My last post was right before Jackson's birthday. So hard to believe he turned 15 and is just a year away from getting his license. We fit in a quick party between practices and Jackson was satisfied. A low-key party is his kind of thing. The exciting thing about turning 15 is being able to get your permit. Jackson had to put that off a bit since he had track practice, then football camp for the younger kids where he got to help out. I eventually took him on the last day of school and after failing his first attempt, he studied a little while and took it again. He was so excited he passed, but we still had to go to the DMV to pay for his permit and finalize it. It was super busy when we went by, so we came back later after picking up the kids from school. It was still busy, but we got in before they closed and he got to drive me home. He was a bit nervous :-).
Jackson had several more track meets through April and May. I loved being able to go watch him but it did take up a lot of time as most of the meets were at least 1 1/2 hours away and the meet would last around 3 hours. We got to host the conference track meet in Kirksville and Jackson placed 2nd in high jump and third in hurdles. He had a great season and is already looking forward to next track season.
The twins and Lincoln also got to participate in a kids' track meet that the city puts on. The twins only got to do the 50 yard dash, but Lincoln got to do a few other events. They all did well in them and Lincoln placed in a couple of the races. The three of them also participated in the kids' bike race for the Criterium again. It was low attendance as the forecast called for snow that morning, so I felt bad for Kirk, the race organizer. He kept at it though and we had offered to help out, which meant helping tear down everything since the later races were canceled because of low numbers.
While Ellie didn't participate in any of those events, she did decide to buy herself a Garmin and has spent a lot of time taking the cross bike out for rides around the neighborhood. She would like to go farther, but we don't feel it is safe at this time. Andrew has taken her out to the lake for a couple rides too.
Ellie along with Lincoln and the twins did manage to get some soccer practices and games in even though we've had a very wet spring. Thankfully, the school let us use the football field for the last few weeks of games because the soccer fields were so wet. It did seem like a bit of an abbreviated soccer season though with all the rain-outs. Then with baseball season starting, they just gave up on rescheduling anything. They all had good seasons though and continue to grow and learn. I would say it is one of all of their favorite sports.
In the midst of all of that, we celebrated Easter. We had an Easter dinner Friday evening with Andrew's family with a little Easter egg hunt afterwards. Easter morning, the kids had to find their Easter baskets and then we went to church. We had another Easter egg hunt after church for the kids and then my parents had one that evening when they got back into town. Ellie did well and made a decent amount. She actually used that money to buy her Garmin.
The next weekend, Monica came into town along with Dave and their son, Wyatt. He was doing a college visit at Truman and they stayed the night with us on Friday night. It was great to visit for a little while, although it was short. I made breakfast for them the next morning and then we all had to head off to our activities. That Sunday we went up to Pella for Owen's First Communion since Andrew is his Godfather.
We also got to celebrate Mother's Day by having a brunch at our house Sunday after church. Lissy, Molly and Brad were in town, so they came along with my parents and Andrew's family came too. Andrew and the kids gave me a couple massage gift certificates. Then Caroline and her kids came into town for a few days the next week. My mom ended up having laser surgery on her eyes the day they needed a ride back to Iowa to fly out, so I drove them all up to Pella and we met Kaitlin and Sadie for lunch.
Our big event that took of most of my time (and received a lot of help from Andrew and the rest of the family) was the TriFAHL. I don't know how many hours we spent on it all together, but it was a big endeavor and it all paid off. There were a lot of nerves during race week as the forecast didn't look the best, but it all worked out. We ended up with over 50 registrations, which was a great improvement from the year before. A few days before the race, we put together the race bags. Friday evening, a couple people worked packet pick-up and some of us worked on picking up supplies and getting the course ready. We picked up the bike racks and other equipment from the TCC and had planned to set up the bike racks but there were several cars in the parking lot. So, we split up and some marked the bike course and some marked the run course. Andrew and I went back later that night to put up the bike racks. He had made some braces with 2x6s and they worked well to help keep them a little more stable. We were up about 4:45 the next morning and got to work again. We had some good help getting all the tables and supplies set up and also putting signs out on the course. Everything ran pretty smoothly until I realized I made a mistake on timing. The men had already started the swim before I realized it. I had to gather all the timers and restart the race clock and fix all the iPads, but it worked. As soon as I finished, I went to work adjusting all the times on the app with the times from the backup timers. It took a little longer to get the results than what I wnated and we didn't have the live timing like I had hoped, but it worked. Thanks to everyone's hard work, we had a successful event and had a lot of positive feedback. I loved that Ellie and Jackson were able to join me in participating. Ellie did the swim for a team and she was the third fasted female. Jackson did the whole thing and got second in his age group. He had to change a flat tire, so he feels like he should be able to beat me next year. I thought this was going to be the year I didn't get first place overall, but I was able to pull it out. I think it was the extra adrenaline and then knowing I needed to finish fast and fix my mistake. We had a good awards ceremony and then had some wonderful help and tearing everything down. Then it was onto soccer games.
And as I mentioned before, we had a clash of soccer season and baseball season for a few weeks. It wasn't as bad as usual because of the weather and a lot of practices ended up being canceled. The twins were excited to end up on a team with a couple of their friends from their class. We've only had a few games so far...broken record...rain and more rain.
The boys also got to participate in football camp. The twins went at the beginning of the week and Lincoln went in the last half. Jackson helped with the camps since he will be in high school next year. The first day I picked up the twins, they were a muddy mess. The next day they took them to the actual field instead of the practice field. They also had a combine competition and Lincoln got first place for the third graders. They all had a lot of fun.
In the midst of the end-of-school activities, we also said good-bye to our old K-Life leaders and hello to our new ones. We had a bbq at our house for Jackson's small group and Wade and the same night we had Ellie's small group all meet up together with Laura at Mi Casa to say good-bye to her. Jackson and Ellie were sad to see Wade and Laura go. They were great small group leaders for them. Then over Memorial Day weekend, we helped the new K-Life leaders, Joel and Megan, unload their truck. They had to go back to KC to finish out the school year and will be back to Kirksville in June. I'm looking forward to them starting and seeing what they bring to the ministry.
With the end of school comes field trips and field days. I joined Ellie on her RAP field trip to St. Louis. They went to the Junior Achievement Financial Park where they worked through a simulation of building a budget based off of their assigned career, family situation and income. I was in charge of walking them through home owners and auto insurance and mortgages. It was an interesting set-up but maybe not something we needed to travel to St. Louis for. Ellie had another field trip to the Clarence Cannon Dam, but I also had to do Lincoln's field trip to Hannibal. We went through Mark Twain's boyhood home and the museum before eating lunch at a park and then heading to the cave. They had the flood gates up at the river so you couldn't walk over to it.
The twins field trip was just to the conservation department. They had a few different activities that they did, followed by a nature hike. I was grateful for another mom who let me borrow her mud boots for the hike, because, again, we'd had a lot of rain and it was a muddy mess.
Lincoln also had a field day the day before his field trip. I worked it by raking the long jump pit and recovering the softballs and soccer balls they threw. Lincoln did well in the running events. He got third in the 50 meter, 2nd in the 75 meter and 1st in the 100 meter. They also did a 400 meter fun run and he got 1st in it too, although he said he felt like he was going to throw up when he was done.
In the midst of the end of school craziness, I decided to throw my first Olympic distance triathlon in the mix. What was supposed to be a pretty busy weekend ended up getting mostly rained out. It was supposed to be opening weekend for baseball and our final soccer games, but they all got canceled. It was kind of nice because that gave me more time to prep everything and get to St. Louis a little earlier than I had originally planned. We had packet pickup at the old Ram’s practice center and then we went to drop off my bike at the race site at Creve Coeur Park. It was super windy and still calling for rain the next morning. After we dropped off my bike, we went to Bella’s ballgame for a little bit Then it was onto Sara’s house where the kids played and I prepped all my stuff for the next day. We just ordered pizza and hung out the rest of the evening. I was up at 4:45 and we left around 5:30. We were doing pretty well until we got close to where we needed to turn off and the traffic stopped. There were a few people hopping out of cars to walk to the transition area, but we got there just in time. I quickly set up my transition area, the fastest I’ve ever had to do that. They were telling us we had to get out of the transition area, so I grabbed my wetsuit and went. It was probably 10 minutes between getting my wetsuit on and my wave starting for the swim. I wasn’t prepared for the swim at all and it was pretty choppy. It was the hardest swim I’ve ever done. When I would breath, I could see lots of people hanging on kayaks. I was hoping once I turned the corner to head back to the shore it would be better, but then I felt some sort of undercurrent and felt like I wasn’t going anywhere. I eventually made it back to shore and was met with my cheering family. I didn’t rush through transition as quickly as I had planned since the swim took more out of me than it usually does. Then it was out for the bike, which was also tough because of the wind. I was thinking they were around 15-20mph where others were stating faster. It was an out and back on 141 where they had the inside lane closed off. SO the way out was average around 15 mph while the way back was 25mph. So I really enjoyed the way back. I ended up averaging around 18 mph for the 25 miles. Then it was onto the run, 6.2 miles. Thankfully it was mostly shaded and I just kept going and kept my promise to myself to not walk. My lack of training definitely had an effect, but I did finish under my goal time of 3 hours at 2 hours 59 minutes and 11 seconds. And the best part was having my family there with their awesome signs Molly made. We didn’t stick around too long as I knew I didn’t place in the top three for my age group. I actually was 9th out of 24. So, we grabbed my stuff and headed to Sara’s so I could shower. We ate some leftover pizza for lunch and then ran by Heidi’s so we could see her new house. It was beautiful and my kids were jealous 😊.
Back to the end of school, Lincoln had basketball camp during the last week. They went right after school, so that was convenient not having to wait in the pick up line for him. He had a lot of fun with it. The twins had their End of School Year Celebration where the signed the Pledge of Allegiance and did some class reading before we got to sit with them and go through their portfolio of work from the year. They were so excited to read some of it to me.
Jackson has his 8th Grade Promotion the night before the last day of school. He really didn't want to go, but we made him. He was recognized for being the Presidential Academic Excellence Award, Optimist Student of the Month, and participating in football, basketball and track. There was also an HS by his name, but we couldn't figure out what it was for :-).
Then Lincoln had his MAP celebration on the last day of school. The third graders were up first in the morning and we originally set up outside, but then the storms moved in and so did we. They had several inflatables in the gym and other games throughout the school they could play at. They got to do it for 2 hours and then it was onto the other grades.
Before I picked up Jackson to go get his permit, I decorated the car with balloons and our SUMMER banner. We picked up the others from school just a few minutes early because a lot of people were going to Dairy Queen and I knew we didn’t have time to wait in a long line if we wanted to get Jackson back to the DMV. And I was right, they did get quite the line going and we were able to get out of there in pretty good time.
We were supposed to have three ball games that night and ended up just having the twins’ game. Then the next morning, Autumn and I took Ellie, Lincoln, Briley and Baylor to a shooting clinic in Hannibal. It was just 2 hours and then we picked up lunch and were back in town around 1:00.
We had dinner at my parents and Kaitlin and her family came into town. We also got the news that Molly got engaged. On Monday we went out to Tom and Mary’s to have an early birthday celebration for Lauren before they left town. Then Lauren came into town and had a sleepover with Ellie. It was a big night for the twins as they got to have their first sleepover with several of their friends from school. They were so excited and Miles came up with the best timeline for their evening that included a “pee poop break”. They had their friends Jack, Noah, Lucas and Elijah over and they had been planning it at school for a while. We had pizza and they played outside for a while. It would have been nice if they could have played in the yard with some soccer, but it was a swamp. Andrew put some of the extra rubber tiles out in the yard to form a path to the ninja course and basketball court and it definitely helped keep things a little less muddy. They also spent time in the basement playing basketball, drawing and playing video games. I escaped for a little bit and took Ellie and Lauren to Marshalls. There were a couple boys that weren’t quite ready to do a sleepover and went home around 10pm even thought they weren’t ready to go. We were sad to say goodbye to Noah as he was moving out of town at the end of the month. We are hoping he will be back when his dad is done with his residency in three years. They all gave him a big group hug before he left. Then Jack went home to as he had been in KC all weekend. We turned on a movie about 10:30 and they settled down…or at least I thought. They told me they were up in the middle of the night playing video games. Elijah had to leave around 7:45 and they were still sleeping hard when I went downstairs to wake him up. I had some donuts for them and he grabbed one before he left. The others slept a little longer and enjoyed some donuts before Lucas headed home. Surprisingly, the boys didn’t crash during the day like I thought they would.
The week after Memorial Day, Jackson and Ellie started their basketball camps. They were both in the evening, so we had to juggle around ballgames a little bit. We also had more torrential rain during the week which led to flooding throughout town where they even had to close Baltimore for a little bit. The flooding in surrounding towns was devastating. The map of roads closed in Missouri was crazy.
Then the end of the week finally brought some sunshine and Ellie’s final dance rehearsal and recital. The rehearsal was Friday night and we ended up having 2 baseball games too. Andrew took care of the baseball games while I took Ellie to the rehearsal. Then the next morning we headed out to Annie and Brad’s to load them up for their move to Florida. I got some easy breakfast items to take out for people to eat while we were packing up. We were so fortunate to have them here for almost a year. Annie and I grew much closer from doing bible study together and meeting up for “coffee”. It was nice for all the cousins to get to spend more time together and I’m glad they will get to do that with the other side of the family now. The load up process went pretty smoothly and we were able to get back home around 11.
That evening was Ellie's dance recital. She wasn't too excited, but still did a wonderful job. I think Lissy was really excited to got to come watch the almost 4 hour production. And we had to say our goodbyes to the Brimmers during intermission. They were leaving early the next morning.
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