The Farwell Family

Monday was back to school for the kids and me. I hadn’t helped in the boys’ rooms for over a month, so they were excited to get me back there. In the twins’ classroom, they were starting a new reading plan and their pod of kindergartners divided up between the classrooms. The twins got to stay in their room and we all divided up into three group since we had Mrs. Feeney, her student teacher and me. We did that for ½ an hour and then moved onto their writing folders where they are writing “how-to” papers. Miles and Bennett have both written on one how to be a ninja or “how to sneak”. Between the two of them, they also had how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, how to take care of a dog and how to clean windows. After I was done at their class, I made my way to Lincoln’s classroom, but made a pit stop on the way and took pictures of the pictures they had on the wall for Kirk’s Kids that Miles and Lincoln won.

When I got done at school, it was time to head home and officially start my Half Ironman training with a 30 minute easy bike ride and an easy 15 minute run. It is heart-rate zone based training, and I am supposed to keep my heart rate in zone 2 for the base-building part of the training plan, which lasts around 4 weeks. I originally thought it would be frustrating to start training that slow, but it is probably what I need right now after trying to recover from two bouts of the flu. That afternoon, Jackson had track practice and we dropped off Ellie and Lauren at Mary Immaculate for basketball practice. We had a breakfast dinner and then took Ellie to dance a little early since Andrew and I had a K-Life board meeting. We left Jackson in charge of the boys and they all survived. The meeting went well and I’m excited to see where K-Life goes this semester.

On Monday, we couldn’t find Miles’ backpack so his teacher sent him home with a Wal-Mart sack for his papers. We looked around the house again after school and still couldn’t find it. So Tuesday morning, he told me, “Don’t worry. I have my sack.” He put it on his back like a backpack and we were off to school. I went in with them and we went through lost and found again (I quickly looked through the day before) and I had about given up when I moved a mound of stuff on the floor and spotted the backpack underneath all of it. It was dirty and I told Miles it would be going into the washer as soon as he got home. After my workout that morning, I went to another TriFAHL meeting and then Andrew and I met up for lunch at Maxwell’s. It is always nice when we get to do that. When the kids got home we went through ideas for their Valentine’s and the twins and Lincoln decided on a popular design at our house-the ninja cards with suckers as the ninja head. All of the boys have used it multiple times. Since I needed 60 of them, I got busy getting them all printed off. Ellie and I found a fun one for her online that was making a shooting arrow out of bamboo skewers, a pack of gum and gummy or chocolate hearts. It is kind of sad that this will be her last year doing Valentines. And speaking of her growing up, she has now started wearing some of my clothes. She always wants t-shirts I don’t wear anymore that she can wear to bed. And she has taken a few shirts that have shrunk a bit in the wash and fit her better than they do me. Ellie was supposed to have a ballgame that night, but it ended up being rescheduled because of illness. I was looking forward to watching her play. And later that night, Andrew helped Ellie out with part of her science fair project by using the Dremel tool to cut off toothbrush heads for the bristle bots her group is making.

Jackson has continued to go to weights and Andrew took him Wednesday morning. I got Ellie and the younger boys up early that morning too to try to see the Super Blue Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse. It was cloudy at first and the moon was behind some tree branches, but then it moved a bit and we had a good view just sitting in our family room looking out the back door. They got to see the eclipse happen and see the “blood moon” before it got too light and we couldn’t see anything anymore. I was so glad we finally got to see some of it.

After I got the other kids to school, I made my way to the Aquatic Center to swim laps for the first time since September. I was definitely slower and really hope I can regain my speed quickly. My shoulders were sore afterwards though. Later on, I spent some time cutting out the ninja Valentines and the ninja eyes. I also cut out some little transfer paper designs I made to go on little muslin pouches I bought to go with the gratitude bracelets I bought for my bible study girls. The boys all got to sign their cards when they got home from school. And then Ty and Alex came over with their Switches and they had three going at one time.

Lincoln had his first Y ball practice that night. He and Alex are on a team with his friend Hayze and Hayze’s dad is the coach. Andrew dropped him off while I cleaned up from dinner and I went a little early to pick him up. His team looked pretty young and I think Lincoln took advantage of that and decided he could maybe be the star. They were scrimmaging when I got there and I felt like he was showboating a little bit. So, I had to reign that in a bit while also encouraging him. I was wondering what the game on Saturday would look like.

Andrew had a trial set for Thursday that he had been working hard on, but after all of that preparation and spending a couple hours in court, it was continued for later. I had another swim workout, then went grocery shopping, got it all put away, started dinner in the crockpot and then did a run on the treadmill. We had a busy afternoon/evening of shuttling kids around. Jackson had track until 4:30 and then Ellie went to an extra dance practice at 5-5:30 while Jackson went to small group at 5:30. The twins had their first basketball practice at 6 and then Jackson was picked up at 7. Ellie wanted to go with me to the twins’ practice just because she wanted to watch them. They were pretty excited to finally get the chance to play like their older siblings. They have been practicing dribbling around the house and I feel like it helped. Kindergarten is the youngest age they can play at the Y and they do kindergarten-only teams, so it is pretty entertaining to watch them as it is the first time for most of them. They didn’t know anyone else on their team, so I’m glad they had each other. It was fun to watch them-dribbling all around, learning new skills, trying to shoot, etc. And then they tried to get them to scrimmage at the end and most of them were clueless on what they were supposed to do 😊.

Ellie and her friends had sleepover planned for Friday at Lydia’s house, so she packed up everything she needed in the car before we went to school. I got them dropped off, came home and worked on the treadmill a little bit doing some maintenance before getting my long bike ride in. Andrew came home for lunch and then went to put out hay for his cows. After my bike ride I finished up my purging that I had been working on little by little. So now it is all done except for the storage area. Ellie walked with her friends over to the Primary School where Lydia’s mom worked, so I didn’t have to get in the pickup line early which was nice. Andrew was home from putting out hay when we got back and he gave the boys the option of going to have Larry cut their hair or him cutting it that evening. They decided to have him cut it. While he was working on that, I went to pick up Ellie and take her to swim practice and then after she was done, I took her back to Lydia’s. The next morning, it was up early to get my 60 minute run in before heading to the twins’ first basketball game at 8. It was an entertaining game as you had most of those kids out there having no clue what they were supposed to do. Miles set out first and Bennett got to play. He had the right idea on offense and even make a couple of baskets, but was a little clueless on defense. Miles figured out that he needed to guard his man on defense, but then he didn’t really pay attention to anything else going on and he still tried to guard his man on offense 😊. They had fun and learned a little along the way.

After they were done, we moved over to the other side of the gym to watch Lincoln’s first game. As I mentioned before, he has a pretty young, inexperienced team and it really showed at their game. Lincoln really hustled though trying to cover multiple people since there wasn’t much defense happening on his team. So, we were really proud of his hustle and that he didn’t give up. He did get a little frustrated though.

After the games, we picked up Ellie from Lydia’s and Andrew took the boys and Alex out to the ranch for a little bit while I took Ellie to swim team. Andrew let the boys run on the hay bales while he put some hay out.

And it was a momentous day for Jackson as Andrew forced him to shave his upper lip…or actually shaved it for him.

I ended up doing a last-minute project that I have been wanting to do for a while-recovering our dining room chair cushions. After I picked up Ellie from swim team, we made a quick trip to Hobby Lobby and picked up some fabric. It was my favorite, but it was almost ½ the price as the fabric I liked and it was an indoor/outdoor fabric while the other one was “dry-clean only”. So, when we got home, I took off one of the old covers and used that as a stencil and cut out out new covers and over the rest of the evening, got them all stapled onto the seats. I took a break and we went to eat dinner at La Fuente. The kids were excited since we really don’t go out to eat that often. And when we got back, the watched more of Hunter Street and Dude Perfect while I finished the chairs.

The next morning, we went to church and back home the boys played with their friends, Jackson went to hitting camp and I worked on food for my bible study breakfast coming up on Tuesday and food for our super-simple “Super Bowl Party” with just us. I had the twins write their classmates’ names on their Valentines and Ellie assembled hers.

And Andrew decided to brave the cold and go for a bike ride. He got to Osteopathy and his hands were really hurting from the cold even though he had gloves on, so he came back by our neighborhood and rode some hills before coming home with a frozen beard.

Jackson spent just a few minutes replacing his screen on his Chromebook. He dropped it out of his binder at school and the internal part of the screen cracked. He found a screen online that we ordered for $30 and was able to replace it very easily. Then he had me buy some elastic the he sewed into his binder to hold the Chromebook in place-that home ec. class comes in handy sometimes. That evening, we settled in with our food and watched the Super Bowl even though we never watch the NFL. It was actually a good game though. I worked on office work and was able to get most of it done before half-time and I jetted to do my grocery shopping as soon as the half-time show was over.