The Farwell Family

So, last week Jackson started into basketball without much of a break after football. They started tryouts Monday evening and there were around 25 kids trying out for 12 spots. While he was at basketball, Ellie had dance and Lincoln had soccer. And that is kind of the way the next few days went. Jackson finished up tryouts Wednesday and he was feeling pretty good about everything. He would practice everyday after school, before tryouts. I scrimmaged with him one time and he really had improved since last year. I was feeling good for him too. Our only issue was that the coach actually had a son in Jackson’s grade and he had been on a traveling team with several other boys in the class and it was probably pretty likely that the coach would be pretty biased. They were supposed to find out who made the team Thursday morning before school, but they ended up giving each kid a letter saying whether they had made it or not. When Jackson got in the car, I wasn’t expecting that and wasn’t quite ready. He opened it up, started reading and his face just dropped…he didn’t make the team. It had panned out the way we thought it might, but had hoped and prayed it wouldn’t. Jackson was crushed and as we heard a little more over the next few days, it was all totally unfair.

Andrew and I went to Columbia on Thursday and Jackson was wanting to go with us. We figured he should be in school though even if it was hard to go after the news. We left after dropping off the kids at school and Buddy at my parents’. We stopped at Sam’s first and picked up an order for my mom and then made our way to Cyclex to pick up my new tri bike and get it fitted. We worked on finding different shoes and a saddle and three hours later were all done. It was pretty exciting and the bike was awesome. We didn’t have time to do anything else, so we grabbed some drive-thru and made our way back to Kirksville. We went straight to the school and Jackson came out and met us. He was pretty impressed with the bike. We picked up the twins too and Ellie and Lincoln went to Little K. The plus about not making the team for Jackson was that he got to go to small group that night. And he actually stayed for club too and enjoyed it. That evening, the other kids enjoyed our continued nice weather and played outside until dark. I got to visit with some of the moms, which we hadn’t done in a while.

Friday I got a run in before doing some shopping. Then I decided to take my bike out for the first time. It took a little while to get used to shifting on the aero bars, but I’ll get it eventually. I was disappointed that my new shoes didn’t keep my toes from going numb and my new saddle hurt. So, it is back to trying to figure out what is going to work. That evening, we went over to my parents’ house and Sara and her family came into town. They picked up AJ’s on their way, so my kids were pretty happy.  The kids got to have a sleepover with their cousins and I picked them up the next morning. The twins actually ended up going to Pella with my parents and the rest of them for Lola’s birthday party. The rest of the kids had activities the rest of the day. We started out with Jackson’s football banquet. He and Andrew went earlier and got his equipment checked in and then Ellie, Lincoln and I came later for the banquet part. We brought some soda, cups and a dessert (which Bennett helped me make) and they had pizza. Everyone ate first before starting the awards and the coach took his time getting started even though I tried to will him through my mind to get him to start sooner 😊. He decided to call each kid up and give them a participation certificate, then talk about each team’s season and finally a few awards. I had to leave soon after it started since I was supposed to help set up the concession stand for the soccer tournament at 1. Lincoln came with me since his first game was at 1:30. I found out when the others got to the games that Jackson won the award for the Most Improved 7^th Grader for the season. There were a lot of people who were pretty proud of him.

Ellie’s games changed times since they ended up having her play in the u14 league since they didn’t have enough girls. They just did 3v3 and the games went pretty quickly. They each had two games and we ended up being there from one to almost 5:30. Andrew did leave between games for a little while to let Buddy out. The kids did well though and hustled. And then Lincoln found his teacher and talked to her during all of Ellie’s last game.

After the games, I rushed home to get food ready to take to Leah’s house. Her grandma had passed away and she was having some family over to her house, so some of us from small group made some food to take over. The others dropped their food off at our house while we were gone and I finished up everything and ran it over to the house that evening. Andrew and Jackson went for a bike ride to get Jackson out on the new gravel bike. When they got home we went to La Fuente for dinner and then to my parents since they were all back from Pella. It ended up raining most of the night, so my hopes of getting to the pumpkin patch on Sunday were dashed. I did get a lot of other things done including clearing the Legos out of the old office and organizing them in the playroom. Jackson and I also went through his room to clear stuff out and get it ready to repaint it and redecorate a bit. It has been the same color since we moved in almost 10 years ago. We sadly took down the big picture of Busch Stadium. I hated to see it go, but Jackson was ready. I ordered him some new bedding and we need to figure out some new pictures. With all the cleaning out and reorganizing, I had some stuff to post on swap shop and got it all sold.