Sporting Surprises

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!

Palm Sunday Week

 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!

Brunch!

Kade hid Erik's and Austin's baskets on the roof. 

We colored Easter eggs.

Easter Eve sunset.

Still a Lot of Madness!

 In the middle of last week, Victoria was rear-ended in my car on the way home from a walk. She came to a stop at the light of one of the hills in our area, and the lady behind her, who was probably on her phone due to the force she hit her with, since she obviously had no idea Victoria was coming to a stop, rear-ended her with a lot of force. She hit the person in front of her, but that part wasn't too bad. I'm just glad she had the sense to pull over and call 911. She thought she was okay at first, but has had many days of head and neck pain, as well as soreness where the seat belt was. The dispatcher asked her if she needed an ambulance, to which she responded in the affirmative. They took her vitals for 30 minutes, and the police got the information needed from the lady in the rear, so we can more easily take care of the damage, for which she is fully responsible. They declared her okay to drive home and the vehicle okay to drive, if she wanted. She did, and Jason was on his way home in the meantime. By the time I heard about it all, I was almost done with my shift and met them at the ER, where we decided she should go to get more thoroughly checked out. After the MRI and xrays, they determined that she just had soft tissue damage and would recover in a decent amount of time. They gave her muscle relaxers and told her she would feel worse the next day, which she did. She is still not 100%, but is much better. We'll see about the car. It's not too bad, but it's getting old. We were told to clean it up so it looks better (the car mats are still covered in salt from the winter roads), and then they would determine the cost of repair vs. the value of the car. Never a dull moment around here!

March Madness Continued

 A few days after I returned from LA, my mom flew in to be with me for my birthday. She had planned it before her husband fell and broke his femur, but luckily, he was starting to begin a good place of recovery and his daughter stayed with him to help him navigate with his walker and make sure he stayed safe. 

The day after my mom arrived was my 48th birthday. We went to work and then to lunch with Kade and Victoria at Mezcal, one of Kade's favorites, and in Dearborn, which is a fun place to visit. The tacos are definitely some of the better street tacos in the area. A few doors down from there is a cute little Japanese sweet shop where Kade bought us some mochi donuts that were delicious and so cute! That evening, Jason ordered out Mediterranean food from our favorite Levant Kitchen, so I was spoiled with many different cultural cuisines, just how I like it!

Japanese sweet shop!

Kade's masterful creation!

The next day after work, my mom and I went to see Austin in his orchestra at a festival at Stevenson HS. They performed extremely well; in fact, it was some of the best I had heard the concert orchestra perform in a while. 

When we returned, it was time to pack up the car and take Erik to Cincinnati for his weekend soccer tournament. Jason had other weekend obligations and wasn't able to go, so it worked out that my mom could attend with me. 

The tournament was the Spring Thaw and the first of our games outside for the season. Two of the games were actually in Kentucky. Our hotel was about 4 hours from our house, and it turned out to be pretty good weather and a fun little road trip.

Erik has been playing defensive mid recently. On his rec team, he was a goalie quite a bit and always did well with that, but when he moved over to the club team, he decided he wanted to phase out of being goalie. Well, for some reason, his club team's goalies kept not working out. Since no one on the team is a committed goalie, we were going to use one of the 3 from the team above at various games. I don't think we've seen them, so our coach started doing what the rec team was doing and rotating different players to play goalie at different games. A few games back, some of the parents took note of how good Erik actually is at goalie; his coach probably did too. At a game just before the tournament that I didn't attend, but Jason did, the coach took out the player who was the goalie and put Erik in for the majority of the game, and while they didn't win, they picked it up and made a comeback. 

Two of my birthday gifts came in very handy for this first game. A blanket that holds in heat and a heated vest!

It's hard to get good goalie pics.

Break between games!

Near the 2nd game venue.

Here's a good goalie shot before the game with some individual help from his coach.

Before the 2nd game.

Out in the field in the 3rd game.

Cincinnati!

We had to cross the Ohio River to get to the Kentucky games.

Needless to say, I wasn't surprised when Erik played goalie for most of the games in the tournament. Watching him play goalie is very nerve-racking as his mom, but also fun. He is pretty good at it. I also really love watching him play in the field, though. He plays with no fear. He just gets in and keeps going for the ball. Not a ball hog, either. And he communicates so well on the field!

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, we lost the first game by 2 points, and the second game we tied, which was pretty incredible because they were a very good team and they were the ones who actually ended up winning in our age group, and we lost the third game by 2 points. Our team is still on a losing streak, like last year, but they're getting better, and they were sure happy about that tie!

We went to a team dinner Saturday night, which was after the game that we tied. It was fun to see the kids together outside of a game and to get to know the parents better. The last game on Sunday morning was hard to lose, but now we only have one way to go- up!

Team dinner!

They got free ice cream to share at the end of the dinner!