11/23/23

 This day was a big day at our house. Not only was it Thanksgiving,  but Erik's 12th birthday!

We celebrated the previous Saturday with a sports party at the park. Luckily,  the weather was perfect,  at least for those boys to run around playing football,  grounders, soccer, and basketball for 3 hours. I got a little cold, but the sun was shining, so I couldn't complain! 

We even fed the kids pizza,  Erik only ate the breadsticks. In the past, we just fed them snacks and cake, but as these kids are getting older, I feel like they need more sustenance, especially with an active party like that. And I'm happy to report that there were no injuries!

The Birthday Crew on a break.

Soccer match

Grounders

Bball

On his birthday,  Erik woke early to eat a little something before going back to bed so he could have energy for the turkey trot at 9:30. Austin took us on a 1-mile warm-up, which was probably a little fast for Erik and me as a warm-up.

We arrived at the Summit at 9 to stretch and do last-minute prep for the race, which included keeping warm inside for me! We saw some friends from church and school as well. 

Austin and his friends were determined to get PRs and I think Erik was too, but he only ran 1.5 miles in his meets,  so when he started to not feel well about halfway into the race, I wasn't surprised.  He and I stayed together and still finished with a PR for him in a 5k. Austin got 2nd for his age group and got $10 for Gazelle Sports, though he didn't get a PR.

Birthday boy!

Pre race pic

Austin flying by.

Erik and I.

Erik was tired!

Erik and Kade playing Hook and Ring, a game he got for his birthday from a friend.

Kade drew on a smile, because he wasn't smiling!

Jason got him to smile, though!

Nebraska shirt! Kade helped make the pics more interesting. 

Austin gave Erik this cereal (for real) and an apple as a joke.

The globe reaction!

Legit smile! He's obsessed with geography. In his spare time, he will watch videos about geography. Location of countries, flags, and capitals are what he knows best. He knows more about that than just about anyone I know!

A cool feature of the globe is that it shows constelations in the dark when it's plugged in!

After the race, we got McDonald's for most of the family for Erik's birthday meal. A must when I don't plan on making him a special meal of noodles for all to eat for dinner! Erik ate a lot and was not hungry 4.5 hours later when we sat down for our Thanksgiving feast at the Remington's (where we had Easter dinner), though luckily Kade and Austin ate a fair amount. I think Erik, he still doesn't prefer to have all that different food around him while he eats, but he didn't complain. He sat on the kid's side of the table and did the cross-word puzzles, word searches, and other games that were on the tablecloth. I had remembered, after I had offered to bring the turkey for part of our contribution, that Erik does like ham now, so I brought him his own special ham steak with raw carrots, but he didn't have a single bite of either one. When some of the other kids were done eating, some of whom didn't eat much either, they all ran outside to play football and jump on the trampoline.  

We also brought Jason's delicious sweet potato casserole, roasted corn on the cob and carrots, an apple pie, and Erik's birthday cake. The Remingtons provided stuffing, green bean casserole, a cranberry dip, pumpkin pie, oreo pie, and Martinellis. The Angel family, who came with their son, brought mashed potatoes and gravy, a veggie tray, rolls, a homemade carrot cake, and a pudding pie. The Remington's neighbor brought cupcakes. It seemed there were too many desserts there, almost as many as there were different food varieties for the dinner, but it was fine. I just had a full plate of dessert because there were too many I had to try! Thank goodness the dinner was early enough that I could manage to eat all the desserts I wanted!

Jason precut the turkey this year which made it faster to cook and easier to transport.

Thanksgiving Feast!

Football outside.

The dessert that was the most popular, at least amongst the kids, was Erik's birthday cake. I made his favorite poppyseed bundt cake with almond extract in it. It's no wonder he loves it! I was glad to not have to try that one since we have it fairly often at home. 

With lots of outdoor time for the kids, some indoor games, including the turkey dice game and Who Knew It? and football watching, I think it turned out to be a great birthday/Thanksgiving. 

I am grateful for our friends and my family. 

I am grateful for Erik, who works hard at what he does. At parent/teacher conferences his teachers all made remarks about what a good friend and helper he is. One teacher kept insisting Erik be placed in the TAG program, however, Erik had already declined a few time times. I think he likes being at the top of the regular classes (and his advanced math class) and feeling really good about himself rather than being in a more challenging school. He saw all the work Kade had to do and I don't think he's interested in that. He doesn't like to be overly busy. He's back to taking a class at Ninja's Edge until his indoor soccer session in mid-winter.

Here's to his 13th year!

Closing Out the Season

 Jason and I attended Austin's cross-country banquet on Friday to mark the official end of the season. Austin was able to earn a varsity letter in his first season in xc. During that last meet, which was optional and during which Jason, my mom, and I were in Indianapolis, he ran his 5k in 18:18! He's the 39th fastest freshman in Salem HS history, of which he is very proud. We had a very good group of freshmen this year. They were 2nd in the State, but since they don't have a separate freshman team, we'll have to wait until these freshies are on the varsity team to really make an impact. 

His earning his varsity letter already doesn't exactly mean he'll be on the varsity team next year. It just depends on everyone else's times and year in school. Being only a sophomore next year, he could still be on JV. We'll see what will happen.

For now, he's starting the dive season, to which he's somewhat hesitant to get any further into since he decided he might want to do off-season training for track and xc, rather than dive. He doesn't have any close friends on that team, so I think that makes a difference too. He'll have to decide by next week.

At any rate, I'm super proud of the effort he put into his first season of high school xc and can't wait to see his success in the seasons ahead.

Receiving his letter and certificate of participation.

A close-up of the whole team.

The fast and furious freshmen!

Their special pose.

Sam and Austin started running together when I coached the running group STRIDE in their 4th-grade year.

Owen and Austin have been friends since they were babies.

This looks wonky here because I just took a picture of one they had on the slide show. I'll have to order it to hang on my wall. It's a very good depiction of his push at the end of a race.

States and Nationals

 November 4th was the State Competition for the marching band. That's the one that's held at Ford Field every year and our school is in charge of hosting it. My friend is in charge of the volunteers and I have been her assistant. I was there for 17 hours that day. Luckily, it was the day before the time change, so it wasn't actually 11:30 pm when I returned home, if I went along with the time for the next day. But yes, I did wake up at 3:30 am and arrived at Ford Field at 4:50 am so we could host the 53 schools from the state. Somehow the day went by fast and I enjoyed my interactions with the people I came in contact with. I heard a lot of band music,  but I didn't see a lot of them due to the fact that I was very much needed this year since a couple of the registration volunteers didn't show and that was where I was stationed. I also had to train each new volunteer who came in. I did get food vouchers,  got to see our school perform, and saw Jason, Austin,  and Erik when they came in. I also didn't have to pay to get in and fulfilled another requirement for volunteer work with the band.

PCMB got 4th in the State, so 1 place better than last year.  I really enjoyed our show this year. It's called Neo Chroma.

We had decided to have the boys attend States rather than Nationals, which was our original plan, because there was supposed to be a Young Men's campout the weekend of Nationals that we thought they should definitely go to, plus Austin had the opportunity to run at the last, optional, xc meet. Well, it turned out they postponed the campout and we were informed after the boys had already gone to States for $30/ ticket and they were't that interested in it. We really didn't want to pay for them for the prelims on Friday and then Semis on Saturday for Nationals, plus Finals if we made that, especially if they weren't going to enjoy it. So, Erik went to a friend's house Friday night and Austin to another friend's house whose 2 boys would also be attending the meet on Saturday. They both highly enjoyed their Friday night fun with friends and a whole day with them on Saturday. Austin even got another PR in xc! (I'll post about that soon).

So, Jason, my mom, and I got to go on an adult road trip 4 hours away to Indianpolis.

We stayed where I stayed last year and did all the walking that I did last year, except this year it was a while lot warmer and even sunny! 

We watched the prelims Friday and the awards that night. PCMB made it to semis the next morning. We watched them, and a whole bunch of other schools. We had lunch with an old family friend. Her mom and my mom were best friends after college and we grew up thinking her kids were our cousins. The daughter my age, Kim, lives in Indianapolis. It was fun to reconnect before going back for more of the competition. 

Saturday evening, we discovered in the awards that we didn't make it to finals, but were in the top 25. We're so proud of all they did and couldn't decided ourselves who should continue on to finals. There are so many talented marching bands! We were happy we could return home that night without feeling like we were going to miss their finals performance, which was going to start at 8pm, with 11:30 pm awards, and cost another $45/ticket. We had walked 9 miles total that day and were tired and ready to be back with Austin and Erik. There's not a lot of interaction with the marching band/color guard kiddos during competitions, we only saw Kade for 5 minutes in person, so we left knowing he'd have fun watching the finals with friends and return home the next day on the bus. 

Way to go PCMB and Kade!

At the mall before dinner. The only time we could visit with the kids. 

And now I can finally post a video of the performance!! 

Halloween 2023

 Halloween isn't the same as your kids grow up. Victoria's not being home was different, especially at the Ward party where some of her younger friends were. Kade carved pumpkins with Sister Nelson, whom we call SisNel, a week earlier. She is his best friend in our ward and yes, is a 50-year-old woman with the heart of a teenager. Since that was not at our home, Austin and Erik didn't get around to carving their pumpkins till way later- on Halloween. And Austin decided he didn't want to carve one anymore because he had to get ready for the party he was going to. It's funny because he's the one who I bought a special pumpkin carving kit for about 5 years ago. I didn't want him to feel badly about not carving a pumpkin, so I asked him if it was okay that we didn't make a better opportunity for that and he reminded me that this was the year he didn't have a birthday party either, so I guess it's just been a "grown-up" year for him.

Kade didn't get to go to the marching band trunk-or-treat because the orchestra concert was that night. I was a little peeved about the fact that the music teachers couldn't coordinate that better. There's a fair amount of kids who are in marching band/color guard and orchestra/choir, so they all either had to rush, or miss the trunk-or-treat. Last year was almost the same problem, but they changed the trunk-or-treat last minute to a different night. I don't know what happened this year. However, Kade invited some friends over on Halloween night to go trick-or-treating in our neighborhood, including his best friend CJ who has moved an hour away. That was also different this year, Kade trick-or-treated in our neighborhood. He hasn't done that in probably 7 years. He used to always go to Olivia's neighborhood for that.

Austin went to a party and then trick-or-treated afterward with the teens there. Erik went to a nearby neighborhood where some of his friends live, and then came back 1 1/2 hours later to go another hour in ours. Austin and Erik got so much candy and we didn't give away hardly any, due to the fact that it was about 40 degrees colder than just a few days earlier, so we have a lot left over. That means- we have too much candy here! Austin weighed his bag and it came to about 11 pounds. Yikes!

Jason and I gave out candy to the about 10 people who came here and we enjoyed standing on Bernie's driveway next door near the fire pit and chatting with him. His wife, Cathy, was on grandma duty, so we missed her as well this year.

We were going to go as a cowboy and cow to the ward party, but when Nebraska did so well on their game that day, we bumped it up to the Nebraska Super Star level!

Musical chairs. We have so many teens in our ward compared to Primary kids that they participated and some of those poor little guys were sad when they lost their chairs.

Erik didn't dress up till the end of the party because he was very committed to his role in the Spook Alley.

Austin's buddies.

If you noticed at the party, Austin was an MIB (Men in Black), however for trick-or-treating he went as MIB on Zoom day.

Erik's pumpkin is on the left, Kade's on the right.

Erik and his buddies. 

Kade and his buddies.

Victoria was a vampire!

Now the decorations are all down and we're ready for Thanksgiving!