New Life- Week 86 (Jeremy's Birthday)

 This week was a mixed bag for sure. Let's start with the good. As the title says, this week was Jeremy's birthday.  We had a fun day on Tuesday celebrating him.  We had special meals and presents and celebrated him as much as we could on a day with school and work and practice.  My favorite were the gifts the kids gave him.  Merrick gave him all the Reese's he could find in his Halloween bag.  Carrigan gave a picture she drew of him.  Elsie gave him two gifts.  One was a picture she had colored in preschool.  The other was a bunch of twisty ties she found in the gift wrap box.  She seems to have a gift for present giving.

The rest of the week had many bumps in the road.  On Wednesday I had a big activity I was in charge of.  Right as I prepared to walk out the the door, Jeremy came in and said that the water heater was leaking and there was water all over the garage.  The rest of the week has been a mess of dealing with water, dealing with repair men and with the home warranty company.  Not only that but it has made a week full with boiling water for baths and to wash dishes and going to Nana and Papa's for showers.  In a world where our schedule is always tight, I feel like it has made us always behind schedule and late for bed.  Thankfully we don't have school next week because we have almost a week and a half left until our hot water heater actually gets replaced.  It's going to be a long week and a half.

We are looking forward to Thanksgiving this week.  Lets just hope I can get everything I need to made and cleaned up without hot water.  I promise when this is done I will never take hot water for granted again!

Oh! I also forgot, Carrigan got her first Covid vaccine yesterday.  We are half way to having all the kids fully vaccinated!

New Life- Week 85 (No School November)

This week was the start of what is being called "No School November".  Thursday was a legitimate holiday, Veteran's Day.  On top of this, the middle and high schoolers (including Merrick) had Monday off for a grading day.  Then, last week, the school district announced that due to a labor shortage caused by covid they would not have enough staff to have school on Friday so it would be a holiday as well.  In the end Merrick and Elsie ended up going to school for 2 days and Carrigan went for 3.  That meant that we had a lot more hours than usual to fill and many of them were very rainy.

Honestly, I am not really sure what we did with most of our extra time.  It's funny how that can happen.  I do know that we spent some time at the church so Merrick could practice basketball and the girls could scooter, both Jeremy and I each took the kids this week.

We also spent lots of time doing playdates and sleepovers with cousins.  I gained about four hours each day not carpooling the kids back and forth from school and activities, but probably spent about that much time shuttling the cousins back and forth between all of our houses.

I also took advantage of the extra time for some rare self pampering.  My hair has been SO long for so long so I went for a big chop and darkened it up for the winter.  It feels good to have a change. 

Next week we have a full school week, at least at this point.  I'll keep you posted.

 

New Life- Week 84 (Halloween)

Once again, I am a week behind on the blog.  Last Sunday was Halloween and it was a day filled with family Halloween fun, leaving no time for blogging.

Since Halloween was on Sunday this year, we had some mixed feelings in the family about trick or treating.  We decided to have a cousin gathering earlier in the day and leave the trick of treating decision to each individual family.  We met in the park, divided into two groups, and made Halloween movie trailers.  Afterwards we went to the Brown's for a viewing party.

After our viewing party, the families all went their own ways.  Merrick went to baseball tryouts (he made the select team-yahoo!) and the rest of us went to visit some old neighbors. Later, we met up for dinner with the Ioapos and went trick or treating with them.

I mostly neglected to take pictures, but I did take a few of Elsie and I earlier in the week at our preschool party and Emily took one of all my kids before we headed out.  This year, Merrick was an identity thief, Carrigan was an angel, and Elsie was a Carebear.  We did our usual tick or treating route and while the crowds were lighters than usual, the candy was plentiful.

Since I am behind a week, just one thing from this week.  Jeremy won tickets to the Blazers game at work this week.  There was some debate about who would be his plus one, but in the end I decided to let Merrick go.  They had great seats and a great time, even though some of the big stars were out.  While they were gone, the girls and I got messy with a "rainbow snow" kit.  It was a lot of fun but super messy AND since the kit makes 2 gallons of snow, we have just scratched the surface.  I will have to come up with a plan to reign in some of the mess next time.

 

New Life- Week 83 (Birthday Season)

October is a really busy month in our family for birthdays.  In October on the Clifford side we have Bryce, Breanna, Jensen, and Betty.  On the Lundberg side we have Kai, Kalani, and Maude. These are all in addition to mine, of course.  It makes for a fun month to celebrate someone new every time you turn around.

This week was my birthday.  Celebrating a mid-week birthday when you are a mom of young kids is a little difficult as the mom jobs don't magically go away.  I did however have a good day.  I had preschool in the morning and then Jeremy, Elsie, and I snuck in a lunch date.  After school pick-up, the kids made me a birthday cake.  Jeremy came home from work with Thai food so I didn't have to cook and we had dinner, cake, Crumbl cookies, and presents.  Jeremy got me a new wallet, in addition to some gifts that I may or may not have picked out myself.  Carrigan made me a very sweet #1 Mom award.  All in all it was a good day.

Also this week Kai and Kalani had their joint birthday party.  All the boy cousins, Jeremy, and Ben, and the boys' friend Mitchel went go-cart racing.  Their were a few missteps with some big crashes, Quincy getting cussed out by a worker, and food not showing up after the races were done, but the boys (big and small) still had a great time.

Now it's on to Halloween and then the sprint to the end of the year! Man, this year is flying by.

New Life- Week 82 (MORE Sports)

Is sports all I ever write about?  It kinda feels like it and it's probably because most weeks that's mostly what we do in our free time.  This week, for example, consisted of two baseball practices/scrimmages, one soccer practice, one club baseball tryout, one soccer game, one cheer clinic, and one select basketball tryout.  It's a lot and that was just for the older two kids and with a bye-week for our last baseball game of the season.  I am not sure what I am going to do when we add a third to the mix.

For now baseball is mostly off for a few weeks.  He has select tryouts in two weeks but until then it will just be any extra practicing we decided to throw in.  Basketball will also be off for a few more weeks after the tryouts today.  Soccer has two more week and then we will get a break from that too.  

As for the cheer clinic, that was just a one off.  I was looking through Facebook and saw an ad for a clinic where they learn a few cheers and then preform them that night at the high school football game.  As I was looking at the ad thinking how Carrigan might like to do it, I noticed that the picture on the ad was of her!  They had used a picture from the last clinic she had done.  It was funny because when we checked her in for the clinic that night, the cheer coach said, "Hey!  I know you! You are on our flyer!".  She had a great time at the clinic because she got to do it with her cousin, Isabel, this time.  Not only that, but it was youth night at the game so all the West Linn Football teams got to run the field at halftime so most of the family was there to see Isabel and her perform.

Well that's it for now I guess.  Another week, another sport...or 5.  Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Merrick made the club baseball team he tried out for.  We are weighing our options because they want him to play up in 13u and he still wants to tryout for the West Linn Select team.  We'll see...

New Life- Week 81 (Fall Break)

 This week was our unofficial Fall Break.  What that translates to is 2 (for Merrick) or 3 (for C.C) days off school for parent/teacher conferences.  We have only been in school for a few weeks so it seems strange to already have a day off, but I never turn down extra time with my kids.

We had some fun crafting and prepping for Halloween.  Our old neighbor has a birthday next week and we decided a craft that the kids helped make would be the perfect gift.  We came up with some holiday votive holder vases.  They turned out pretty cute so hopefully she likes them.  The girls and I  also went to a farm and garden store and picked out pumpkins.  We didn't buy pumpkins at the pumpkin patch but this was still fun because they had a pumpkin washing station where you could scrub your chosen pumpkin and have a little more fun than just grabbing one at the grocery store.

The extra time the last few days even gave us time for something that has been almost a year in the making.  We finally got around to putting up the basketball hoop Merrick got for last Christmas.  When he first got it, we couldn't put it up because we were still waiting for our new house.  When we finally moved in, the next door neighbors had a hoop and it just didn't seem like a big priority with everything we were trying to get accomplished.  Merrick frequently asked, but it just never made it to the top of the priority list.  This weekend we FINALLY got it done, much to C.C.'s disappointment because it meant she didn't get to carve pumpkins. 

Oh well, there is always next weekend....or next Halloween at the speed we seems to operate.

New Life- Week 80 (Fall Sports)

 This week I considered dropping the "New Life" title.  The kids are in school and sports and in many ways life feels normal.  And yet, we are not quite there.  All activities, including school, are constantly threatened to be shut down.  I track cases in the schools daily.  Mask and health screening are a part of everyday life. Additionally, multiple members of our YW presidency are currently quarantined with Covid (in fact another one just went down as I typed this).  Maybe one day we will get there for reals.

Anyway the highlight of this week has definitely been our fall sports.  We are deep into the fall baseball and soccer season and both Merrick and Carrigan are finding their groove.  Merrick is looking so solid on the field.  His pitching lessons are really helping him, you can see the difference on the field.  He has a game this evening, but he got a happy bonus this morning.  He went to watch his friends on the senior ball team and ended up getting recruited  because they didn't have enough players.  There is a bit of a learning curve to the senior ball field, but he held his own playing first base and got his first senior ball W.

Carrigan is also coming into her own on the soccer field.  Before the season started she fretted about how this is they first year with goalies and how she definitely didn't want to play goalie.  On just the third game she decided she wanted to give goalie a try.  She has played goalie for half the game for every game since then.  This week, she had some good stops and got to experience her first PK (which got by her).  I am proud of how brave she has been, taking on something that was very scary for her.