Comp Time, Go Time

 It's a busy time of year. Then again, I'm not not sure it's ever not a busy time. Jeremy is slammed at work because they are down two attorneys. I am gearing up at work for the high-need spring season and trying to hold our life together with all the everyone has going on.

Speaking of everything everyone has going on, Merrick is keeping himself very busy these days. We are in the heart of basketball season. He has 5-6 practices and games a week and is also reffing on the weekends. Because that isn't enough, this weekend he also decided to coach a sophomore rec basketball team with some of his friends.

For CC, we are officially in dance competition season. She had a comp yesterday and spent most of the day in Salem. While we love watching her and her team dance, Jeremy is not sure about the return on investment of time. We were gone for 6 hours yesterday to see her dance for two minutes. It was a really good two minutes though. This week we also got to watch her perform at half time of the girls varsity team. Please enjoy some very graining photos of her from that performance as well as a photo of her team from the comp.

Poor Elsie gets dragged along to most things, but also insists on having play dates almost everyday after school as well. We have definitely become the hang out house for her neighborhood friends.

We somehow are making it all work. Now, if I could just get everyone in the house fully healthy, I think that would make things a lot easier. Unless there are more surprises waiting, I think we are almost there.

Welcome 2026

 We are about a week and a half into 2026 and so far 2026 has been a friend. The kids went back to school on Tuesday, well at least for a day. Merrick got progressively sicker over the day on Tuesday and then ended up being home sick for several days. Jeremy took him yesterday to get an IV and since he is feeling much better. He should be good to go for Monday. I have been fighting off the sickness too, but so far I'm more or less staying on top of it.

The big news of the week is that yesterday my dad was able to bust out of the skilled nursing facility. Having him there was a double edged sword. He was able to get therapy 6 days a week and made really great progress over his time there, but we missed having him home. I know he was not super comfortable there and it was hard on my mom having to go back and forth and sleep alone at the house.

11 days in, life in 2026 is far from perfect, but we are fighting back against sickness and everyone is home where  they belong. Peace out skilled nursing! 2026 is all about finding joy and there is definitely joy to be found.

Goodbye 2025

 Every year I do a wrap up post for the year before so that I have a good place to transition to a new book when moving my posts over to a blog book. I'm not sure I have ever been so happy to close the chapter on a year as I am with this one. Maybe that's not true. Covid was pretty bad, but 2025 was right up there in many ways. I'm not going to list here the parade of horribles that happened in 2025. You were here for the ride. Instead, I'll focus on the good from this past week because, as we head into 2026, I am focused on finding joy and making 2026 the best year yet.

We wrapped up 2025 with the Clifford's still in town. While we enjoyed lots of down time, we still partied, like we always do. We spent a day at the arcade. It turns out that $10/person goes a long way at a nickel arcade. I think everyone scored big at some point. Personally, my highlight was besting the claw machine. Jeremy would also want me to mention that he finally beat the ball drop game.

We also spent an afternoon at the movies. While I didn't take any pictures at the movies, I did capture the post movie candy tongue. That's one thing about Grandpa and Lollie being in town, there is no shortage of treats and candy.

In the end, we sent 2025 off in style with at 50th birthday party for our friend Troy.

Well, as you can see 2025 wasn't all bad. You just had to look for the joy, something I plan to do a lot more of in 2026.