Another week of April, another track-centric week. This week was different, though, because on Monday, April 17th, after four full weeks of practice, we finally had our first middle school meet of the season! It was also my first track meet as head coach! It went relatively well. From the time I left home to the time I got back home was just over 6 hours, so not too shabby. The actual meet went from 4pm-7pm. Not too bad, although it did get colder than I expected it to. I had two jackets and a coat on by the time I got home, and I was still freezing. The team was cute, wide eyed, and enthusiastic about being at a real track meet. I did a LOT of explaining and question-answering and heat sheet-shuffling to get kids where they needed to be. At the meet, I lived off of peanut butter pretzels and a granola bar and had reheated pasta when I got home at 8pm.
Jeff came with Rose and Amber to watch Jay's 1600 meter and 400 meter races. Jay ran pretty even splits and finished the mile in 6:02--a new PR! It was fun to see my son race! And hard to focus on the other kids from our team in the race at the same time, haha.
Jeff had two high school track meets this week: one on Thursday afternoon in Yakima (1 hour away) and one on Saturday in Snohomish (3 hours away). He had a 19 hour day on Saturday and was completely wiped out afterwards.
My workload with coaching felt much more under control this week, which helped me feel more balanced with all of my other responsibilities. We finalized the house renovation floorplan with the contractor, which felt good, but undoubtedly will open up dozens of other decisions to ponder.
On Thursday, I went across the street and mowed for over an hour. The massive back yard is more like a field than a yard, so I was bouncing and bumping all over the place! But it felt good to get the shaggy grass cut. I'm still not as precise with driving our new zero turn mower, and I definitely clipped some irrigation riser pipes, but I'm getting the hang of it. Jeff and Rose both mowed big chunks of the yard this week as well--we got most of it mowed. It rained on Jay's day to mow, so he was off the hook. Now we get to start over and mow it all again this coming week!
On Friday evening, we hosted the inaugural high school team potluck dinner at the big barn. Jeff invited the distance squad from the high school track team over for dinner and games, from 6-7:30pm. Jeff made crepes on the janky old stove in the house's kitchen (which made the house smell a lot better). When the high schoolers arrived, we gave them a tour of the house and barn. Then we blessed the potluck food and dug in! From there, the kids spread out, playing frisbee in the yard and basketball and ping pong in the barn. Jeff accepted a challenge and played a little one-on-one basketball with a high school basketball player from the track team. It was hilarious and awesome.
From the ground floor of the barn where we had the food tables set up, each basketball bounce sounded like a cannon shot! It was a bit stressful to me to stay inside the barn during the basketball games. I was worried that the 15 or so high schoolers in attendance would linger indefinitely as teenagers are wont to do, but Jeff announced at 7:25pm that it was time to clean up and go, and they all politely cleared out. It's funny how I only seem to be able to get used to being in charge of one age group at a time. Currently I'm in middle school 13-year-old control mode, and I felt a bit intimidated by the high schoolers in our barn, even though I knew over half of them from cross country season.
On Saturday, Jeff left at 5am for the track meet. The rest of us overslept and had to scramble to get out the door by 8:15am to get Jay and Rose to the church for a youth activity. They went on a hike with over 100 other youth from our stake. While they were gone, Amber and I parked at the church and took the bike path 2 miles to Sunnyview Park--Amber on her bike, me running. Amber wanted to play on the playground when we got there, so I did all of my non-weighted physical therapy exercises while she played. Then she begged and convinced me to play a short game of tag with her in the massive field there before we jogged and biked the 2 miles back to the church. As a mother-daughter outing treat, we stopped by the gas station and got sugary cold beverages: Amber chose orange soda, and I chose raspberry lemonade.
After I showered, we still had a little time before Jay and Rose needed to be picked up, so Amber and I went across the street and removed all of the nasty heavy dusty red drapes from all of the windows. Amber was a good helper: I removed the curtains from the rods and she spread them out in a stack. There were so many curtains, and they made a hefty heavy 30+ pound log when we rolled them all together. I had to hug the roll to my body while lugging them out to the van trunk, and it was so gross I went home and changed my clothes after depositing the curtains in our big outdoor trash can. I kept sneezing all afternoon from the dust and dander in those curtains. Red is not my color, and pet dander plus dust is a potent combination. It feels good to have that minuscule task done. only like 10,000 more things to do before we can move in! Haha, at least a contractor will take care of most of it.
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