Back with a Bang!

After Victoria saw the cardiologist, almost a month ago now, she was able to participate in a couple of track meets as a sprinter again. She did very well, though she still struggled with trying to catch her breath (not in the usual way). When she went for her stress test two weeks after her original appointment, she was very tired and somewhat out of breath even before she started, but the results were still normal. Again, the doctor stressed that it would take time and he prescribed her Singulair, to see if that would help. 

Getting ready for the 100 at a JV meet. She came in first by a long shot in this heat! She placed 2nd overall for this event!

Not bad earnings for the health problems she had this year!

Ready or not, she had a dance competition on June 4. All three recitals were on one day, not usually the case, but Senior Prom was Friday night and I'm so happy they can't do Sunday recitals at our new venue. She was scheduled to dance 10 dances per recital, so 30 dances in one day! And some were pretty challenging. She had a support group ready to help her if she needed it, with water and her inhaler (which does help her a little). Her instructors made sure she was mostly on the side of her dances so she could pop off the stage if she needed to. Well, she didn't have any significant problems, except for a little shortness of breath. I think the endorphins of being on stage, without a mask, and doing what she loves best helped her make it through. She danced beautifully!

Bonus: Jason was finally able to dance in the Dad's dance!! He didn't think he did very well, but I thought it was great! He didn't do as well with the choreography in the Broadway-style dance at the beginning, but when they got to do some freestyle moves with pop music at the end, he did very well. He's got good moves and excellent stage presence/showmanship. He just needs to get used to training. Jason-we're signing you up for dance;)

Here are a few of my favorite dances that she performed. If you want to see more, let me know and I'll send them to you, including the Dad's dance.

Kai was an amazing supporter! These two have finally gotten closer again, after a year of Seminary together and being in the same orchestra class.

We all made it to the recital, including Grandma Pat!

Jazz dance- she's in the back left.

Beautiful kick!

Contemporary- getting ready for a lift.

Tap- she's on the front left.

Front left

Dad's dance- Jason's head is peaking out in the middle.

He's second on the right.

Bowing at the end- she's on the far right.

Bowing with Dads!

Hard dancers!

Teenager!

 Another teenager in the house! This year, Austin has made great strides not necessarily in height,  though that will come,  but in school, music, sports, church,  and his social life. I'm sure it was extremely hard to start his middle school years off in a pandemic, however, he has forged through!

I've noticed how more motivated he is in his classes this year than last, especially his accelerated math class. He no longer sits for hours doing his homework because it gets done more efficiently. 

I've already mentioned his music in a previous post. He really loves exploring music on the piano and his cello. He also loves to harmonize with me in singing, which is so fun! Often when he's watching Youtube it's about how to play video game theme songs or other theme songs from movies or shows. If he hears a cool song in a movie we're watching or on Alexa, he'll go replay it on the piano. I love it!

He finished a successful swim season, track season, and soccer season, almost. One more game for soccer. As I mentioned in my last post, they have 0 losses and 2 ties. His school won the league track meet by 1/2 a point! He ran the 800m in the league meet. At other meets, he also ran the 300m hurdles.

Lately, he has to miss Youth activities for various reasons, but he loves his ward family, recently gave a very good talk on repentance and takes his calling to pass the sacrament very seriously. He went to the temple for baptisms a couple of months ago and I was happy to send him with some family names.

Since he has become more efficient in his homework, he has more time to hang with friends and loves to ride bikes or run around the neighborhood with them. He now has a phone and loves connecting with them that way as well and plays Pokemon Go. He even called me one time to see what time he should be home after he left with friends one day. Wow- I hope he keeps on being so responsible! 

Yes, there are times when he's not the "picture perfect" kid as I seemed to have portrayed him here, but he's come such a long way that I have to put a lot of focus on the positive. 

Running the 800m.

Prepping for hurdles.

Not a great hurdle picture, but here's a video below.

We went for a bike ride on Memorial Day.

Early morning cinnamon rolls on his birthday, before orchestra. They're his favorite, even though he's making a funny face here.

He opened one gift before school. A bag for his bike. 

Villains from Grandma. He loved all the gifts and cards from everyone who sent them in the mail as well. 

His big gift, besides the phone he got last month.

Trying out the Ripstick!

Kai made him a Stranger Things cake.

Erik got him his favorite junk from the Dollar Tree and Victoria took him out the next day for an afternoon of spoiling while she bought him gifts and food.

Birthday dinner: he wanted spicey chicken, flavored rice, and his favorite veggie is peas.

Austin's choir concert was on his birthday. Victoria had dance by that time. He even had a piano solo at the concert! I'm including that video along with a clip of him singing for the 5th grade orientation a couple of weeks ago.

At his piano recital, a couple days after his birthday.

Spring Soccer Season

 While the soccer season isn't quite over yet, it's close enough. It should be over, but both my boys each have a make-up game this week. I feel like the weather has been crazy all over the country and we have definitely felt it here too. Yes, it's true that we get a lot of rain in the spring, however, this year takes the cake during soccer season (last year it all came in June when soccer season was over and we were trying to get our sunroom started.) We had more canceled practices this season due to rain than ever since my boys have been playing soccer. It is true that we practice "rain or shine", but when there are buckets and buckets of rain that make the fields so wet that they're going to be compromised, then they have to cancel, and obviously do for lightening as well. At least most of the cancelations were for practices and not as many games. Also, we have been able to make up all the games, so that's what counts.

Besides the rain, this has been a more difficult soccer season schedule. Both Austin and Erik had practice at the exact same time at two different locations. It made for some creative driving and Austin's ability to get his own phone, about a month before his 13th birthday (which is coming up). Also, the beginning of the soccer season was the end of swim season for Austin and then it rolled right into track season, which he's also participating in. It turned out that the track meets were on Wednesdays, one of the nights of Austin's soccer practices and Youth Night for our ward. Since there are only 3 Deacons in our ward and Jason is over the Deacons, Austin would usually go right from a track meet to the church and miss soccer practice those days, which, by the time the meet was over, the practice pretty much was too. 

So, in a way, the only day affected by the practices at two different parks only affected us half the time, and the 5 or so canceled practices due to rain were fine, but they were ironically on nights where the Youth activity wasn't happening due to some random events. It was just a weird season.

That all being said, my boys had pretty awesome seasons! Austin's teammates, who because they are all in middle school and since this isn't a travel team, all do other sports. I have the feeling they didn't practice together much. In fact, at one game, one kid kept calling another kid by the wrong name and asked another what his name was. So they didn't know each other very well, but they played well! They have their last game this weekend, but they have no losses and two ties! Lots of the time they rarely have any subs too. I guess they could place first or second in the league for the season, depending on how they work those ties. His team didn't enter the Canton Cup this year. Go Avengers!

Erik's team lost two games, so far. They have their last this week. But, they got second place in the Canton Cup this weekend! They actually beat one of the teams that beat them in the regular season, which is the team two of his best friends are on. The Canton Cup doesn't put any weight on the regular season, but they could still place second in the league for the season overall. Go Sharks!

This was one of the games we didn't cancel but probably should have. It wasn't a great game because the ball wouldn't bounce, just splashed into puddles with a big SPLAT! The boys had fun though!

I love seeing his tongue out in concentration!

This was at the Canton Cup. He played goalie for part of the game too. He's very good at defense!

It was a very tough final game, but we were happy to receive second place. The ref complimented Erik on his goalie skills!

Coach!

Grandma Pat is here!

46!

 Jason's birthday was on Sunday. I hope he felt celebrated, even though it was a busy Sunday that followed a hectic week. One excellent part about it was the start of no more yard work for him for a little while, besides watering. 

Spreading fertilizer 

The week leading up to his birthday found him outside moving dirt around, if he wasn't on his regular Ford job, so we could take down the old garden plots, even up some places in our yard, and fill the new garden plots. Plus he had found another space in the yard with buried concrete, under the grass. He worked his tail off trying to get it all ready so that Friday night he could aerate it and then Saturday he could overseed, fertilize, and cover the bare spots with hay.

We can't believe how much concrete was buried under our grass!

 

Our garden plots! I transplanted the garlic and the raspberries. Everything else is going to be planted in a few weeks. 

Everything all smoothed out where the old garden plots were.

I helped where I could, but mostly I was driving the kids around to where they needed to be, or attending events and doctor's appointments with them. Friday night was the birthday party of little Jacob, who we will be watching this summer and just turned 5. Erik is his favorite person in the world, so I made sure that at least the boys and I could attend the party. 

Cute Jacob!

After a full day in the yard Saturday, Jason was beat up by Sunday! I was pretty tired myself from the busy week and late nights on the weekend, as well as getting over the tail end of a bad cold that's been lingering forever. 

Since Jason is in the bishopric and is in charge of the talks this month, which is a 5 Sunday month, he's been really busy with filling the talks, along with assigning the topics to speak on. He ended up asking Austin to speak this Sunday as a last resort, since no one else could! I told Austin that it was part of his birthday gift to Jason. He did a fantastic job on his talk, though I actually missed it as I was visiting another ward to pass on the preliminary girl's camp forms that we have to get going on. With Mother's day last Sunday and Memorial Day weekend coming up, we have limited Sundays to do that, but luckily I was only gone during our church time, so I didn't miss any extra time with Jason, except for when he had to go to Standard's Night that evening with the 3 older kids. Phew, didn't I say it was a busy Sunday?

I was able to make him homemade biscuits to go with his eggs and sausage for breakfast and he opted to grill hamburgers and brats for dinner. I made homemade fries and a cheese sauce for him to pour over them, as well as on his broccoli, which I know would always be his preferred way of eating broccoli, but I just don't do that. I'm not a cheesy person!! 

Only 2 cheeseburgers because Victoria and Kai can't have dairy anymore.  See why Jason wanted to grill? His always looks so perfect!

His cheesy dinner!

Kai made his birthday cake and tried to make it a Horton Hears a Who theme (you know, On the 15th of May in the Jungle of Nool...), but she ran out of time, so she just wrote, "On the 15th of May... is Dad's birthday!

He enjoyed talking to family and seeing friends at church with their good wishes. He was in good spirits, despite being super sore. 

He got some nice cards, candy, Dr. Pepper,  and a Nebraska camping chair! He'll get plenty of use out of this chair!

Happy Birthday to our hard-working Dad and hubby! We love him!!

Happy Mom!

I'm a little behind in my blogging, so I'm going to try to condense a few things here, otherwise, they won't get blogged about!

First of all, let me say that my expectations of Mother's Day were different this year than other years and I enjoyed this year's so much more because of that. On Saturday, it was a very busy day, but I considered myself lucky to have been able to attend a soccer game for Erik, an orchestra concert for my older 3, and an invitational track meet that I had signed up to volunteer for at the beginning of the season when we were highly encouraged to volunteer at this particular one because it brings in funds for our girl's track team every year and is our main fundraiser. Well, I didn't end up having a child in the meet or even attend with me, but I enjoyed the connections I made with some of Victoria's coaches and parents of other teammates. (More on track later).

(Austin, Kai, and Victoria all got to play a big group song, Croc Rock, which was so fun! I tried record amongst the three of them.)

On Sunday, Mother's Day, Erik started the day reading the Friend, without me reminding him to do that. Victoria did my hair and Austin and I made music together, him on the cello, me on the violin, and Kai made the potatoes for dinner and a berry cake. Jason was hoping they would make me breakfast, but he ended up doing it and I was just so happy for the other services they gave me, that it didn't matter. I felt loved. 

Before hair and make-up!

Delicious cake!

I thought this was so cute of Erik and Luke.

(This video was of Austin just messing around.)

Most people read about Victoria's and my visit to the cardiologist this week on social media, so I won't go into detail here, but I just want to reiterate how amazing that doctor was in how he answered all of our concerns, spent time explaining things to us, could empathize with Victoria and gave her a plan of action. These past couple of months have been really hard for her without being able to dance. Even not being able to run, which she had just started, and weight train that she started in the fall, was discouraging for her. What really impressed me though, was that she just kept going to all the dance classes and all the track practices and workouts, doing very light weights and eventually finding something she could participate in for track- discus.

(Here's one of her throws at a meet.)

Her coach thought she should try throwing because the setup for the throw is almost like a dance itself. Well, she ended up doing amazingly well! About a week after started throwing, she moved up to Varsity because she was passing all the JV throwers. Between 2 track meets she made a 10-foot PR, throwing 75 feet at the second meet! She got third place at that meet and earned her letter! She was invited to the next invitational after that. She didn't get to go to that last one that I referred to above because that one was for the top two throwers, plus she couldn't have gone anyhow with the orchestra concert that day. The field events were going on at the same time as the concert. 

All in all, she has shown perseverance in trying new things as she was waiting on that cardiologist appointment. 

My kids all worked hard to make Mother's Day special for me and so did Jason, even though he's almost driven himself to the ground with all the work he's doing on the yard. More on that next time!

Hair and make-up done!