Celebrate

This week was a bit of a roller coaster. We took two trips to Urgent Care, for x-rays of Elsie's arm and my ankle. Elsie hurt her arm at school and I finally went for x-rays of my ankle that I fell and hurt three weeks ago at Merrick's baseball game. Luckily, neither Elsie's arm or my ankle are broken, but she is nursing some significant soft tissue damage. I get to go to an orthopedist to discuss the results of my x-ray. Yay!

On the bright side of things, this week we got to celebrate the end of an awesome dance season with Carrigan's year-end dance dinner and awards ceremony. C.C. had a great night and won the "100% award" from her coaches and the "determined diva" award from her dance team captain. I would say the evening was probably the highlight of her week, be she did also have a track competition and did a great job competing in her first relay race.

As I mentioned, Elsie had a rough week. She has had limited use of her arm all week and subsequently could not participate in her first softball game. She did get to have some fun this week celebrating others. She enjoyed C.C.'s dance celebration and she got to celebrate her friend's birthday yesterday.

As for Merrick, he has a lot to celebrate this baseball season. He team is currently undefeated and on a 6 game shut-out streak. They have not allowed a single run during league play. It has been pretty amazing. He personally is in a bit of a hitting slump, but I'm confident he will turn it around this week.

We are looking forward to another busy week ahead where not only do we have our regular busyness, but we also have something big to celebrate, C.C.'s 12th birthday.

Easter 2025

Happy Easter Sunday. What a beautiful day we have had already. We started with day with the secular Easter stuff. We had a visit from the Easter Bunny right away. He hid our Easter baskets, as that tricky bunny always does, but most everyone's was in a visible spot. Everyone, except Elsie's. I think that is because our Easter bunny is smart enough to know that she would be up starting at 6am and if her basket was visible, she would have visually identified everything in it before everyone else was up. Elsie was not pleased.

Everyone got mostly eggs with candy, but the Easter bunny also brought small gifts for each of us. Elsie got three new summer dresses and lip gloss, Carrigan got a dress, hair clips, and lip gloss, Merrick got cologne and socks, I got shower steamers and an automatic pumice file, and Jeremy got a massage gun.

While everyone was happy with their gifts from the Easter bunny, it was nice to quickly put them away and shift our focus to more important things. We had a lovely church service today with beautiful music. All three of the kids sang during the service, Elsie with the primary children and Merrick and C.C. with the youth. Actually, since Jeremy is over the youth group, he sang with them as well. I guess everyone but me sang in church today.

After church, we had a family brunch and this evening we are going to the Browns for a special Easter and Christ-centered LSF. It has been a great day.

Keep Up

We made it through last week. Somehow. Weekly recap: 4 baseball games, 2 baseball practices, 3 track practices, 1 track meet, 1 horseback riding lesson, 1 church activity, 2 softball practices, 1 field trip, 2 play dates, and 1 baseball fundraising dinner. Unfortunately, the weather has not always cooperated with all the activities this week. Baseball games were played in the rain and it poured for CC's track meeting.

Since this was CC's first track meet, I'll give it a little more attention. Each meet, they get choose which events to participate in. They just have to sign up in advance. For this event, she chose to participate in the long jump and javelin. Javelin was supposed to take place in the first half of the meet and long jump in the second half. Somehow, however, they ended up calling for all long jumpers early in the meet. While she was getting checked in and waiting to jump, they called for javelin. She ended up just staying put and completing the long jump. Once she was finished, I told her I would walk her over to check and see if she could still do javelin, but it was pouring and she was freezing. She decided she would rather just check out with her coach and head home, so that's what we did. It was a tough first meet, but she said she still had fun. Hopefully, next week's meet will be a little better.

As I mentioned, we also had some softball this week. Elsie had her first two softball practices. She has a different team for the most part this year, but so far she is really liking it. She leaves each practice talking about how fun it was. Maybe that is because she has yet to have to practice in the rain. Also this week, she had a field trip to the Youth Music Project, some play dates and park trips.  She doesn't realize how crazy the schedule has been, she is just living her best life.

As for Merrick, his games have gone well. His team has a perfect record and they made it past to their two toughest competitions this week unscathed. Merrick is now starting most games (or coming in after a couple of innings) and this week split his time fairly evenly between 1st base and the outfield. It was a bit of a slow start to the season, but he's getting there. He's even getting to be a good a bunter.

This coming week, very little is dropping off the schedule, but we are adding a vaulting lesson and a volleyball clinic. I may have almost cried last night looking at the week ahead. At lease the weather is supposed to cooperate this week, so that's something, right?

Tulip Watch 2025

 I feel like a broken record and that all I talk about on here is how busy we are, but that's our life right now. I am frantically trying to manage the schedules of three overscheduled children, all while trying to work full time and take care of all the normal life stuff. Merrick had 4 baseball games last week and he will have 4 this coming week. CC has track practice, volleyball, horses, and her first track meet. Elsie starts softball and has two practices. I'm pretty sure there are not enough hours in the day for all that. I guess I'll report back next week if we somehow pulled it all off.

In the meantime, in all the comings and goings from the house, driving kids here and there, we have been on tulip watch. We have a couple of tulips in a planter out in front of our house. In the 4 years we have lived here, we have never seen them bloom. Every year, seemingly hours before they will bloom, the tops get eaten by deer. So this year, each time we come and go from the house, we check the tulips. Are they still there? Did they bloom? Did the deer eat them?

Guess what? This year, one bloomed and it is beautiful. Maybe it was all the coming and going. Maybe the deer never had a chance because we were always pulling in or out of the driveway. Maybe our crazy, overscheduled lives saved the tulip....maybe.