Dancing Queen Birthday!

 Victoria has been very excited about her 17th birthday. One of the reasons being so that she could play Dancing Queen by Abba. She is our dancing queen. Always dancing, always moving. She hasn't changed much in that regard in her life, nor has she changed in her birthday expectations. 

She really loves celebrating her birthday and wants to make the very most of it. We did just that!

On Friday, there was no school, so she opted to have her party that day from 3-6. She has a new main group of friends she hangs out with now. They are her workout friends at the high school. Since she'll be doing track in the spring (somehow we'll fit that into the busy dance schedule then), she gets to work out with the off-season athletes at the gym after school. She goes on the days she doesn't have dance and she loves it! The workout is great, plus the camaraderie of a team. Her freshman year, we didn't know how busy she'd be with her classes in high school and with dance. Plus, that was when she joined the competition team for dance as well, so we didn't want her to do any other activities until we knew how busy she'd be. Then covid happened... After that, dance wasn't quite the same and last year's school year was not the greatest. So, having the chance to be on a team at the school, and she just found out that she made the competition team at dance again, brings her so much joy!

These new friends, and some older friends that have meshed with the new friends, came for the party and then they all went to the football game (Salem's Homecoming) afterward. The party was just hanging out, playing games like Twister, 3 Truths and a Lie, and I've Never, chatting, and eating tacos. They also played Donuts on a String. I served brownies for dessert so I could pre-cut them and have her blow out a candle on the one brownie. You know, covid safe!

Getting ready for the party in our new sunroom (it's almost done, just need to put the flooring in!)

Playing 3 Truths and a Lie on the trampoline.

The party people!

Dinner!

Donut on a string!

Brownies on our new deck!

Saturday was pretty much just getting ready for the Homecoming Dance, which I posted about last week. She had a fantastic time, but the cold she had been fighting off all week hit her hard that night and she didn't feel well when she returned or on Sunday. Grandma Pat was here, so that was a bonus "friend" for her to have around to talk to and to be part of the celebrations. Victoria loves all people, young and old. She always loves when people come to visit or when we visit others and she gets to be a part of their lives. 

Kai and Victoria, almost ready to go!

Victoria and Max now

Max and Victoria exactly 11 years ago!

We celebrated BYU with Grandma, even though we lost that game...

On Sunday, we had her requested Puerto Rican dinner that Jason prepared. Rice and gandules, pork, tostones, and veggies. She had to stay home from church because of the amount of coughing she was doing, so the day was restful and we even got to watch a religious family movie I Can Only Imagine (which was super good!).

She felt good enough to go to seminary and school on Monday, her birthday. So she ate her locs and bagels for breakfast and I sent her off with a yummy lunch and lots of cough drops. Since most of the school has the cold that she has, and we know it's not covid, I felt fine about her going. 

Mondays are busy with cross country for Austin, which I volunteer for on Mondays, and soccer for both boys. Instead of having everyone miss things for a family dinner, Victoria and I had planned for her to meet a few of her old besties in Downtown Plymouth for dinner at a delicious little diner called Simply Fresh. It's Mediterranean food! She was happy to hang out with her friends there, one of her favorite places to be! When we were done with soccer, she was back from her dinner so we could all have cake together. Lemon poppyseed bundt cake!

She loved her gifts and her time with friends and family. There's never a dull moment with Victoria around! I can't believe she's 17! 

Birthday gifts after school!

She blew out all 17 in one breath- she is full of hot air!!

HOCO!

 Homecoming, or HOCO, has been long-awaited in our house. Victoria got to go her freshman year, but that was it. You know, COVID.... A lot has changed since then. 

First, Kai is in the color guard, so she got to perform at the HOCO game. It's the same performance as before, so I won't post it, but she looked great, as usual. It was fun to support Salem HS at the game, even though we lost, but that wasn't a surprise.

I snapped this still photo, but you can hardly see her. She's holding the flag in the middle.

The next day was the HOCO dance. With our high school's unique 3-schools-on-one-campus situation, there are 3 HCOC games and dances, one each weekend. While the marching band/color guard perform at each game, they still have a competition to go to each Saturday.  That prevents them from being able to go to the Canton HCOC dance if that were someone's assigned school, or the Plymouth HOCO dance, if that were the assigned school.  What they do, is allow all the marching band to go to the Salem HOCO dance, which happens to be our assigned school.

 The color guard "Mom" planned a dinner at her house before the dance, so Kai got to take pictures with lots of friends there and eat dinner with them before being shuttled to the dance in a big van. So fun! She ended up at a restaurant with other friends after the dance, so that's where I picked her up when the night was over. She commented to me on how she has so many friends now in high school. From the Arts Academy, color guard/marching band, orchestra, and her oldies from middle school. She really feels the love from all her groups!

Kai's second from the end on the left.

Isa and Kai

The big color guard group and some dates. Kai is on the stairs behind the railing. You can just see her head!

Victoria surprised me last week by asking her old, but good friend Max to the dance at the football game. She had written on a poster, "I would be "bursting" with joy if you would to HOCO with me!" And she gave him some Startbursts. She showed it to him in front of her group of friends. I was so excited she had asked a date to the dance! Before he came to pick her up last night, she went with her girlfriends to take pictures in Downtown Plymouth, because that's the place to do that and she loves taking pics with her girlfriends! I know she and Max hung out with them at the dance, along with their various other friends. Taking the pics of her and Max beforehand was super fun! His mom, Melissa, is my good friend, and we loved snapping pics of them at the neighborhood park they used to play at when they were little.

Victoria is third from the right. 

Have you noticed the shoes? HOCO was outside on the football field and they didn't want the heels to ruin the turf, so no heels were allowed. Also, at the previous HOCOs the last two weeks, the kid's feet got very muddy. I don't know how they lucked out last night and weren't covered in mud because it's still very wet outside!

At Leann Park!

I think I had as much fun anticipating that night as my girls did, maybe more! It was a busy, but memorable weekend!

Getting ready!

I was so excited to take this pic of them, ready for homecoming!

Ragnar!

 About Ragnar: Ragnar is a running relay race consisting of 12 members on a team. There were about 170 teams in this race from Muskegon to Traverse City. Basically up the coast of Lake Michigan for 200 miles. Each member ends up running abdout 17-18 miles total. There are two vans per team so you can "be off the clock" for a few hours while the other van has a person running. So you are either running, prepping to run, or recovering from a run, along while cheering your team member on when your van is "on". Each team has a name. We were Don't Hurry, Be Happy, with a turtle as our "mascot". Every team makes up little magnets to slap on other team's vans. That's where our turtle was pictured. There's a lot of running, driving, drinking water, eating, cheering, and conversing. Not much sleeping, though! 

Our magnet

Our van. The "hare tally" is how many people we each "killed" or passed while running. That's a thing in Ragnar. This tally pictured here was in the middle of the run, so not our final count. We lost track of that when the rain washed it off!

A better picture of our turtle.

Someone else's van. We saw this "dummy" at every exchange point!

Meet the team:

Our team leader and runner 1, Laura, is in the Canton ward. She teaches Hight Fit in the parking lot of the soccer fields. She is an amazingly fit person, so kind and friendly, and worked so hard to put together our team of 12 and give us the best experience in this race. 

Bobbie Lee, runner 2, is a fantastic runner and member of a local non-denominational church. She is very active in her church and is a woman of such strong faith who gives amazing prayers! 

I was runner 3. I was one of the oldest ladies on the team, but held some of the fastest average speeds on my runs. I averaged a 7:48 minute pace on my short 4.1 run! Though I thought I would be too tired for this event and was nervous about feeling sick from eating at weird times, I felt pretty good and planned my food well! That's one thing about being older, you have more experience with that kind of thing. 

When our run was over, we'd pass along the snap bracelet to the next runner.

Jenni Mae was runner 4. She was a college roommate of Laura's and is living in Missouri. She is a very supportive friend and great conversaltionalist! She asked such thought provoking questions on some of the longer stretches of our drive that we really got to know each other well. Also, great stamina in her runs!

Rachel, runner 5, is in the Canton ward. She came with an injured sciatic nerve. She couldn't even walk in the grocery store a week or so before Ragnar, so she wasn't sure how she'd do. She swapped one of her longer runs out with runner 6, but other than that, she was able to do some slow running, which surprised us all! In fact, I think the only time she walked was up a huge hill on her last leg. She is a fighter! She is also super athletic and played softball at BYU and happened to live in Taylor Hall only one floor below me the exact year I was there! 

She was looking like she was going to go super slow, but she really went much faster than we expected!

Teresa was runner 6, except for the first leg when she ran for Rachel. She's also a roommate of Laura's in college, currently from Kansas. She is so fun and friendly, praising everyone for their hard work in the race. She also was recovering from an injury, a long-standing IT band injury from a past marathon, but she did so well!

Laura gave us all these cute compression socks, among other little gifts.

Van 1 was all done by this time!

This was during one of my runs.

We were all in Van 1. This is Van 2. 

Before the race, while we were finishing our first legs.

Smiles in the middle of the night!

I didn't get to know them quite as well, since we didn't ride together, but two of them are from my ward, the Plymouth ward. These ladies got the brunt of the race. While Van 1 did have to leave at 5:30 am the first morning and they got to sleep in (5:30 is my normal time anyhow, so no surprise there), they had their first legs in the middle of the day, when it was the hottest, and their first legs weren't very long, so they weren't that tired when they went to rest at the hotel for our evening legs. They started their 2nd legs around 8:30 pm, while we got to go rest at the hotel until 2:30 am. The worst part was that was when it was storming. We could hear the wind and the rain from our hotel, so we couldn't even sleep. When we finally started to fall asleep, the power went out and the microwave started making this crazy alarm sound! When we met them at 3 am to start our 3rd and final legs, they were beat up! And they didn't get to go to a hotel after that. We each only got one stay at the hotel. After that, we had to rest at major exchange points in the vans so we could be where we needed to be for the next exchange. 

Things I Learned: Michigan does have some pretty steep hills up near Traverse City. That was the end of the course, so we all had some hills on our last legs, a lot of them were run in the dark, maybe that was a good thing so we didn't have to see them! I also learned that I can survive a few hours of lousy sleep, I didn't think I could! And, I would definitely do it again! It was such a great time with so many amazing women. Not just physically, but spiritually, socially, and mentally too. I felt so inspired by all of them! 

The last runner came into the finish line area, then we all ran in with her to receive our medals. It turns out that our team came in 7th place out of 25 teams of all women. So we did pretty well, despite injuries and our "don't hurry" name. Go team!

After we all crossed the finish line together!

Our medals fit together for a puzzle. It says "We are Ragnarians. Together we can!" 

It was a gorgeous place to run!

Lots of different scenery.

Waiting for food!

And props to our husbands who manned the kids and homes for 2 1/2 days while the moms were living it up! There were 50 kids amongst all 12 of us!