Tuesday, December 25th, 2018

Merry X-mas 2018!

Yesterday Grandma Becky came down to Ames so that she could spend Christmas with us.  Elizabeth made a bunch of cookies, so the kids could leave some for Santa.

This morning Nolan and Maxwell woke up around 6:30, eager to open presents.  Some of the gifts they opened included a small foosball game, Guess Who, Pop the Pig, coloring books, Roblox figurines, some slime, and some candy.  We did not have a white Christmas here in Ames, in fact, the temperature got up to around 43 degrees in the middle of the day.  It was nice enough to take the boys to Daley park wearing only light jackets.  Nolan did have quite the spill while running back home.  He was running downhill at the park near the edge of the sidewalk when he slipped, and his face hit the sidewalk.  He was scraped up and sad, but when we got home we found that Santa had came back and left an extra present that he had forgotten!  That was the Roblox figurines, and that made Nolan's pain dissapear :)

Elizabeth gave me a bottle of "Gentleman Jack", which is basically a twice filtered Jack Daniels.  I made a scavenger hunt for Elizabeth, which ended with a Starbucks gift card.  I also gave her "12 days of Hogwarts" socks, which she had requested.

Tonight we all watched the movie "The King's Speech", which was pretty good.  After putting the kiddos to bed, we played the card game "Golf".  Elizabeth ended up matching four 4's, and we declared her the winner after that.

Merry Christmas from the Saltons!

Friday, December 21st, 2018

Tonight I attended the Iowa State men's decisive 101-53 victory over the Panthers from Eastern Illinois.  Before today, I was not very familiar with Eastern Illinois, but they are a small college located in Charleston, Illinois.  Their enrollment is about 7,500 students, and the Panthers participate in the Ohio Valley conference.

Anyhow, the main highlight of this game was the fact that Lindell Wigginton and Solomon Young both returned to the lineup after missing much of the year with injuries.  The player of the game for the Cyclones would have to be Marial Shayok, who led the team with 23 points. Shayok was joined in double figures scoring by Michael Jacobson (15) and Wigginton (15).  It was impressive to note that a total of 13 players scored in the game for the Cyclones.  It's not very often that ISU scores over 100 points with only 3 players scoring in double figures.  I guess that when this team is healthy they have a lot of quality depth.

Tip-off between the Cyclones and the Panthers.

Monday, December 3rd, 2018

Iowa State 81, North Dakota State 59.

Tonight I took Maxwell with me to watch the Cyclones defeat the Bison of NDSU.  He was a good boy for the game, even though it was late for him (a 7:00 tip-off).  Maxwell did a good job cheering and clapping for the Cyclones, and it seemed like he had a lot of fun.  I gave him the choice to have either a clone cone, soda, or popcorn... and surprisingly he wanted popcorn instead of something sweet.  I believe that today was the 9th basketball game that Maxwell has attended.

As for the game, I would say that Michael Jacobson was the player of the game for Iowa State.  He tallied a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds.  He was joined in double figures scoring for the Cyclones by Marial Shayok (20), Talen Horton-Tucker (12), and Nick Weiler-Babb (11).  It is worth noting that both Cameron Lard and Zoran Talley rejoined the team today after being suspended for the month of November.  Both players came off the bench and will need to earn their playing time back.

Tonight was the second time that I have seen ISU play the Bison of NDSU.  The Cyclones also won back in 2015, 84-64.

Maxwell posing with the scoreboard :)

He was happy to have some popcorn to start off the game!

I also wanted to talk a little Cyclone football tonight.  This past weekend I was lucky enough to score box seats for the last football game of the year, where Iowa State defeated Drake, 27-24.  My brother in law Brian Gleason has a friend, Keith, who was generous enough to invite us along to his box seats (as well as Brian's wife Sarah).  Even though the game was quite ugly and the weather was terrible, I enjoyed myself about as much as I ever have at an ISU football game.  Our seats were almost on the 50 yard line, there was a full bar we could order from, and there was a buffet of good food.  There were breaded pork tenderloins, hamburgers, hot dogs, lots of fried appetizers, soup, scalloped potatoes, and assorted desserts.

My view from the Jack Trice Club.

Then on Sunday the Cyclones were selected to participate in the Alamo Bowl vs. Washington State!  This will probably be the highest profile bowl game that the Cyclones have ever been in.

To recap the season, I attended 7 home games (8 if you count the South Dakota State game that ended up being cancelled).
I saw wins against:

• Akron, 26-13
• West Virginia, 30-14.
• Texas Tech, 40-31.
• Baylor, 28-14.
• Kansas State, 42-38.
• Drake, 27-24.

Then I also saw the loss to Oklahoma, 27-37.