Noah News

As I begin to type this, he is standing here crying about how he never gets to play the Wii. It's 7:45 a.m. Good day so far.

This past Friday night, Noah had his first Reconciliaiton at church. He was very brave and not nervous at all. We went out for an early dinner then celebrated after the service by getting ice cream with some friends. When we pulled into the parking lot Noah said, "I hope they don't nail me to the cross." Not so much buddy. That's already been taken care of for you.

Saturday, Noah had his first state championship qualifier for chess. He needed to score 2.5 points in 5 rounds of play. He took a bye one round for a basketball game and came away with only 2 points. Pretty good stuff. We are skipping this weekend's tournament so he has one more chance in two weeks to qualify. Either way, he is continuing to develop some serious chess skills. Here is a section of what his coach had to say about this past weekends performance. (I cut out the info from the rest of the team and yes, the man, Coach Woody, does write about himself in the third person. He is a character.)

Noah Selter, our most experienced returning player, also earned 2.0 points - and had the biggest shark to battle with of any Patriot K-3 player on Saturday - Henry Palmer of St. Francis, rated 445. Noah, like Michael, fell a half point short of qualifying for State. And like Michael, Noah always had significant action in his scoring. In this case, Noah's draw with #66 Srisai Julakanti was the best any of Coach Woody's students fared against Hopi Elementary, who won 3rd place as a team on Saturday - and were undefeated against Coach Woody's teams. "My teams ate the #1 team's lunch!" chuckles Coach Woody, but Noah Selter did the best against the teams that did me the most damage." (The #1 team on Saturday was Anasazi, Scottsdale USD, with a whopping 15 Team points, and Coach Woody's later mentioned McDowell Mountain Bobcats whacked them three times as well). Noah Selter's ASCF rating is now 236, and he was unsatisfied with 99th place. He'll be back, as there is very little doubt that Noah will make it with a second attempt.

Noah has also been excelling at school. He continues to earn top grades in math and science with above average scores everywhere else. He was recommended for gifted testing by one of his teachers a few weeks back. He took a gifted services test and according to AZ state standards he needed to score in the 97th percentile or above nationally, among all 2nd graders, in one of three categories in order to qualify. Well, he did it. Pretty impressive for a kid who would only be in first grade if we still lived in Missouri.

Needless to say, we are so proud of him and all that he is doing. My favorite part was the hour before the crying started this morning where he sat and played trains with Caleb so peacefully.