Catching My Breath

Let's see. Looking at the calendar, I think I have might have two weeks, maybe three, if I'm lucky, to slow down and breathe a little before things pick back up again.

Baseball season is finally over. Jared finished his coach pitch team the second week of July. I forgot to sign him up for soccer this year, but he says he's okay with it. Adam's team did well in their baseball tournament. They took 3rd place out of 16 teams. Adam had fun and ended the season with with a single and an inning of playing 2nd base, after spending most of the season in the outfield. After winning the consolation game to take 3rd place, I heard him saying, "Best season ever!" It was good to see him enjoying it. This next week he will finish up swim team. He best times in the regular meets have qualified him to swim in the Silver meet at County. He is also talking about taking lifesaving and water safety instructor courses in the future, so he can prepare to teach swim lessons and life guard at the pool when he is old enough to get a job. It's nice to have our community pool is so close to our home. We get a family pass every summer and take as much advantage of it as we can. Adam and Ryan are both old enough to swim without an adult, so they head over there quite often to swim with friends too.

Ryan just started practices for his competition soccer team. I sat and watched them for awhile the other night, because the coach had asked parents to be there for a meeting. I was really impressed with him--his coaching skills, his knowledge of the game, and especially the way he interacted with the players. He's expecting a lot of them, but he communicates it in a very positive way. I think it will be a great experience for Ryan to play for him. Ryan is excited to start 5th grade in a few weeks. We got an email from his teacher, asking him to practice typing, cursive, and times tables each week until school starts. It's hard to think about school in the middle of the summer, but he doesn't seem to mind.

All the boys finished the summer reading program at the library. They've been reading 15-20 minutes a day, five days a week, since the first week of June. They'll keep doing that even though the program is over, but I'll switch to encouragement mode, rather than "you have to get all your chores and reading and piano practicing done before you can have screen time" mode. Now they just have to do chores and Adam has to practice piano.

There are lots of changes going on around here, some of which are nicely facilitating my "breathing time." I decided to step down from the Library Board in June, after 3+ years of service. It was a great experience and helped me get to know our community after we moved here. I enjoyed it, but felt like I needed to put more volunteer hours in at my kids' schools. With all four of them at different schools next year, I'm sure I'll be busy enough.

Then, last Sunday our stake presidency canceled regular church meetings and held a special stake meeting--to reorganize ward boundaries. Every single ward in our stake was shaken up, most pretty drastically. We were moved from our ward of four years to a new ward made up of parts of four old wards. Everyone who was moved to a new ward was automatically released from their callings, so I am no longer the Primary president. I will miss the kids and especially the wonderful ladies I served with in the presidency. We attended our new ward for the first time today--sacrament meeting only. Our new bishop and his wife gave great talks. They introduced themselves and we learned that they met in a "military ward" in Virginia shortly after he returned from the Viet Nam War. (Sound familiar Mom?) He is from Hawaii, originally. By way of introduction, his counselor told us that he likes to give hugs, and he loves luaus. Our first ward activity will be a luau in mid-August. This change is going to take some adjusting for all of us--particularly Adam, who was attached to his deacon friends and Young Men leaders--but it will be an adventure and an opportunity to grow. Jared was happy to learn that several boys he knew from school are in our new ward, and it looks like there are some Ryan's and Dallin's ages too. Hopefully Adam will find some as well. We are sad to leave the friends we made in our old ward, but at least this time we don't have to pack any boxes to do it, and we don't really have to say good-bye either.

I've decided my motto is, "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other gold." We've made so many wonderful friends in all the places we've lived. We love keeping in touch with them. (And living in Utah, we get to see many of them when they pass through. We visited with one family we knew in Texas last week, and we're having dinner with with four different families this week--two we knew in Cincinnati, and two we knew in Texas.) For Family Home Evening last Monday, Jeff took us all to Provo for a little "family history tour." We ate dinner at the Malt Shoppe on University Avenue, then drove around and showed the kids all the apartments we lived while we were dating and first married. Then he talked to the boys about all the places we've moved to, the good friends we've made, the wonderful experiences we've had, and the memories we've made. Then we talked about the changes in our ward and how we have the opportunity to grow and make new friends, just like our family has done many times through the years. It was a fun trip down memory lane, and hopefully an effective lesson. At least it kept the kids attention and they weren't wrestling on the couch, like normal. :-)

I feel like I'm rambling, but I'll finish up with this. We have a 16-year-old German girl coming in a few weeks to live with us and go to our local high school for the coming school year. She is the youngest daughter of a family Jeff first met as a missionary in East Germany. I'm not completely sure I'm prepared to deal with a teenager, or a girl, but we are excited that she got all the red tape worked out so she can come. It will be another adventure for us. Mostly I worry that she will get homesick, but I guess we'll cross that bridge if we get to it. In preparation for her arrival, we have to clean out all the stuff we've been storing in the guest room. So for the moment, I'm spending my breathing time deep cleaning my house, room by room, making space elsewhere to put that stuff. It feels good to dejunk a bit, and my house certainly needs the cleaning.

Prince Dallin

I am proud of myself! I was almost the coolest mom in the neighborhood today. Dallin was invited to a "Tangled" birthday party. His friend, Bailee, who lives in the cul-de-sac behind us, turned 5. The invitation said to dress as a prince or princess. I wasn't quite sure how that was going to happen, but we got the costume box out and it came together.

The shirt is from a pirate costume that is at least two sizes too big for him. I pinned the sleeves up though, and managed to make it work. He was definitely the cutest prince at the party. The moms gushed over him, and all the kids thought he looked just like Flynn Rider from the movie. But Bailee's mom was the coolest mom in the neighborhood. She went all out with the Rapunzel theme, making a super cute cupcake tower, a 20-foot-long braid out of yellow yarn, fun Tangled party favors, and games and activities to match. I'm not sure how impressed Dallin was, but Bailee was in heaven. I couldn't help but think again that it's a good thing I have boys!

Busiest. Summer. Ever. Part 3.

And finally, swim lessons. We just finished the our first session today. Our second session starts after the 4th of July holiday. I considered not doing two sessions this year, but all the boys are doing well and progressing, so we're pushing on and trying to take advantage of that.

Dallin is finally old enough to enjoy the water and not freak out. Last year he lasted less than two days of the Preschool class. Thank goodness he doesn't remember that. He even loves the water slides. He can't do them on his own, but I think he went down 9 or 10 times today with help.

Jared was the best swimmer in his Level 2 class, according to his teacher, our good friend Rachel. Watching him catch on to swimming and become more independent in the water is almost as much fun as seeing him learn to read this past school year. He's moving on to Level 3 next week.

Ryan passed a major milestone in the pool. For a couple years he's struggled to pass his swimming classes because he was afraid to go in the deep end. This year the fear is gone. And he even jumped off the diving board for the first time this week. Now we can hardly get him off it. :-)

Busiest. Summer. Ever. Part 2.

The third week of June is Strawberry Days, a week-long celebration of local heritage. We usually participate in the Children's Parade, go to the carnival, and watch the big parade. This year I took the kids to the carnival while Jeff helped with the concessions at the rodeo as an Elder's Quorum service project. It was the first night, so all the rides were one ticket instead of two or three. There were people everywhere and the lines for the rides were long, but it was worth it, because the boys loved it. I stuck with Dallin, so almost all the pictures I took were of him.





Ryan ran fast enough to earn the right to participate in the Strawberry Days relay races with other 4th grade boys from his school. They ended up taking 2nd place. They started fast, but all of them faded too much at the end. The relay teams from his school got enough points to win the whole group a mission at the Christa McAuliffe Space Center hosted in another elementary school in town. They got a two-and-a-half hour simulation of a real space shuttle mission. I haven't seen what it's like, but it sounds like a lot of fun.

We actually skipped the big parade this year. The boys sacrificed it to go to Cedar City and support me at the Utah Summer Games instead. I've wanted to participate since I volunteered there as a teenager. I finally got my chance--now that I'm old and have little to no competition. Literally. I won a gold medal in Women Masters 40-45 Weightlifting (snatch, and clean and jerk). No one took silver or bronze, because I was the only one in my division and weight class. :-) I snatched 25 kg (55 lbs.), and my best clean and jerk was 38 kg (84 lbs.). It was lots of fun, a goal completed (after a year of Crossfit workouts), and a dream come true. Thanks to Jeff and my boys, my parents, and my brother Enoch and his family for coming to support and cheer for me.

Gold medals earned by TUG club members, l-r: me, Cali, and Coach Moore.