Tucker's Soccer Season

Tucker's soccer season ended.  He had a great season.  We weren't sure how it would go because he came from a very small school where everyone made the team.  After tryouts he was put on the JV team but after just one practice they moved him to varsity and he played starting varsity for most of the season.  

Tucker played as a defender and he liked that position.  His foot was hurting him the entire season and we don't know why. That was a challenge for him but he never told his coach because he didn't want him to play him less.  

He made some friends on the team and really enjoyed it.  He did say that he didn't feel as close with this team as his old one and he wishes he could have played with his old team in Japan this year.

High school sports take up a lot of time and effort and I'm proud of him for working so hard and also keeping up with his schoolwork.

Kobra Soccer

I gathered together pictures from Tucker soccer season.  He got to play on the high school varsity team as a Freshman here in Sasebo.  The first picture is of the entire soccer team on their awards night.  The coach likes to talk and we were there for three hours.  A few other teams were doing awards as well, but it was a long night.  

Tucker's team traveled to play.  He only had one weekend where they played two home games, and those were the last games of the season.  All the other weekends Tucker got to miss school all Friday and sometimes Thursday as well to travel and he wouldn't come back until Saturday night or even Sunday.  On top of that he had practice everyday after school until 5ish, so we never really got to see him.  He also had to be taken to base or picked up late at night or early in the morning.   Lots of weekends I had to drop him off around midnight.  The bus would drive the entire night and they would play a team in Tokyo around 5pm the next day.  Most weekends he traveled about 5 hours away to play, and one time they even flew.  

The team worked really really hard but they never actually won a game.  Their first home game was one of the last of the season but the first game they didn't have to travel to and they got to have their family and friends watch and they tied the champion team.  It was really exciting for everyone.  I think they could have done better if they didn't have to travel to every game.

Tucker did not get a ton of playing time but he was happy to be on the team.  The coach couldn't bring all the players on the away game they flew to and Tucker was worried he would be one of the three boys who didn't get to go.  Luckily he got to go, and he was thrilled.  The coach said he improved a lot over the season and I agree.  This was Tucker's first time playing on a more serious team.

Overall, it was a little hard on us to have Tucker gone all the time.  We missed him and his grades did suffer.  Tucker absolutely loved it though and he worked really hard and made friends so he definitely wants to do it again next year.

Tucker's Birthday

Tucker was in South Korea during his actual birthday so I snagged a picture with him on his way out the door.  It was strange to send him to a foreign country without Bob or I, but he wasn't nervous at all.  He traveled with a few other teens from our church for a week long conference called FSY.  He had a blast and refused to tell anyone it was even his birthday, so they didn't sing to him or anything.

After he got back we had a family party.  The highlight was when we got Tucker a shocking pen from the dollar store and he totally got shocked without expecting it.  He didn't even react that much but we were all brimming with excitement as he opened that present.

We had some excitement over the cake as well.  I didn't have 15 candles that were all the same so I thought it would look cool to have a bunch of candles close together with taller ones in the middle and shorter ones around them in a circle.  It definitely did not work.  The smaller ones were melting the big candles and the whole thing was a big ball of fire.  We could have had a serious problem because the cake was sitting underneath an entire roll of paper towels as this went down.  Luckily no one got hurt from the candle fiasco.   I have a video of the whole thing below.

Happy Birthday Tucker!!!

Tucker's 15 Photos

Tucker was not really thrilled about taking pictures to commemorate his 15th birthday, so we just quickly took some the Sunday after his birthday.  We didn't even need to leave the front porch.  

Squirrel Girl Goes to College

"Squirrel Girl Goes to College," was the title of the high school play Tucker was in.  This is his first high school play he's done when actually in high school.  

It is about a Marvel super hero called Squirrel Girl.  The play was pretty funny.

Tucker played a few different parts, including Little Georgie and Little Tomas. 

All the kids worked so hard on the play and they did a great job.  It was a huge time commitment, they met after school for about two hours four days a week for about three months.

I was working on opening night so everyone came to see at me Chili's after the show.

This is the first time they've been allowed to visit me at Chili's.  I was worried it would be too distracting.  It was ok though.  We weren't busy so it was fun to see them.  The kids kept calling to me across the restaurant trying to get my attention.

Don't worry I got to see the play on closing night, and then I watched it again on the video.  

Ladies of the Palace Arcade

Tucker preformed in the middle school play titled "Ladies of the Palace Arcade."  With the world changed because of Covid the drama department has as well.  The play is really twelve separately recorded performances performed only for the director and a video camera.  Which was then made into one video play.  

This was Tucker's first time having a part that wasn't in the ensemble.  He was nervous for the audition but once he had the part it was considerably much less work then the past high school plays he has done.  I am grateful for the work that the teacher has done on this.  It is awesome that he found a way to continue even without gathering together.  I do feel a little bad for the kids though.  They were originally going to watch the performance all together socially distanced of course.  But even that had to get cancelled.  We had our own little viewing party in our house with just our family.

It is about half an hour long, and Tucker is the very last one.  So if you don't have time to watch the whole thing just skip to 28 minutes and watch the end.

Ladies of the Palace Arcade from Travis Ratts on Vimeo.

Tucker's 12 Year Video

Check out the compilation of pictures and videos from when Tucker was 12.

Tucker Rubik's Cube

After the big upset in the family Rubik's cube race I posted about yesterday, Tucker wanted a rematch.  Unfortunately Penelope was not willing.  So Tucker filmed himself doing it faster and wanted me to share his video here. 

He calls himself the speed cubing kid.

Tucker 13th Birthday Photography

I cannot believe I have a child that is a teenager!  Its been a couple weeks now and I'm not sure what all the parenting hype is all about, it is not bad at all.  Tucker is in fact actually pretty good.  Ok, I'm kidding I imagine it will get harder.  But for now he is really a great kid.

Tucker is responsible and getting more mature, I can tell he is starting to take things more seriously.  It is intersting to watch bounce back and forth between acting like a child and then acting like a much older teen and back again all throughout the day.

He is growing so tall.  I still need to measure him on our wall, but he is about up to my eyebrows and I don't think I'll make it another complete year being taller than him.  He totally broke a part of the playground fixture the other day on accident when he was just trying to climb up onto it.  We had a talk about how yes, the toys are old, but also about how now he is almost the size of an adult and he needs to be aware of that in his actions.  I'm sure it is a lesson that takes time to learn.

Tucker is brave and kind and friendly.  He doesn't mind being the center of attention, in fact in our home it kind of seems like a battle between him and Calista as to who can get me to pay attention to them the most.  Tucker is still young and likes to play pretend.  He likes the show Avatar, to make movies, and to make up games outside to play with friends.

Tucker is a great oldest child and I really think Heavenly Father knew what he was doing when he sent him to our family.

The North Face

Tucker did his first modeling job and it was for North Face.  Go here and here to see it on the website.  Just in case those links don't work forever, I'll go ahead and post the screen shots I took.

This was by far one of the easiest modeling jobs we have done.  Probably the easiest.  We were there for less than two hours total.  I also think that Tucker being older and not completely terrified of a bunch of strangers staring at him made it a breeze.  He was very nervous though.  We have lived here for almost three years and during this time the other kids have done several modeling jobs yet Tucker hasn't done any.  I think there are just more jobs for the younger kids.  Waiting so long made it a little scary.  

I love to see the background photos so here you go.  They usually have some sort of sheet with the clothing items and also a picture of the model on the sheet.  Sometimes they even have stick type people in certain positions.  I think this is just so everyone is clear on which models are wearing what and what exact poses they need.

The model always gets called over for hair.  Sometimes they get dressed first and sometimes they do hair first.  For Tucker this took about 10 seconds.  They pretty much left him as he was.

There is usually a lot of waiting and downtime.  But not on this day.  They were ready to go, so Tucker went straight over to the other side of the room and got started.  I also think it was so quick and easy because he was the only model, there was no one else he had to coordinate with.

Sometimes the photographer has certain poses they want the model to do and sometimes they want them to just stand there or move around on their own.  It just depends on the photographer about how vocal they are and how much direction they give.

There is always a snack table.  Usually it has lots of candy for the kids and juice boxes or other random things.

The photographer has their camera set up to display immediately on the computer so they can look over at anytime during the shots. 

 

This was a really easy shoot for Tucker.  Everything they had him do was not really a problem.  He even got to play with a tennis ball for a few pictures.  It is kind of cool how the tennis ball was not in any of the pictures.  Even the ones that were instantly showing up on the computer.  I'm not sure how they did that.

Check out the video of Tucker modeling.  Sorry there is no sound, the microphone on my phone was broken.

Overall, this was not a high paying job.  Probably close to $100 after we take out the money we spent on tolls and parking.  But it was a really fun experience.  I know Tucker is glad that he got to try it out and see what the modeling world here in Japan is all about.