Kelly, you did a really nice job on these
It's pretty incredible how good of a job the camera did on it's own though isn't it??
Personally I would have used matrix metering and then taken a shot. Chimped the histogram as you did to verify if any thing was blown or not. That should have done a good job with the background exposure. Also a polarizer would have really helped make the sky blue!! However I'm not to sure what it would have done to the subject?? I would have to guess though the fill flash would fix that?
Then I would have added some fill flash as you did to brighten up the subject, as he would have been a bit dark from using matrix mode. As far as how much flash to use I have no clue?? Trial and error. The only way to figure out the best method for me would be to do test shots and check them in the shade or on my Laptop.
For such harsh conditions they both look really good to me, and with some Post Processing would look great
Nice work!!
Best,
Jay