Packed Week

The middle school cross country season ended last week, but high school cross country is still going full steam ahead, along with what feels like everything else as well. We are in the thick of such a full busy happy tiring time right now. Our week was packed to the brim! Pretty much everything happens after 3pm too, which makes for a rather intense final five hours of each day. This post is a day-by-day breakdown of our week, with corresponding pictures under each day.

Monday was cross country practice, followed by Rose and Amber's piano lessons. We also squeezed in a trip to the library to pick up a book I had on hold and Pepe's Bakery for fresh donuts. Since we're nearing the end of the high school cross country season, practices are shorter to get the team's legs ready for the big district meet this coming week. So we had time to burn between cross country practice and piano lessons. Once we had our donuts, we went to Denny Blaine Park around the corner from Pepe's to eat the sweet treats. Denny Blaine Park is possibly the most underwhelming of parks. It is one tiny city block, with minimal everything. But it's a perfect place to park and let off steam because it's between the piano teacher's house and Pepe's Baker. We've stopped at Denny Blaine Park many times.

Classic Pepe's pic, with Amber being her full authentic self as always: the Amber-coon! She found this raccoon mask somewhere on her walk from elementary school to the high school. I've learned to just roll with it.

Sunny donut selfie with my son.

Rose, on the frog. Denny Blaine Park has one frog, one skinny jungle gym, two swings, and a miniature basketball court, with a few patches of grass between.

Rose for the photo bomb.

Amber, finishing her donut while two stray dogs charge through the park, yipping and barking. Sunnyside is nothing if not consistent.

This is how Amber starts most days: with a terrifying tangle in her lively locks.

Tuesday we managed to pull together a slightly more meaningful family Come Follow Me lesson before school in the morning (a feat in and of itself within the book of Jeremiah). Grama Leslie picked the kids up from school while Jeff and I took our high school team to a league cross country meet in Moses Lake, WA (a 2 hour bus ride on curvy bouncy minor highways through barren central Washington--4 hours roundtrip). We left at noon and got home to our house at 9:30pm.

Our family art collage based on Jeremiah 31:33. Contribution credits, clockwise from the bottom: Shaina, Jay, Amber, Rose, Jeff.

The cross country meet was held at Blue Heron Park, which is right on the shoreline of Moses Lake. This picture shows a line of runners racing along with the lake behind them.

Oct 18, 2022: our girls team captain, Jenny Lopez finishing her race in the melty molten golden afternoon sunshine. I took almost this exact same picture of Jenny four years ago when she was a freshman...

Oct 22, 2019: freshman Jenny Lopez finishing the same XC course.

Coach date, sitting together on a picnic table while waiting for our runners to pass by in their race. We wear matching shirts on our coach dates, just like in Asian dramas. Haha!

The coach date continues. How idyllic is this hand holding shadow picture? Autumn leaves, favorite human, golden sunshine. It doesn't get much better. Normally Jeff sprints around the course repeatedly throughout every race, but since he's still regaining his health after long covid, he has slowed down somewhat this season, which translates to more together time. Which I love.

The still-under-construction new Moses Lake Temple, taken from the school bus window on the way home. I love the design. At stake conference earlier this month, it was officially announced that this will NOT be our temple. Even though this is a beautiful temple, I'm relieved that we won't be in the Moses Lake temple district because it takes 2 hours to get there, as opposed to the 45 minutes it takes us to drive to the Columbia River Temple.

Wednesday was a slight reprieve with just one commitment after cross country practice: kids' church activities from 6:30-8pm. The primary kids met to practice for the primary program and the teenagers met with the missionaries to learn about serving missions. Jay said he really enjoyed listening to the missionaries speak and asking them questions.

Thursday after cross country practice, I took the kids to the middle school for Jay and Rose's parent teacher conferences. The conferences were student-led, so Rose showed me a sleek slide show that she made on her school Chromebook laptop detailing her grades in each class and her plans to improve. She relished telling me she had no plans to improve "since I have straight As!" She is looking forward to getting better at playing the cello in her school orchestra class. Jay handed me a paper with his grades on it and gave me a quick rundown on his performance as well. He was very nonchalant, but his teachers couldn't say enough nice things about him. I did like meeting several of their middle school teachers--people who choose to teach middle school are possibly some of the most angelic humans on the planet and both Jay and Rose have some very competent, kind, professional teachers. They gave both Jay and Rose so many compliments about their classroom behavior and performance, Rose said "this is why I like coming to parent teacher conferences--the compliments!"

Jay and Rose in the middle school hallway, with Amber running away behind them. I noticed that I don't take as many pictures as I used to now that these kids are older, so I made a goal to take two pictures of each kid every week. I love my kids and my photo memories too much to stop now!

Jay, looking like the tall 8th grader that he is.

Sweet 6th grade Rose.

Friday: fall weather arrived with a vengeance. It was 47 degrees and rainy on Friday afternoon. Jay and Rose left their backpacks in Jeff's car and ran the 3.5 miles home from school together so they didn't have to wait around for their parents to be done with high school cross country practice. I passed them while driving to practice, and they were so adorable running side by side in the cold rain! I wanted to take a picture, but I was driving and it didn't seem safe. Later, at cross country practice, I got a text message from Jay: "Rose ran 24:29 for a 5k." That was five minutes faster than her previous best 5k, which she ran back on the 4th of July at our family Independence Day run. Jay ran a few seconds faster than Rose, so both of them got huge improvements to their 5k times, and the route home from school is mostly a slight uphill too! Side note, Rose's 5k time puts her ahead of our fastest girl on the high school cross country team. 

Cross country practice in that cold dark rain was an exercise in a different kind of endurance for me. We had the team do a workout on the track, and I paced the girls team for their workout, which meant I couldn't bundle up in 15 layers and just stand there in the cold steady rain with a stopwatch; I had to peel off my layers and run. I couldn't feel my hands by the end, but it's FUN when the team is in shape because they can push themselves harder in workouts, and I loved pushing the pace with our front-running girl. Normally Jeff and I don't run in the workouts with the team during the season, but our girls needed some help finding their pace so I have jumped in the past two workouts. Let me tell you, it is way more fun running the workout alongside the girls with my feet rather than running the workout with my watch and voice! I arrived home more than half frozen and soaked my bones in a hot shower before family movie night.

Amber looked so cute snuggled up with her dad during family scripture time on Friday morning that I had to snag a poorly framed ill-aimed picture of them on the sly while Rose read some verses.

Saturday we did not have cross country practice OR a meet, but we did have the team bonfire and awards ceremony that night. But first came the Saturday morning primary program practice at the church for Rose and Amber. Rose had a big part as a senior primary narrator, so she was glad for the extra practice. Amber was stoked to go to this practice because in a genius move our primary planned a trip to the pumpkin patch after the practice. A family in our ward always grows enough pumpkins for the ward, so after the 90 minute program practice, Jeff took the girls to pick pumpkins, eat donuts, and drink chocolate milk with the rest of the primary kids at the Kannely family's house nearby. They arrived home lugging "the biggest pumpkins in the whole field!" and immediately set about carving them. 

I offered to give Jay my pumpkin from last week's Relief Society activity, but he assured me that he did not care to carve a pumpkin this year. So I gave the girls the carving tools, cut off the tops of their pumpkins, and left them to it in our sunny front yard. They scooped, scraped, and sawed for nearly two hours before they were satisfied with their carvings. With some detailed instructions from me and a bit of frustration from them, they even cleaned up the folding table and all of the pumpkin guts, spoons, and knives. We have sufficiently pumpkin-ed and it was the easiest year yet! 

That's me cutting off the top of Rose's pumpkin...she cut my head off while taking the picture, which somehow seems appropriate given the task at hand.

These were some massive, thick-skinned pumpkins.

I like how far away from the house they set up the table. No pumpkin scum came anywhere near our floors!

I enjoyed looking out our front kitchen window and seeing the girls still carving away in the sunshine.

Rose finished first.

Amber couldn't lift her large pumpkin, even after she had scraped the seeds out, haha.

Their photo-posing game is either right on point or way off, haha.

Saturday night was our cross country team awards bonfire. It was held out in the country at Condie family farm--their son is on the team. They have an excellent fire pit and the team brought large quantities of food, from wings to cheesecake to enchiladas to smores, with soda and homemade horchata to drink. It was a quintessential Sunnyside meal. I love how seamlessly these kids blend and embrace their dual cultures. Jeff brought high school yearbooks from both his and my senior years, and the team had fun browsing through and finding pictures of their coaches as teenagers. 

Once the first round of food had been consumed, Coach Winger handed out certificates to the middle school runners, and Jeff handed out certificates, varsity letters, plaques, and pins to the high school runners, relating kind words and fond memories of each runner (while I assisted/scrambled around in the background gathering the right assortment of pins and papers for each person). We love our team--seriously, this has been the most fun season since I started coaching five (!) years ago.

Bonfire! Jeff is in the background of this picture, wearing a black jacket.

Jay, receiving his certificate from Coach Winger. Jay was a co-captain of his middle school team and he is such a good leader. I am still getting used to the fact that Jay will be on the high school team next year! Coach Dad and Coach Mom, haha.

*Side note Shaina running update: remember how I was training for another sub-20 minute 5k attempt? I ran that 1% downhill 5k in 19:52 back on September 23rd, and planned to try again on flatter ground. But a week later at xc practice I tweaked my same weak right hip and glute area that I've been rehabbing with the chiropractor for the past 9 months. I tried taking a little time off from running hard workouts to see if it would heal, and it got a little better. So I ran a 5k on the gently rolling bike path on October 7th. But I didn't have that same eye-of-the-tiger drive, and my hip wasn't quite right. I faded and finished the bike path 5k in 20:40 (6:24, 6:33, 7:04; 19:58 at the 3 mile mark). My hip and gluteus ached for days after that, and I made the tough decision to back off my training. I had already run a satisfying sub-20 minute 5k, and I realized that I needed to look at the big picture: I'd rather ease up now and not have to take two months off of running later to heal than to keep pushing through now and destroy myself. I may come back and try again in the future, or I may be satisfied with my 1% downhill 5k time. It's all about balance.

Perishing pic after my tough bike path 5k on Oct 7th. Displaying my stretch marked stomach skin in solidarity with mothers everywhere. I passed our bishop and another ward member on the bike path during this run, and had to remind myself that a woman's stomach has just as much of a right to fresh air as a man's stomach, haha, though I don't run shirtless when I'm coaching, of course, for professional reasons.

Sunday (today) was the primary program at church. It was everything a primary program should be: sweet, funny, random, musical, wiggly, spiritual, and adorable. Amber somehow scored a seat next to her best buddy Dekker, and watching them repeat the cycle of whisper, scuffle, giggle, fold arms was entertaining. But Amber was paying attention enough to get up when it was her turn to deliver her lines that I helped her write a few weeks ago: 

"I like learning about the creation of the world. Jesus made this world for all of us to live in. I am extra thankful that he made rocks because I like to collect rocks. I know that Jesus loves me and I'm excited to get baptized next month."

This was Rose's last primary program, and she looked so tall and confident up there! She said she didn't even feel nervous at all with all of her speaking parts, getting up and down throughout the program in her role as a narrator. [Maybe next time I have to speak in church I'll have Rose read it from the podium for me!]

I helped Amber write her program part a few weeks ago, and it turned out so perfectly AMBER. She carefully wrote it all out, asking me how to spell every word she didn't know, and she brought this paper to church to read in the microphone. HEART EYES.

Two cute sisters before church, ready for the primary program.