Many Beginnings

We had a week of beginnings: 

• Jeff began his 11th year as a high school French teacher and returned to work on Friday, August 20th.
• High school cross country began on Monday, August 23rd with our first official practice of the season. This is Jeff's 6th year of coaching cross country, and my 4th year as his assistant.
• The first day of school was Wednesday, August 25th.
• Amber began first grade--the only year she'll ever be at the same school as a sibling.
• Rose began fifth grade--her final year of elementary school.
• Jay began seventh grade--right in the middle of middle school.
• Jay began his first-ever season of middle school cross country on Thursday, August 26th. 
• I began having six-plus full hours of home-alone time during the day. 

Those are the stats of the week. It was an intense week! Adjusting to a new schedule is always tiring. 

On Tuesday, we had one final hurrah to summer with the cousins, tie dyeing t-shirts at Grama Leslie's house. The kids had fun with their cousins and didn't get too much dye on their skin.

On Wednesday, once everyone was at school, I stood in our silent house and felt that hauntingly familiar left-behind feeling. It was a total "now-what?" moment. For years I have agonized over what to do when all of my kids are in school full-time, but I have never felt strongly about anything in particular. Since the pandemic is definitely not over, and the near future could bring any host of additional school restrictions/closures, I decided not to make any big hopeful plans for myself this school year. I will enjoy full-time in-person school for as long as it lasts (and hopefully it will last all 180 days). My plan is simply to take it day by day, and decide how to use my time as each day comes rather than building large castles in the clouds about the Big Wonderful Things I'm going to accomplish this school year. So far I have done a lot of cleaning and organizing. Our house is going to be immaculate by the end of next week, haha. I am not even really thinking about what I'm going to do once I have everything cleaned, purged, and organized. Like I said, day by day. 

The first thing I did when I was home alone was update and print out the kids' school journal book pages. Normally we print and fill them out before school starts, but I didn't even think of it until Rose mentioned it right before she left for school. 

We have a good group of kids on our cross country team. Much to my relief, there are less than 30 kids on the team. As the first day of official practice drew nearer, I was surprised to find that I was not terrified! Something shifted inside me over the past year that made me not as scared of teenagers. I can't say that I am any better at being in front of them or communicating with them, but I am not scared of them. I am still nervous whenever I stand in front of the team because it's a group, but I am not scared of the individuals teenagers that make up the team. It only took me four years to get to this point, haha. Baby steps. Maybe in another four years I'll learn how to actually talk to a group of teenagers?

Basically, my day has become a rush in the mornings, getting everyone off to school by 8am. Then there's a quiet 6 hour lull, after which I go to cross country practice and the rest of the day is go-go-go with coaching and kids and piano lessons and dinner and bedtime. It's so totally not balanced, haha.

The wildfire smoke was in and out daily again this week. The air was unhealthy in the middle of the day, and the smoke tapered off in the mornings and afternoons. Even though the elementary kids had to have at least one indoor recess per day, we were able to have outdoor cross country practice every afternoon.

PICTURES:

View from my bedroom window: the mint field behind our house was cut this week. It smelled amazing.

On the way home from the first day of cross country practice, I took a commemorative picture.

View from a run: that brown smudge along the horizon is the smoke drifting in. I decided to see if I can finally run a 5k in less than 20 minutes this year. This is a goal I've had since college but never achieved, and even though I often feel old and creaky, I am still plenty young and fit enough to pull off a PR, so I figured, why not now? I am going to do my best to do all of the cross country workouts each week, to get my body ready for the big sub-20 challenge. Since us coaches don't run with the team during their speed workouts, I did a snazzy snappy set of cruise intervals on my own before practice on Tuesday. It was hard, but I also felt strong, which was an awesome powerful feeling.

Tie dyeing shirts with Grama Leslie.

The little bundles of tied-up dyed shirts looked funny on the grass.

Backyard cousin beachball volleyball

Toby the dog is looking rather venerable with his white face. Normally I avoid my in-laws' pets because dogs smell and cats make me feel allergic, but Toby was just so quiet and peaceful next to me on the couch, I had to take a picture using portrait mode on my phone.

He has soulful butterscotch eyes. He is also older than Jay. I always like old dogs better than young jumpy peppy yippy dogs. They are restful.

Jeff gave the kids back-to-school father's blessings on Tuesday night. I made them do a group hug for a picture afterwards.

Jay the seventh grader, ready for his first day.

Jeff humored my first-day-photo-rama and let me take a picture of him before he left. It was the first day of his second decade as a teacher!

Amber the first grader. First grade seems so much MORE than kindergarten. It's an actual GRADE! Amber seems so tall and old!

Rose the fifth grader. She has the same class, same teacher for the third year in a row in her highly capable program, and she felt confident and excited to go back to school. I can't believe this is her last year of elementary school!

Sisters!  It was actually kind of chilly on the first morning of school--very unusual for late August in the Yakima Valley.

Waiting for the bus on the second day of school. The school didn't have our bus route figured out on the first day of school, so we drove to school. On day two, we waited for the bus together to make sure they got on the right one (lots of school buses pass by our house). On day three, the girls waited and got on their bus all by themselves.

The bus routes were still in flux, so we went out to the end of our driveway early in order to make sure we didn't miss the bus. We waited for 20 minutes.

Rose filled in this questionnaire at school and I just loved how it her enthusiasm showed through, even in her non-capitalized, unpunctuated responses.

Cross country practice! I am the caboose, monitoring from behind and trying not to think of all the possible injuries that we reviewed during my first aid and CPR training.

During school one day, I moved all of the girls' art supplies out of the overflowing shelf in the kitchen into the spare bedroom closet. (Aka the girls' former bedroom.) Hopefully we won't have so many papers and paints and markers constantly scattered across our kitchen table now.

Push-up technique lesson from coach Dad.

Rose wanted a treat yesterday, so I told her to make one, and she actually did! She's good at making chocolate chip cookies.

Rose and Amber, enjoying the "new" art room.

And, the school book pages:

Last night I sat on the front porch and enjoyed the cool breeze and the fiery sunset. The next seven weeks are going to be intense with cross country meets every single Saturday! My goal is to find peace when I can.