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.

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.

It won't be easy to condense our June activities into one blog post. This will probably have to be Part 1.

My general rule is that the kids can each only participate in one sport and one music at a time. Yes, this is a sanity preserving tactic. No, it isn't working very well at the moment. Adam's baseball season was due to end the first week of June. Mother nature poured rain on us in May though, postponing four games later into June. Then, when the regular season was finally all over, we learned that his team did well enough (5th place in their league) to advance to the state tournament--starting the 12th of July. Thank goodness his coach gave the team two weeks off before they start practicing again next week for the tournament. I love baseball and I enjoy watching Adam play baseball. I never thought I would say I've had enough of baseball. But I have, at least for this year.
That is because swim team started the first week of June. Adam went to his first scout camp that week, skipping baseball and swim team for a few days. I have no pictures of scout camp, but from all reports he had a great time, behaved himself, worked hard, and earned at least four merit badges, including leatherworking, Indian lore, woodcarving, and geocaching. There may have been a fifth as well, but I can't remember it right now.

As much as I love baseball, I'm really hoping to encourage Adam more in swimming. I think he's really got some potential in the pool. In his first meet last Saturday he swam the 50 yd. freestyle, 50 yd. backstroke, 50 yd. breaststroke, 11-12 boys medley relay, and 11-12 boys freestyle relay. He's still getting back in shape, but did pretty well.

I think this would be an awesome photo if it weren't for the yellow line running through the middle of it. It must have been a rope across the pool.

"Swimmers, take your marks."

"Go!"
Jeff was supposed to be a stroke judge, but ended up being the starter for the day. He enjoyed it, but wished he'd brought ear plugs to protect his ears from the whistle and the air horn. (It's interesting the things you can see in a photo that you didn't notice when you were taking it. For instance, the lady to the right of Jeff is my friend, Jenny, and her baby girl. And the boy to the left of Jeff has "Eat my bubbles!" written on his back in marker.)
Adam got a fever and a headache for a couple days after he came home from scout camp. It went away, then came back again three days later. Just when I was ready to take him to the doctor, it went away again. But he's been extra tired--taking naps, cranky, not wanting to even play, let alone do chores. Not completely his normal self. Jeff thought he was just dehydrated. I thought he was just not getting enough sleep. He had commitments though, so I kept sending him to baseball and swim team practice, except when he had a fever. But then this last weekend when he started complaining about a sore throat, I decided to take him in to the doctor after all, even though he didn't have a fever this time. I was imagining all kinds of things that could be wrong with him. His cousin came home from scout camp with swine flu last year. And his other cousin has mono this summer. After comparing scout camp notes, and even showing us his own woodworking merit badge video on his iPhone, Dr./Scoutmaster Liddle diagnosed your basic, garden variety strep throat. Amazing how fast a little amoxicillin can turn things around! I am grateful for nice doctors and antibiotics.

"Do you swim in a pool, to keep yourself cool?"

Hectic

I don't even know where to start catching up, so I guess I'll just jump in. I learned a couple things from our busy, busy June. First, don't sign the kids up for the 9:30 a.m. class of the first session of swimming lessons. It was just too chilly. Most days after lessons I had to send someone into the boys' locker room to get Adam and Ryan out of the warm showers. And we made hot cocoa several times to warm us up when we got home--in June! The second session went a little better--summer finally showed up for real, and I changed their lessons to the 11:50 a.m. class. Second, don't sign up for swimming lessons before baseball is over. We did swimming lessons every morning and baseball almost every night and tried to squeeze the rest of life in between. Swimming lessons ended two weeks ago, and baseball finally ended last Wednesday. Phew.

I thought maybe we could stop running, but it hasn't happened. We spent four days in Cedar and Glendale, visiting with my family and catching "Two Gentlemen of Verona" at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. The kids loved playing with their cousins and Jeff and I enjoyed a little down time. We caught the new Indiana Jones movie one night after the kids were in bed. It was fun and we were glad we saw it on the big screen. Jeff was a good sport to watch nine kids by himself one day while my sister and sister-in-law and I took a break to do lunch and a little shopping. The Slip-n-Slide helped! My mom provided the Shakespeare tickets. She wanted Adam and Ryan to see their first play, so we opted for a comedy. It was a little slow and not as impressive as some other Shakespeare productions I've seen, but the comic fool (Brian Vaughn) and his dog made them laugh, so they weren't too bored. I think they'll be willing to go again in the future, but we'll try to find a more exciting play to keep their interest. Of course the highlight of their weekend was the marshmallow gun fight--thanks Uncle Enoch! (I'll post photos when I get my camera software re-installed.)

I got unpacked and got the laundry done just in time to turn around and go to Jeff's parents for the 4th of July weekend. We had a great barbecue and fireworks with extended family. It's really been a blessing to be close enough to spend time with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins again. While there though, we learned that Jeff's Grandpa Jo had slipped into a coma in Idaho. He passed away yesterday morning. We will miss him, but congestive heart failure had made his quality of life so poor for so long that his passing was a blessing. Again, I'm glad we are close enough that traveling to his funeral this weekend won't be difficult, but we're off and running--again. I have this faint hope that my life will slow down when the kids go back to school in August. Whatever happened to slow, relaxing "summertime and the living is easy"?!

Sold!

We sold our first home today, almost two years after buying our first home. The best thing about it was not having to put it on the market because some friends in our ward wanted to buy it from us. It was a win-win situation, AND nobody had to pay real estate commissions. We think we gave them a decent deal on it for the current market here, plus we got enough out of it for a down payment and closing costs on something in Utah Valley where the market is almost double. Anyway, we hope they feel as blessed as we do. Now all we have to do is finish packing and cleaning, move, find a new home, buy it, and unpack. Somehow I'm not feeling any relief yet....

On a totally different note, Adam and Ryan finished a two-week session of swimming lessons today. Adam was a pretty good little swimmer to start with, but he really improved his crawl stroke. I think he's a better swimmer than I am now. Ryan made the most progress though. He was scared of the water last summer and didn't want to take swimming lessons this year. Once he got started though, he adjusted amazingly quickly. It's so nice when they are finally comfortable on their own in the water.