Months ago, probably just after Christmas, we got tickets to go see Hamilton in Detroit. I always told the kids who didn't get to go with Kade and me years ago in Chicago that if it came to Detroit, we'd go. They all love the music now. It was just Kade before. The timing for it to come here wasn't great, but we were happy we could go on Friday. Everyone got to go, minus Austin. He opted not to go. We knew when we bought the tix that he would have KLAAs the next day, and he wanted to be well-rested the night before. (He didn't actually go to bed before we returned home, so he still went to bed way too late. Got his same time on the 1600, 4:33. Still amazing after only a couple weeks back from injury.) The rest of us really enjoyed the musical. Victoria thoroughly enjoyed the dancing, amongst other aspects, Erik and Jason really enjoyed experiencing the music with the acting on stage, which brings it all together better. Kade and I enjoyed it just as much as last time, or maybe more.
Walking to the Fisher Theater.
Kade, enjoying the art.
Victoria, enjoying the photo ops.
The Fisher is gorgeous!
On Saturday, besides Austin's track meet, which I couldn't attend, I participated in my third recital in the Ladies Tap dance. This year was special to have Victoria here to watch me perform and give her support. She so wanted to be on stage, but she had fun seeing familiar faces from her dance days at Dancin Feet. She also got to do service backstage with the little dancers. Her friend Susie taught a couple of classes to some young girls and Victoria, and I helped with managing them backstage as well. I really enjoy this new hobby I have and the friends I have made through my class. (Unfortunately, I haven't gotten the recording of the dance yet, but I'll include it when I receive it, if you so desire to watch it.)
Reverse rolls! (My costume wasn't on here, though.)
Meliss and I!
Vicky and Susie
This year's class! (We were combined with the advanced class, so they had some parts that made us look even better!)
Being in the Relief Society Presidency means Mother's Day isn't as restful, but it's fine. The tradition we have in our ward is to prepare a little spread for all the ladies in the ward, including the YW. I cut up a bunch of fruit after the recital and arrived at church early to help set up, and then we had to clean up. We had lots of help from our families, though, and it was a lovely time of chatting, eating, and a nice short message from our President and my friend, Melissa. We wanted everyone to feel loved and valued, no matter what phase of motherhood they are in, what relationship they have with their mothers, if their mothers are still on earth, or if they will never have children.
My own family made me blueberry, cinnamon, and cloves waffles. They were delicious! They made me a Greek chicken salad with homemade fries for dinner. Victoria made apple crisp for dessert. Muy rico!
Yes, Erik is as tall as me now!
My gifts! The two burgundy things in the front are a new sports bra and a tank.
And for a special Mother's Day surprise, the mama duck that has been nesting in our ground cover is now waddling around with her 10 babies!!
Austin's injury has been healing after his work with the PT and not running for about 3 weeks, which has taken us to the middle of the track season. Since it's his junior year, he's been getting anxious to get back into it, but waiting patiently until the "ok" from his PT.
For the dual meet last Tuesday, his PT said he could run the 800, two laps around the track, and go all out, just to see how his healed hip would do. So Austin trained for one day before the meet.
Well, Austin took his advice and went all out, getting a 7-second PR of 2:02! For the 800, that much of a PR after an injury is incredible! It was helpful for all that 3 of his friends were right there with them. The two Salem boys are the best 800 runners on our team, and I know they wanted to stay with Austin, who had just come out of an injury, and Austin was on his runner's high. The other runner is a mutual friend from Canton. He took #2 in the state in XC in 2024 and has become close with our runners because he's the only one on his team who is serious. Watching them finish within seconds of each other was so exciting!
Coach gave Austin the best compliment of all time after this race. He said, "That was one of the best mental performances I have seen in my entire career." I thought a compliment from his teammate was pretty funny as well. Referring to Austin's incredible PR after an injury and no practice, Sam said, "You @*# hole! Why did you have to run so fast?!" In his loving, friend kind of way.
So today, at the invitational, Austin was placed in the 4x800 (the relay for the 800, where each of 4 runners runs an 800). That's the only race he ran, as he still probably needs more training before he competes in his usual 1600 and 3200. The problem is, there's not much of the season left, and he doesn't really want to run the 800 much more because it will take away from the other two races.
There was a soccer tournament for Erik this weekend in Bowling Green, Ohio. Jason took him this time. It's only just over an hour away, so they didn't have to get a hotel. Still, it didn't make it any easier when Jason called me at the end of the first game to ask me if our dentist's office was open on a Saturday. Immediately, I became very fearful of what he would say next. He started to tell me about how Erik's front teeth were pushed back, but I had to interrupt him because I didn't want to hear it. After I mentally prepared myself, I let him tell me how Erik's teeth were knocked back by another player's head when they were both going to head the ball at the same time. The other player had his head wrapped from Erik's teeth. (I'll picture it below, but don't feel obligated to look very long at the first photo; it's a little cringy.) I called the dentist and got no answer, even from their Saturday emergency line. In the meantime, Jason was directed to the dentist of two of Erik's teammates who happened to be there, watching his child play in a game. The dentist was able to professionally pull Erik's teeth back into place. He said that Erik's braces saved his teeth from being knocked out. It's ironic because Erik was supposed to get his braces off by now, and he was a little mad that they weren't taken off at his last visit. Well, he's singing a different tune now.
After his teeth were put back into place, they got a mouthguard, ibuprofen, and some treats from the grocery store, and took a break before the next game. Yes, Erik stayed for the next game. Victoria was surprised that he was going to keep playing, but I wasn't. And apparently, during the second game, which they won, Erik played just as aggressively as he always does. Even while playing goalie during the first half, he was out charging towards the ball and other players as they charged towards him, trying to score.
Before
After
The team went to a team dinner together afterwards, as is tradition on tournament weekends, and it took 3.5 hours since there were 40 at their table! Needless to say, Jason and Erik got home late and went right to bed. After a church meeting this morning, they were off again for the 3rd game of the weekend which they ended up losing. Erik came home more tired than I have seen him. Since he plays goalie for half the game and has the ability to fire up the team when he's playing in the field for the second half, he usually ends up playing the entire game.
We'll be calling the dentist tomorrow morning, first thing.
Kade is the top sales associate at Zumiez! If he were available more (ie, not taking classes), he would probably be made a manager.
Erik was recruited to be the narrator at Discovery's Drama Club spring play, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The only reason he did it was that he wouldn't be on stage the entire play, and he would earn hours for his NJHS service. Jason and I got a kick out of hearing his voice over the mic during every scene. He had some funny/amusing lines.
He had to make an appearance at the end when they announced the cast. He was just before Roderick, Rowley, and Greg.
Erik's team played a game yesterday with some dirty players. Just watch these 2 videos and know that I didn't record these to get the fouls, but Erik's playing. It just so happens that he was fouled in both videos. Those weren't even the bad fouls that we saw. There were some major two-hand shoves throughout the game. None of them were called (maybe one was).
I love my yard in the spring. It's so nice and simple. It gets out of control by August! Plus, the spring flowers are the best!
The ground cover doesn't have 5 other things growing through it yet.
The bush hasn't gotten its new leaves yet, but the tulips and daffodils are beautiful!
In middle school here, the opportunity is given to the 7th and 8th graders to be on the swim team. Last year, Erik really did not want to participate in it. I tried to convince him over and over. His best twin friends, who attend another school, were going to do it, but he still didn't want to. I didn't care that much whether or not he participated in it, but I wanted him to try it out. Austin did and turned out to be a fantastic swimmer. He still chose running over swimming in HS, but he's glad he got the opportunity to experience it and become a better swimmer because of it.
This year, Erik, out of the blue, surprised me by telling me he was going to sign up for the swim team. I asked why. He said his friend Jacob wanted him to. It's amazing how a friend could convince him that easily! He and Jacob have known each other since kindergarten. They weren't as close for a few years, but it's nice to see them hanging out more again. And to see that they're close enough that Erik would even join the swim team for him!
It's trickier for Erik than for Austin since Erik is on the club soccer team, which we pay good money for, and is his passion. He actually only goes to half the swim practices, so he doesn't miss soccer practice. He does go to all the meets, though, and missed one soccer practice for the meet. It's a very short season, and there are only 5 swim meets total. I admit that I was a little worried that he would become discouraged with only having half the practices under his belt, and this being the first year he's been on a swim team. I learned from when Austin was on the team that the swim team has kids who have been on club swim teams for years, kids who have had some lessons and then just joined in 7th or 8th grade, and kids who have had hardly any swimming experience ever, and you wonder if they're going to make it across the pool. With Erik starting in 8th grade, he didn't have 7th grade to give him that extra year of experience. I thought he would be last in every race, which is not a problem, but I wondered how he would like it, or if he would just quit, because let's face it, swimming is a hard sport!
It seems that our team is really small this year. Erik assures me it's not, but it seems smaller than when Austin was on it. Either way, I have been surprised that in the 3 meets he's participated in so far, he's been in the first, fastest heats. He was a great competitor in the 50 and 100 free, finishing in the middle of the group. His form looks pretty good (thanks to his swim coach of a long time ago, Emily, and of course, some lessons from Grandpa Dave, the GOAT swim coach). He actually came in first when he swam backstroke in a race. We've learned he's not very fast at breaststroke, and the 200 free is way too long for his lungs, which are not yet fully developed for that capacity in swimming. I don't think he'll ever do butterfly, as that takes a lot of skill and practice. But, I have to say that I'm impressed with his drive and that he was willing to try this new sport, even with all the soccer practice he's involved with. I'm actually impressed with all the kids who try the swim team. Swimming is hard. We can't breathe water, so it takes great discipline to train and execute the breathing techniques on top of the physical exertion.
First to finish in backstroke!
Erik and Spencer cheering on Nick, mid flip turn!
While this has been exciting, the news on Austin has not been so good. About 10 days ago he injured himself running down a hill in Ann Arbor for one of their training runs at the end of spring break. He finally got to see a PT a couple of days ago. His right hip is injured, and the pain spreads to his lower back on that side. The PT gave him some exercises to strengthen his glutes because they believe that will help alleviate the pain, and then they want to watch him run on the treadmill to see how his gait may have been a long time in leading up to this now very severe muscle injury. They believe it will be at least 2 weeks until he is pain-free. I'm not sure when he will be ready for a meet after that. The first meet of the season was last week. It's discouraging, but we've been discussing the other Juniors we know who were out of their sports during such an important time, due to serious injuries. It's also going to be expensive with all the visits to the PT. I remember from when Kade went for his knee... Here's hoping for a little miracle in his healing process!
With Easter being on General Conference weekend, we had our church Easter celebrations on Palm Sunday, including having friends over for our "Easter" feast.
After Palm Sunday Sacrament meeting
We missed the whole group in Sunday best, but we're all smiles here!
Making cookies for our guests.
Dinner guests!
Fun tradition!
Spring Break was this week, which was convenient for the holiday.
The timing of Victoria's accident was also "convenient". I was home to drive her a few places since she couldn't drive the rental car and was hesitant to drive anyway. It also turned out that she had really bad stomach pain up to a week after the accident, which brought us to the lab for blood work and then to get a CT scan of her abdomen. We haven't heard the results of the CT scan yet, but the bloodwork yielded that she probably has hypothyroidism. She has a follow-up appointment for that in a couple of days. In my opinion, the CT scan won't have any results that would worry us because I think it was the muscle relaxers that ended up giving her all the abdominal pain. She was advised to stop that, and at the same time, they sent her to get the scan. We followed through with getting the scan because auto insurance is covering all the medical bills, and we may as well cover all our bases in case there was something wrong.
Other than the long 5-hour trip for the scan (she had to drink Contrast two hours before the scan at the hospital, which was further than usual, since it was the only one available), going to see Project Hail Mary (which I really wanted to see since I read the book and loved it), and going to see a new-to-me car with Jason on Friday (an hour away) and going to the temple with him, nothing else happened over the break. Austin and Erik did various things with friends, and Kade had a regular week since he already had Spring break.
I tell you, though, this dumb rear-end, which wasn't that big a deal, but ended up being a big pain (literally in Victoria's neck and figuratively in mine and Jason's), has just been annoying to deal with. If you connected the dots, you'll realize that, yes, I got a "new" car because mine ended up being totaled in that accident. It was old enough that the cost of fixing it was about the same as its value. So Jason found an Explorer 1 year newer than mine with some extra bells and whistles that mine didn't have, which was only a bit more than we're getting for mine. We just returned from picking it up. So, even though the whole ordeal was kind of a pain, I now have a new car that has better gas mileage, Sync for my phone with navigation, cooled seats ( I don't care about that, but Erik will love it), a heated steering wheel (I do care about that!), and some other nice driving features that Cinnamon didn't have. We decided to name my new car Gertie, short for Gertrude.
So pretty!
To end off on a high note, I did really enjoy having nothing going on Saturday and Sunday, so I could enjoy General Conference and Easter with my family. The sister missionaries came over on Sunday, too. We had some good food, played fun games, and celebrated Christ's Atonement and Resurrection the best way. Happy Easter!
