She's a Star

The other day, CC was making videos on my phone for each member of the family. She accused me of loving Elsie the most because I have the most pictures of her on my phone. I assured her that it's just because she is the only one who isn't too cool to hang around her mom and the only one who wants me to take her picture. She is right though, the pictures on my phone do heavily favor Elsie recently.

Elsie may typically be the star of my phone, but this week she truly did get to be a star. The Cedaroak talent show was this week and she sang the Taylor Swift song "Sparks Fly". I'm biased but she was the best singer in the talent show. The talent show was all videos that were submitted ahead of time, but it still took a lot of courage for her to put herself out there in front of the whole school. I was very proud of her for being so brave.

Since I am leaning into the "it's all about Elsie" thing, I think I will take the opportunity to do a photo dump of some of the other photos I have taken of her (or she has taken of herself) recently. 

Despite what all the photos say, Elsie's older sibling actually take up the majority of my time. I guess I just need to be better about taking their picture, whether they like it or not.

Carrigan's 12th birthday

 Today is Carrigan's 12th birthday. We have had such a great time celebrating her this weekend! The festivities started yesterday with a friend birthday party. We started with pizza at our house before heading out to the Clackamas Aquatic Center. The girls had a blast in the wave pool and sliding the water slides. Since our whole family came along, Elsie and Merrick spent much of their time sliding the slides too. Elsie was nervous at first, but decided she loved it. Jeremy took Elsie on the slides a couple times too, but then tapped out to Merrick and hung out in the hot tub.

After swimming, we came back to our house for presents and dessert. C.C. chose brownie sundaes and they were are huge hit with her friends.

Once her friends went home, we went to dinner as a family and then finally accomplished C.C. and Elsie's goal they have had for several month, to go to 7-Eleven while they were 7 and 11-years-old. We made it just in the nick of time. C.C. and I capped off the night with a girls night eating junk and watching Gilmore Girls in the basement.

Today is Carrigan's actual birthday. We started the day with church because, you know, Sunday. We then had family brunch and she opened her presents. She liked them all, but I think the Lululemon crossbody bag and the the Sol de Janeiro perfume were the favorites.

Nana and papa will come for dinner soon. Of course she chose soft pretzels and cheese. After dinner, the family is all coming over for dessert.

It's been so fun celebrating Carrigan this weekend. She has really blossomed into a little lady this year. She is so fun to be around and, despite having some serious health struggles this year, always has a smile and happy attitude. We are so blessed to have her in our family.

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.

 

Spring Break Fun

This past week was Spring Break and, like in many years past, we chose to stay home and have more of a "staycation". Unlike in past years, I think we really made the most of our time this year. We crammed lots of fun in just one short week. Let's break it down day by day.

On Monday, we went to Enchanted Forest. For 13 years we have driven past Enchanted Forest. We even have had admission passes for the last 4 or so years and still haven't made it happen. I wasn't sure how the experience would be. My understanding was it was a nursery rhyme themed amusement park that was geared more towards younger kids. Given that Merrick is now 15, I encouraged him especially to keep his expectations low. To our surprise, while it is in fact a nursery rhyme themed amusement park, there were things to do and see that appealed to all of us. In all fairness, I do think Elsie enjoyed it the most. It was pretty magical in her eyes.

Tuesday, Jeremy took the day off and joined us on our adventures. We spent the day out at a campground called Camp Dakota. While we didn't stay over and camp, we bought adventure wristbands to participate in all the daytime activities. We did rock wall climbing, disc golf, Lego car building and racing, and tomahawk throwing. The highlight of the day, however, was the archery. It turns out we all really like archery and spent much of the day at the archery range. Elsie, in particular was set on mastering it. It was a struggle for her. She spent much of the day unable to reach the target, but she didn't give up. Time after time, she steered us back to archery so she could keep practicing. On our last visit, the girl running the station said that she thought Elsie was big enough to use the full sized bow and encouraged her to give it a try. With Jeremy guiding her on how far to pull it back and how high to aim, she was finally able to hit the target. We were all super proud of her perseverance.

Wednesday was a local day. We spent the day shopping. We hit a bunch of stores, including our favorite thrift store and went to lunch. It was a more low key day, but still fun.

Thursday, I was supposed to go help my mom start her bathroom remodel, but she wasn't up to it so instead, she and I went shopping for some of the remaining pieces she needed for the remodel. The kids enjoyed a day of hanging out with friends and cousins. Merrick started the day at the church playing basketball with friends, while the girls hung out with our family friend, Coco Salo. While they were away, the Brown cousins reached out and they all ended up going straight from hanging out with friends to hanging out with cousins. It worked out well because I had made plans to hang out with my BFF, Shaunell, that evening and the kids were all occupied until after Jeremy got home.

Friday, Jeremy took the day off again and we went to the Pinball Museum and Arcade. I know I have talked about this place before, but it never disappoints. After a day of about as much stimulation as we could handle, we wrapped things up with a trip to the Nike Employee Store and dinner out.

Saturday, our kids dispersed again and each hung out with friends.

That brings us to today. Today we went to church and are preparing for the week ahead. It's going to be a busy one, as usual. I'm just so thankful for this past week we had to recharge. Hopefully, it's enough to power us through the next 10 weeks until summer.