Spring Break and Beyond

Wow. I didn’t mean to make it three weeks between postings, it just happened. I had started working on it a couple weeks ago and never got back to it. So, we’ll go back to three weeks ago…Monday we were back at it. I helped at school in the morning and worked on cleaning the house and prepping for bible study the next day. Jackson had track after school, and Sharon was so nice to get him home because we had to leave for Ellie’s game in Moberly at 4. She was in a tournament at St. Pius and it was clear when we saw the other team, that it wasn’t going to go well. It was a 6^th grade team from Our Lady of Lourdes in Columbia and there were almost 20 of them. They trampled us. I believe we had 6 points and Ellie had 2 of them 😊. And that meant we would play the next night at 7:30.

Their bench compared to ours :-)

Tuesday morning was quite a morning. I was up early to get on the bike, but the internet was down, so I had to get that going again. Then the computer wouldn’t open my bike program. I started all of this a little after 5 and didn’t get my ride started until 5:50. I had an hour to ride, so I would be cutting it close. I was able to use the Alexa app on my phone to wake the kids up as I was riding and then with about 2 minutes left in my ride, Bennett came down dressed, but holding his pj pants and underwear with poop on them, letting me know that he had pooped in his pants during the night. He had been complaining of his stomach bothering him some the night before at the game and went to the bathroom a few times while we were there. I sent him to the shower and took care of the pants when I got off the bike. I put them on the sanitize cycle in the wash. Then Jackson said he thought he needed some more Immodium before he went to school and I made sure to give some to Bennett too. He seemed okay otherwise. I didn’t get my shower done before I had to take the kids, so I did it quickly when I got home and was able to get ready right before everyone showed up for bible study. We had a good study and it actually ran later. Then after everyone was gone, I worked on some TriFAHL stuff. Brian wanted us to do a short video introducing ourselves, something I was dreading doing. But, I decided to just get it done, quickly wrote up something and after a few tries, sent the finished product to Brian.

We didn’t have to leave until six that night for Ellie’s game, so I was able to make a quick dinner and we all went. We ended up having some crazy weather that included snow. Jackson’s track practice actually ended up being canceled. Most of it cleared up before we had to leave though. My parents had just gotten back from Disneyland that day, but they made the trek to Moberly to catch the game. We were playing the 5^th grade team of Our Lady of Lourdes this time. We were a little more evenly matched, but we just couldn’t get our shots to fall and ended up losing and that was the end of the season. I hated to see it end because I really enjoyed watching Ellie play.

The twins and Lincoln had their last basketball practice of their season on Wednesday and Bennett had been complaining of not feeling before we left and he ended up sitting out most of the practice as he would start crying when doing anything. I ended up having him stay home on Thursday and he slept most of the morning. We picked up Miles from school and when we came back home, he fell asleep again. So, then when we had to pick up the kids from Little K, he didn’t like being woken up and cried most of the time during the trip. Thankfully, Sharon was picking Jackson up from track and Andrew was able to get him small group. I decided it would probably be best to just keep Bennett home on Friday too. Thankfully, Andrew was able to stay with him in the morning while I did my swim workout and ran to the store. After I got everything put away, he seemed to do be doing well so I decided to go ahead and do my long bike ride which was 3 hours and 15 minutes. I didn’t feel the best starting it and felt worse afterwards. We went to go pick up the kids and I felt horrible waiting in line. Things didn’t get better for me as the evening progressed, but thankfully Bennett was feeling better. Andrew was pretty busy with the law office and the cows, so he wasn’t able to go to the last basketball games. I forced myself to get up and get going so that the boys could make it and they had some great games to finish out the season.

Before we left for the games, I made the decision to cancel our dinner plans for that night. We were supposed to have Andrew’s family in for dinner that night and I knew that wasn’t a good idea. I was thankful to be able to rest the rest of the day instead of making dinner and cleaning the house. We did have kids at our house a lot during the day though...even hanging out in my bedroom while I laid in bed :-). I sent Andrew a text at one point wondering why all the kids seemed to end up at our house having Nerf gun wars and such while I was trying to rest. He sent me one back of what he was doing.

Sunday brought some yucky weather with some sleet/snow. Andrew watched the kids most of the day and they did some work out at the ranch.

The truck got stuck, so Andrew pulled it out with the tractor while Jackson steered the truck.

And Andrew was nice enough to take me grocery shopping that evening since I was still trying to have his family in for dinner on Monday. So, it wasn’t the best start for the kids for Spring Break. And I made it worse by having them help me clean on Monday. But, I was able to rally Monday and spent the day picking up the disaster the house became while I was sick, getting caught up on laundry, making dessert and finally dinner. I also took the twins to the dentist to get some fillings. I was so thankful that they both did really well and made it through without any fighting or crying. Andrew’s parents, Matthew, Kristin and their kids all came in that evening.  And thankfully it was nice enough outside for the kids to all play after dinner. It was nice that it was lighter later since the time changed on Sunday. So, the kids played outside while the adults visited inside. But, I wasn’t feeling that great again as the day went on, so I was grateful Andrew worked on cleaning up while I rested. I was up a lot that night and didn’t get much sleep. But I made myself get up around 7 and started getting ready to go to the pool. I even got my suit on and just ended up climbing back in bed because I felt so bad. I spent the rest of the day there. My mom did offer to come by and pick up the kids though, which they were excited about. Autumn and her kids were in town for Spring Break, so they got to all spend the day together. I was thankful since I had made their break kind of a bummer so far. My mom had dinner for them too. Again, Andrew just had several very busy weeks with several trials and moving and feeding his cattle, so he was appreciative of my mom watching the kids too. Andrew and Jackson ate over there and then came home while the others stayed for a sleepover. But, on their way home, they stopped at Smoothie King and got me a smoothie with immunity boosters 😊. The next day we were supposed to go to Scottie’s Fun Spot but we rescheduled for the next day since I still wasn’t feeling great. But I was up and moving and made my way over to my parents in enough time to see Kaitlin and her kids for a few minutes before they left. Although we didn’t have the best weather, the kids did get a chance to get out and play around…they played in my parents’ backyard and rode bikes up in the church parking lot.

Finally on Thursday, we made our way to Scottie’s Fun Spot. And the day before, I sent Tiffany a text to see if they wanted to join us since Ty had been over several times and was getting kind of bored with break. It seemed we were some of the few who didn’t leave town. So, they met us there too and the kids spent the next couple of hours playing laser tag, bumper cars, laser maze, playing in the ball pit and arcade games.

And once they had enough of that and were hungry, we made our way to Steak-n-Shake for lunch. We were split up into three booths and had such a nice waiter who was so patient with all the kids. My kids loved it. We hardly ever eat at Steak-n-Shake and Jackson and Ellie said the meal really filled them up. My parents ordered pizza that night and they weren’t even that hungry. Then that night we went to see A Wrinkle in Time. It was actually better than most of us thought it would be. Ellie really liked it and Jackson was surprised that he liked it. But there was a part towards the end that scared the twins and they were both wanting to sit on my lap.  I was so ready to get to bed when we got home.

At this point, I really can’t remember much about Friday except that I did try to start working out again. I was so frustrated at having to miss several of my training workouts. Since I had been out almost a week, I had to start back a little slower, so my 3 hour 45 minute bike ride, ended up being a 1 ½ hour bike ride. Our big plan for the day was to clean the K-Life house, so we eventually made our way there in the pouring rain. Briley and Baylor met us there because they had to get service hours for the volunteer certificates. I divided up jobs of bathrooms, vacuuming, dusting and windows. I had to keep redirecting their energy, but we eventually got it done. Definitely not perfectly, but it was cleaner than when we first showed up. And I meant to get a picture of the cleaning crew but only ended up with this one.

The kids went out to the ranch for a little bit Saturday morning, but first they checked out the mess the leprechauns  left for St. Patrick’s Day. Later that afternoon, I eventually got on the treadmill and did a 2 hour run. Ellie pleaded with me part-way through to let her text Autumn and see if Briley could come over, which she was fine with. Baylor also wanted to come over and Autumn dropped them off around 4. They played all over the house and even got outside a little bit. They played some Uno, laser guns, nerf wars, played the guitar, etc. And I made green pancakes that night for dinner to cap off our St. Patrick’s Day.

Sunday we went to church and that is about all I remember. It was the last day of Spring Break, so I’m sure it was epic…no, probably not. And Monday we were back at it…up early to ride and run, kids up, get ready, do chores, make lunches and off to school. I was back to helping at school in the morning and then made a Hobby Lobby run and found a few things for Easter decorations. That afternoon, I dropped Ellie and Lauren off at Bellacinos for their basketball team pizza party. They just enjoyed some time together, gave the coaches their thank yous and received Hawk Camel Bak water bottles. Andrew picked them up while I finished dinner, then it was off to soccer registration and drop Ellie off at dance. It was hard to believe they were starting soccer the next week as it was so cold standing out there to finish registration. I will probably be spending a lot of practice in the car and just pray the twins have fun and don’t whine. Tuesday was another busy day with an early workout, take the kids to school and then we started back to bible study after taking time off for Spring Break. I had to move us along though as I had to get to a TriFAHL meeting around 10:15. We got some stuff knocked out and I left with a list of things to research and made my way to Ray Miller to work the book fair for a couple hours. Ellie was just starting lunch, so I stopped to say hi to her. I didn’t realize it was just a teacher preview day, so we didn’t have much business. Actually, our only sale was Ellie who came in to visit and convinced me to buy her a couple books-actually it was buy one, get one, so she lucked out. Then it was back home and finally time to eat lunch and do a few things before heading back to school to pick up the kids. We had planned to take the kids to my parents after school so that Andrew and I could go to Jackson’s first track meet in Macon. But we had some cold, yucky weather and they ended up canceling the meet. Jackson still did have practice though. So, our afternoon/evening opened up except for Ellie’s dance classes. Wednesday was a much nicer day, thankfully. It was nice to see the sun. I swam in the morning and then ran by the office to look at some of the TriFAHL stuff we had stored there. I did some research on various things for the race when I got home and then went to school to run around the loop. I was supposed to run on Thursday, but the weather was better on Wednesday and allowed me to run outside, so I switched it up. I did an hour run around the loop and then got in line to wait to pick up Ellie. And with the nicer weather and the sun being out later, the kids got to enjoy playing outside while I made dinner. Andrew had them get out their baseball gear and got some practice in.

Thursday was another busy afternoon for us. It was one of those days that had a lot of sign-ups-drop off hot dogs for a book fair event, Little K snacks, YCW snacks and pizza for Jackson’s small group. After school, Jackson had track and Ellie and Lincoln had Little K. So, I just had to pick up the twins but we also had to pick up the meat stick order from their fundraiser. Jackson was done with track early, so Andrew picked him up. Then I took him with me to pick up the kids from Little K so we could just drop him off for small group then instead of having to come back in 20 minutes. And he was also able to carry in the big box of granola bars and cookie packs we got for Young Christians Weekend. Then the rest of us were off the Mary Immaculate for the Mother Daughter basketball game. I told myself that I couldn’t go too hard because I didn’t want to risk getting hurt before my race. We still had a lot of fun though. Our mom team was better than I thought we would be and we definitely won even though the score showed otherwise 😊. And Dan was the ref and made it fun with his outrageous calls. He told Ellie to go ahead and shoot and he would always call a foul on me even if I didn’t foul. It was a fun night!

Friday was more yucky weather. Jackson was supposed to go to the 8^th grade track meet in Macon, but it was canceled too. I was dreading my workout that day- a 4 hour 15 minute bike ride followed by a 15 minute run. I read the next few chapters of our bible study book, paid some bills, did some TriFAHL stuff and watched a couple motivational movies on Prime. It was pretty miserable by the end though and I ended up doing 60 miles-so more than what I will do on race day. It actually felt good to run 😊. My workout is about all I got done before I had to pick up the kids from school. Ellie did walk over to the Primary with Lydia so I didn’t have to wait in that line. And since the track meet was canceled, we got to go the Primary Art Show and see some of the boys’ artwork. They also had tables set up with blank notes for people to leave “letters” complimenting their artwork and she made a mailbox to put them in to be delivered the next week.

Then we went over to my parents because Lissy was in town and had Mexican and visited with her for a while before heading home. Andrew took the kids out to the ranch the next morning but they weren’t gone too long. Ellie left around noon to go with Lydia and a few other girls to Columbia for Lydia’s birthday. They got to go to Sky Zone and then stayed overnight at a hotel where they swam and had pizza. The boys went to the office with Andrew for a little bit and then spent the rest of the day playing with friends. I had my long run that day and eventually got around to doing it. By the time I was done with that, I was beat. The two long workouts just took it out of me. I was wondering if it is a fueling issue and needing to figure out how to do that party better. That night, we just ordered Colton’s for dinner and didn’t do too much. Sunday morning I got a text from Tiffany saying, “Look who we ran into at breakfast.”

They were in Columbia for basketball and actually ended up in the same hotel as Ellie. We were then off to church and I went grocery shopping. The rest of the day went as usual. Ellie got home around 2 and said she had a lot of fun, then she fell asleep on the couch even in the midst of the boys and their friends running all over the house as our house has become the one to play in a majority of the time whether it is building forts, nerf wars, playing on the Switch, laser tag, etc.