Fall Sports

 As promised last week, I'm here today with an update on the kids' fall sports that are now in full swing.

Merrick- Merrick is playing fall basketball. He tried out for two club teams, and made both teams, but decided to play for a team that our family friend put together. They will be called Willamette Select. They started practicing this week and games start next week. He is pretty excited for the fall season and thinks his team is going to be pretty good. I don't have any game pictures yet, but I do at least have a picture of the jerseys.

Merrick is also assistant coaching Elsie's soccer team, the "Fire Pugs". He is really pulling his weight as the assistant coach this year. Jeremy got caught at work on Thursday and Merrick ran practice all on his own. The girls did not make it easy on him, but he held his own!

Carrigan- Carrigan is doing both dance and volleyball, when she is well enough to participate that is. Dance is Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and volleyball is Tuesday and Thursdays with games on Saturdays. She is very busy and we are working REALLY hard to find out what is going on with her and get her feeling better so she can keep up.

Elsie- Elsie had her first "Fire Pugs" game on Saturday. While it did not go the way we would have wanted, she had a great time. She is loving having her dad and brother as the coaches.

As for Jeremy and I, we are just trying to keep our heads above water. We have both been really busy at work. On top of that, helping CC is becoming a full-time job in and of itself. It's a busy season for sure, but we will get through this. We always do.

Merrick's Sweet 16

 What a whirlwind week it has been. Do I also say that? Why does life never seem to slow down? In any case, here we are again at the end of another week. This week fall sports started up again. Merrick had basketball tryouts with a few different teams, Carrigan started dance and volleyball (all while feeling terrible and barely making it through most days), and Elsie started soccer.  I’ll probably save pictures and a more in depth discussion of all that for next week. Today I want to talk about the biggest event of the week, Merrick’s 16th birthday.

How is it possible that Merrick is 16? For years we have told the kids they could not eat on the couch until they had a driver’s license because 16 seemed impossibly far away. And now, inexplicably, we are here. Unfortunately for Merrick, DMV appointments are ridiculously hard to come by these days so he won’t get his license for a couple of weeks, but we still celebrated him as best as we could.

On Friday, his actual birthday, we started the day off with birthday cinnamon rolls. He then had to rush off for seminary and school but I excused him from one class so he could go take an extra long lunch with his friends. After school, we went to the rec center so he could workout and shoot while I took Elsie swimming. We then went to dinner and came home for presents and his request of birthday rainbow sherbet. For his birthday he got some golf balls from his sisters, some money and gifts cards from his grandparents, some random gifts, like a new watch and sweatpants from Jeremy and I. His big gift was a shooting machine that we preordered and should hopefully be delivered this month. While I hope he felt like his birthday was special, our hands were a little tied with school and work, but we were able to make up for that yesterday.

Yesterday, Jeremy and I took Merrick and Colvin down to the U of O game in Eugene. Jeremy had gotten AMAZING tickets through work and we made a day of it. We left early to get down there so we would have time to get some lunch before heading into the stadium. The game itself was tons of fun! It was a complete blowout, we won 69 to 3, but the energy in the stadium was fantastic. After the game we went down to the field and got to exit out through the tunnel. We stopped for dinner on the way home and battled traffic along the way. In the end, it was about a 12 hour day but such a blast!

I’m so glad we had the last few days to celebrate Merrick. The last 16 years have certainly had their ups and downs but being his mom was worth every second. I hope he always knows how special he is and how much we love him.

First Day of School 2025

It's late Sunday night and full disclosure, my energy for the weekly update is waning. That said, we just wrapped up the first week of the new school year and I would be remiss if I didn't post our first day of school pictures. So without further ado, I present the first day of school 2025-26.

Merrick- 10th grade

Carrigan- 7th grade

Elsie- 2nd grade

Last Hooray

This was the last full week of summer vacay for the kids and we went out with a bang. The week started with the wrap up of Carrigan's summer dance intensive and a family performance. CC is really looking forward to the upcoming dance season and she enjoyed getting a jump start.

We also blew out summer with a trip to Oaks Park. Elsie was much more adventurous this year and she went on all but one of the rides CC wanted to go on. Merrick brought Colvin along so they mostly were off on their own.

Brendon came to town for a few days this week and we all got together for a family dinner. The girls did less time eating and more time creating dances and routines.

We also had CC's last summer market this week. Jeremy and Merrick had a church activity at the same time. That just left Elsie so she got to tag along with Jeremy for an epic night of slip and slide. She was a little scared to begin with, but ended up sliding more times than anyone else.

After a whirlwind week, I capped it all off with a quick 48 hour trip to Arizona. Carolyn had a stitching convention she was running and Mike, who usually lives with Grammy was also out of town. That meant that Grammy was going to be alone all weekend. I hopped on a plane and spent 48 hours at Grammy's side. As a huge added bonus, I got to hug all my cute nieces and nephew and hold my newest niece, Sally, for the first time.

I just walked in the door and I'm exhausted so that's all for now. 

Anniversary Cruise

 I'm still playing catch up and today, I wanted to report in on the cruise Jeremy and I just went on for our 20th anniversary. It was a magical trip in every sense of the word, I'm fairly certain it was the best vacation I have ever had, but don't tell the kids that we had so much fun without them. We have been home for a week and already the details are slipping away so I will try my best to get it down before I forget even more.

The trip got off to a bit of a rough start with a very delayed flight. We were supposed to leave here at 11pm and fly overnight to Boston. Unfortunately, our flight was very delayed. We didn't end up leaving PDX until 1:30am. We then had a VERY tight timeline for catching our connecting flight in Boston. It was tight enough that once the plane landed the flight crew asked everyone to stay put to allow those of us trying to make our connection to San Juan to get off the plane first. We made our way to the front of the plane, but unfortunately the airport crew had an extremely difficult time attaching the gangway so that we could deplane. Once we were finally allowed off, we had to sprint to our next gate (thankfully only a few gates down) where we found a fully boarded plane waiting for us. The second flight was uneventful and we finally made it to Puerto Rico.

The first day is Puerto Rico is a bit of a blur. We had mostly been awake for 36 hours. We took an Uber from the airport and the driver ended up not actually dropping us at our hotel. He told us we were there, but when we got out, we were not. We had to drag our luggage about a 1/4 mile to the hotel, which would have been more fun had the roads not been rough brick/cobblestone. We got settled into our hotel, found some food, and did a little shopping/walking around. It started to rain that evening and we were beyond exhausted so we ended up going to bed before 9, which was really crazy considering that would have been 6pm our body time.

The next morning we were recharged and ready to spend the day exploring San Juan, since we didn't have to be to the ship until 3pm. We spent much of the day wandering around old San Juan, ducking into shops with AC whenever possible. We visited an old military castle/fortress, Castillo San Cristobal, which was not only really interesting, but gave us incredible views, including our first peak at our ship. We found an amazing little hole in the wall place to eat and had empanadas, fish and shrimp tacos, and traditional Puerto Rican beans and rice. Eventually, we made it to our ship and were on our way.

Our first morning of the cruise, we awoke in St. Thomas, USVI. We had heard that St. Thomas is very touristy and not the best of the Virgin Islands, so we had planned to immediately head across the island and take a ferry to St. John. We had to take our life into our own hands just a little with a taxi driver who thought he was a race car driver in order to make it to the ferry, but in the end it was worth it. We took the ferry to St. John and then another taxi to Maho beach. St. John as a whole is incredibly beautiful, most of it is a state park. At Maho, we found an incredible beach that is designated a sea turtle sanctuary. We snorkeled around and saw sea turtles for the first time. Unfortunately, we didn't get to stay as long as we would have wanted because we knew the ship was two taxi rides and a ferry away and the last thing we wanted to do was miss the ship on the very first day. We did make it back though and were rewarded with our very first towel animal. We ended the night with formal night on the ship.

Day 2 was our anniversary and it found us in St. Croix. This was the only day we didn't really have a plan for, but it ended up being magical. The beach at the port is fantastic, so we didn't have to take a taxi. We spent the day snorkeling and spent probably a good two hours following a couple of sea turtles around. We also saw some amazing fish and huge starfish. Since we were so close to the ship, we didn't have to worry about missing it and even were able to walk back and have lunch mid-day. The only downside was that we spent so much time in the water that we both got pretty sunburned without realizing it.

The next day was St. Maarten/St Martin. The island is split and half owned by the Dutch and half by France. We spent less time in the water this day, which was welcome as we were babying our sunburns. Instead we took a island tour and got to see both the French and Dutch sides of the island and learned all about the history of the island. We stopped at several prominent sites throughout the island, including an iguana farm. Our last stop was at Maho beach (not the Maho beach on St. John). Maho is famous because the airport is right next to the beach so the planes fly right over your head as they land. It was unreal! We also got to watch a plane take off. That was an adventure because we didn't realize how strong the jet stream would be off the back of the plane. Our hats immediately blew off and mine ended up in the ocean. It was difficult to even stay on your feet.

The second to last stop was Antigua. This was the only island where we had booked an excursion through our cruise company. We had planned to snorkel with the stingrays. This ended up being way more amazing than I had anticipated. We started with a bus ride through the island. We got to learn about the island along the way. We then took a boat ride out to "stingray city". We got off the boat in the middle of the ocean. It was a shallow area at least a mile from land on any side. The stingrays could best be compared to cats, who like to come up and rub against you. They were very eager to let you touch them and we even held a few. It was something I never thought I would experience. Antigua was also the only place we saw jellyfish.

Our last island was Barbados. He we look a taxi to Carlisle Bay. We spent the day at a resort there. They had an ocean slide, ocean trampoline, and rope swing. We also were able to take a boat ride out to a shipwreck and snorkeled around the shipwreck. I was not  sure I wanted to get back on the boat because I knew the fun was coming to an end. At least we came back to a towel surprise.

All good things must come to an end. And so it was that we spent the last day of the cruise at sea and then started our journey home. The only good thing was at the end of it all, we were rewarded with getting to see our kids again. That made it worth it to come back to real life.