss the books in depth and brainstorm questions that might appear. They were well-prepared and worked really well as a team. So well, in fact, that they went into the Championship Battle undefeated.

The Championship Battle, scheduled for April 2, never happened.

Obviously, this is an extremely minor disappointment compared to all the other things canceled due to the pandemic. But I feel bad for those kids who worked so hard and were having so much fun. It was their last year of middle school, so there's no looking forward to next year's team. They hadn't taken their team photos for the yearbook yet, or even posed for a group photo before school was abruptly moved to distance learning. All I have are a few lousy snapshots from the meets.

Why am I bringing up the Battle of the Books now, months later? Because I recently finished reading what should have been the championship book (along with the other three books in the series). I loved it. I loved all of the Battle books. Even though Trevor and the BGW team didn't get to finish their season, they are all better for having read and studied some really great books.

I don't know who selected the Battle books, but they couldn't have made better choices. They're as enjoyable for adults as they are for teens. I loved each of the books enough to search out and read more by each author. Below are affiliate links for all of the books. I highly recommend you give them a read.

When I drafted this post, I mistakenly included one that I'd thought was a Battle book, but was actually from Trevor's book club. It was fantastic. 

Have you read anything great recently? Let me know in the comments. Happy reading! 

Celebrating 13

I've already told you about Trevor's Peanuts-themed 13th birthday party; here's the layout about that fun day. 

13th Birthday Party (affiliate link)

Every item, except the white cardstock, is from the Party Boy collection by Photo Play. Sometimes it's nice not having to dig through different collections or different manufacturers to find embellishments that coordinate. It certainly makes scrapping faster to stick with a single collection. 

12th Birthday Party

One of my favorite things about blogging is that I can tell more of the story and include more photos of an event than I can squeeze onto a scrapbook layout. So while I want the important photos and the story to appear in the album, it helps knowing that the details are preserved here on the blog. Because I shared so many details from Trevor's narwhal-themed ice skating birthday party back in June, I didn't feel compelled to include close-ups of the narwhal items we made on the layout. Instead, I packed it with photos of Trevor and his friends having fun.

12th Birthday Party (affiliate link)

I debated whether to include the grinning alligator on a page about a narwhal-themed birthday, but I couldn't resist. He fit the space perfectly and looks so cute holding the present and the balloons. 

You may have noticed that the only journaling I did was to label the kids (and Narwhal). The photos answer the rest of the basic questions:

• What: Trevor's birthday party
• Where: ice rink
• When: Trevor's 12th birthday

You might argue that, years from now, one of Trevor's descendants won't know when his birthday was and thus what year this took place. Nor will they know which ice rink we visited. But I'd argue that both of those questions are answered by other layouts in the same album. For the record though, I'll note both of those here, with the optimistic (though perhaps unlikely) expectation that my blog will be accessible to future generations: This party took place at Vacaville Ice Sports on June 8, 2018, the day after Trevor's 12th birthday. And it was awesome.