Home Meet Week

Early morning seminary started on Tuesday! As a freshman in high school, it was Jay's first time attending the early morning scripture study class. It was also my first time as a parent of a seminary student. Our ward holds seminary Monday-Thursday from 6:15am-7:15am at the church. We joined a carpool with two neighbors, so each family will drive the kids to seminary for a week at a time. I took the first week, which was only 3 days of seminary due to Labor Day. It has been a long time since I consistently got up before 6am, and let me tell you, it was not easy! I joked with Jay that he and I both had to get up early, but only he got the spiritual boost from it by going to seminary. Jay and I both started going to bed earlier to compensate for our early mornings. Next time the carpool rotates to our family, Jeff will take a turn driving!

The other big event of the week was our home cross country meet. We hosted the First Annual Sunburn Invitational at South Hill Park in Sunnyside on Saturday. Hosting a meet is a LOT of work! In and around all of that, there was a whole week of running, cooking, working, planning, prepping, driving, and living. Journal entry clips:

Monday, September 4th: Labor Day. It was nice to have a day that felt like summer break again. We had XC practice at 8am at the barn. Around 20 kids showed up! After that, Rose and I spent an hour inside our new house measuring and planning how to arrange her bedroom (and other parts of the house). Rose loves dreaming and designing, and we had fun together. Cute Rose is so excited to move to our new house. I am too! They are supposed to start working on the flooring, trim, and cabinets over the next 2 weeks. I can't wait to see how it all looks! Jay made mac and cheese for dinner tonight. 

Tuesday, September 5th: It was Jay's first day of early morning seminary! He got up all on his own and got ready in plenty of time. He's such a great guy. It was my first day of seminary carpool, and I was so worried about oversleeping that I woke up at 2:30am thinking I was late! It took me a while to fall back to sleep, and then my 5:25am alarm came way too soon. This afternoon Jay said seminary was a blur.  Our ward had to call a second seminary teacher for Jay's class because there are so many freshmen! It is a freshman/sophomore seminary class. 

I was super productive all day today. My physical therapy appointment destroyed my hammies in a good way (4 sets of 8 Nordic curls at the very end--youch). It was a total sweat fest too. Even my legs were dripping sweat. After that I did some errands and even met Jeff at the track shed during his planning period to get some gear shifted around--we replaced two of the most broken of the shade canopy frames and threw away the old destroyed ones. When I finally got home and ate lunch, I was very much in need of a shower.

I turned on the water and waited for the shower water to heat up. I fiddled with the knob. And waited. Turned the shower knob a different way. And waited. The water never warmed up! It was icy cold water straight from our well. I was desperate for a shower though, so I stood on the outside of the bathtub and stuck just my head in, holding the shower head on its hose to get my hair wet and wash it. Once my hair was clean, I wrapped it in a towel. 

Then it was time to get all the way in. I got one arm wet at a time and gasped/yelled/screamed at the shock of the cold water. Then I got my legs wet. After that, there was nothing left to do but put my entire torso into the frigid shower water. It took my breath away. I was gasping so much I started feeling lightheaded from near hyperventilation. I stepped out and soaped up, then rinsed (gasping and yelling) as quickly as possible. It was the worst shower of all time! I was covered in goosebumps and shivering when I got out. But once I dried off, I also felt oddly invigorated. Whew! 

I did not run at xc practice this afternoon; I drove at trunk full of water jugs and water bottles to the park for the kids to use during their workout. We had leftovers for dinner. I was going to make more rice to go with our leftovers, but I forgot to put the rice in the cooker before practice because I was preoccupied with the water heater situation. Juan told me how to reset it, so we can have hot water for another 12 hours or so until he comes to replace the water heater tomorrow. 

Wednesday, September 6th: Whew, day 2 of early morning seminary! I'm so tired and it's only barely after 9pm. Jay fell asleep close to an hour earlier than usual last night. Today after Amber got on the bus, I drove 40 minutes to Target, WinCo, and Costco for a LOT of food (and bath towels at Target). It was a large trunk full of food. I got home before 1pm! I started my Garmin watch during the unloading process back at home, and I walked .56 of a mile just between the van and the house, unloading everything back and forth. 

We had team pictures at cross country practice today. It was hot and not my favorite thing standing there melting and directing teenage traffic. We survived.

Thursday, September 7th: This afternoon I felt like a total Korean housewife, filling my fridge with neatly organized containers of homemade food: I plucked meat off of 2 rotisserie chickens, set the wings & drumsticks aside, made curry chicken salad out of some of the meat, made chicken broth out of the bones, cut up a watermelon, and hard boiled 7 eggs. I worked in the kitchen for an hour doing all of that. It was a lot of prep work that I didn't exactly enjoy, but I'm glad it's done. 

If only I had time to make bread and cookies! Those are two of my goals for this month: make bread and cookies. I also plan to somehow drag my tired body to the temple one day this month. Definitely on an off week for the seminary carpool, haha. Getting up before 6am to drive kids to seminary sure makes me drowsy in the afternoon! But I haven't had trouble falling asleep at night all week, so that's a perk. 

I had a physical therapy appointment this morning, and my PT started the conversation about me being close to "done" with PT! That was encouraging--I am feeling much stronger in my weak places, and I'm ready to start figuring out how to maintain that strength on my own.

While waiting at cross country practice today, Amber found a four leaf clover for the first time ever. She was ecstatic! 

Rose brought home 2 instruments (clarinet and cello) and practiced each one for 10 minutes this evening. 10 minutes of The Star Spangled Banner on clarinet felt way longer than 10 minutes of cello, if I'm being honest. Haha. Rose is improving a lot with clarinet; it's just loud and... clarinet-ish. 

For family scripture tonight, we read the 1 Corinthians verse about "o death, where is thy sting" so I found that song from Handel's Messiah and we listened to it. Then I had everyone listen to "Even So In Christ Shall All Be Made Alive" because we read that one recently too. It was quality supplemental scripture music. Not sure if anyone but me enjoyed it, but oh well.

Friday, September 8th: There is no seminary on Fridays, so we got to have family scripture this morning before school. We also had morning family prayer with Jay for the first time all week! When we were all kneeling around the ottoman ready to pray, we kept saying silly things and giggling, delaying the prayer. Then Jay said "for every 30 seconds we kneel here without praying, I'm going to fart." All five of us cracked up and of course delayed the prayer even longer. It was a funny happy family laughing moment that I loved. I'm so glad we have Friday mornings together, and I love my family! 

Jeff took the afternoon off from work, and I met him at 11:40am at South Hill Park to measure the cross country course. We are hosting an invitational tomorrow! It's going to be very small, with 7-8 tiny  schools attending, but that's fine. Measuring the course took all afternoon, and we went straight to XC practice afterwards. It was a lot of sun, even with my hat and sunglasses, and I got such a headache this evening. It's probably a three pronged headache: hormones, bright sun, and dehydration. Tylenol to the rescue! Tonight Jeff and I slipped away to his high school classroom during family movie night (there's only so much Harry Potter we can take) to prep race numbers and team packets and to load the timing equipment into Jeff's car. It was a tight squeeze! 

After that, Jeff and I visited our new house to admire the new floorboards (actual flooring, not just plywood!). We sat on the back porch to watch the sunset afterglow for a while together. It is a gorgeous tranquil place and we are going to love living there so much. Back porch dates will definitely have to become part of our home-date repertoire.

Saturday, September 9th: We had our home cross country meet today!! It was the First Annual Sunburn Invitational. The trophies were bottles of sunscreen with a number stuck to it--Jeff was proud of his quirky trophy choice. The meet was small (16-45 kids per race in 4 races), but it went well. Rose broke the Harrison Middle school girls record for her 2.5k (1.55 mile) race with an 11:44, and Jay shaved another minute off his 5k PR, now down to 21:15. Over the past 30 hours, Jeff and I put in close to 10 hours of behind the scenes course measuring, packet assembling, timing, setup, and cleanup. It was so hot (85 degrees) and sunny at the meet today, the sun sapped my energy so fast. We left at 7:20am this morning and got home just before 3pm. Compared to days where we travel to meets, it was a relatively short workday. But hosting a meet is not simple! Jeff did all of the timing and some of the course setup and coaching, plus a good chunk of the cleanup. I did some of the course setup, most of the welcoming/packet handout, and a whole lot of the coaching, plus a good chunk of the cleanup. We had a few saintly parents help with setup and a few stellar kids help with cleanup. Once we got home, we ate Popeye's chicken and everyone vegged the rest of the day, pausing sometime in the late evening to eat once more and to have family prayer. 

PICTURES:

Early morning seminary, here we come! It was so dark, with a slash of orange on the horizon.

We had to take one more "first day of seminary" picture with the light on in the van.

Jeff wanted to recreate an old picture we took a few years ago, so he scooped me up. I laughed because this is not a great angle for photography, but it's fun to be picked up.

House planning/dreaming outing with Rose.

Running past the freshly mown mint one morning was divine.

Costco restock. It looks like less than it was: this was a huge haul of food. The soft new bath towels that I got from Target were in the front seat--I was so excited to have fluffy new bath towels because our decade-plus year old Walmart towels were threadbare and gross. I washed those new towels a few days later, anticipating that fluffy fresh feeling when I pulled them out of the dryer. When they came out of the dryer they were crusty and splotched in a bright blue color. I concluded that there must've been a crayon in the dryer. It ruined all 8 of our beautiful brand-new towels! I felt so betrayed and tragic. I looked up how to get crayon out of laundry, and the process does not look worth the intense process of scrubbing, washing, soaking, and re-washing. Luckily I didn't buy crazy expensive towels (2 for $12!) so replacing them won't hurt too much, but still--I was so excited to have those fluffy new towels and before we even used them they were destroyed! A first world tragedy.

We had a Relief Society presidency meeting in our barn on Wednesday night. The youth had an activity across the street, so we met in the barn for convenience. We should probably get a few more folding chairs--we sat on an assortment of objects that were in the barn, haha.

House renovation update: The subflooring was mostly done by Wednesday! It was dark by the time I managed to take a picture of the floor, but it was so nice to walk around without stumbling on saggy flooring.

Home sweet future home after sunset, with Mt. Adams on the horizon to the left. 

Amber's four leaf clover!

Jeff joined in with his trumpet on one of Rose's clarinet repetitions of The Star Spangled Banner. Two wind instruments in our 600 square foot main floor was intense, but they sounded good together!

FOOD PREP CENTRAL! Lots of chicken broth: it may still be hot outside, but I'm in the mood for some soup and bread this week.

Did I mention that over summer break, Amber forgot 70% of what she learned in piano lessons last school year? She couldn't even consistently find middle C when she started practicing last week, and I felt doomed to a bonus round in a certain circle of Dante's Inferno that I thought I had already climbed out of. We got out the music note flashcards again and I committed to quizzing/teaching her a few notes each day, as a warmup before her piano practice. Blessed happy day, it helped. She started remembering! I had her name the note and then run over and play it on the piano. It's a work in progress, and teaching Amber to read music may double my growing number of white hairs, but it'll be worth it someday, right? 

Amber dressed as a walking memorial to two of her great grandparents: she wore socks that used to belong to her great Grama Brown (my grama), and a Penn State t-shirt, where her great grandpa White used to teach (and where her grandpa Dan graduated).

Actual flooring!! I really should remember the brand and style, but I can't. It isn't pure hardwood, but its pretty sweet all the same. Once the orange-ish shelves and trim are painted white, it will be a very dramatic transformation!

MEET PREP! On a miniature budget! Jeff found those pennant flags for $20 per 1000 feet on Amazon, and purchased 2 packs. The stakes to hang them on were the more expensive limiting factor, and $1 apiece. We rationed our 50 pack of stakes and the course looked pretty sweet.

Heading from course measuring to xc practice, laden with my bag, the team first aid kit, and the voice amplifier.

Jeff's little Nissan Leaf hatchback fits an impressive amount of gear with the back seats folded down. We crammed the timing equipment in all the way to the roof. We also used our van to drive supplies from the high school to the park, but we had to leave enough seats open so our kids could fit too. Coach Winger drove his pickup truck and helped us get all of the gear to the park in one trip. The park is not far from the high school, but it sure took effort to transport bulky equipment across town, even if the journey was less than 2 miles.

The start of Rose's first OFFICIAL middle school cross country race in a team uniform! She ran so well and she was so happy after her run! She finished first on her team and fourth overall, and broke the middle school record for the 2.5 kilometer distance.

The finish! Go Rose!

Jay ran strong too! It was a bit much for Jeff and I to host the meet, coach, AND take pictures, so this was the best I could do.

Jay was pleased that all three of his mile splits were under 7 minutes.

Jeff: head coach, head timer, head meet director, heart and soul of Sunnyside cross country.

Near the end of the meet, two ice cream trucks pulled into the park and played their music overlapping each other. Hot tired runners flocked to the trucks, and I said yes when my 3 kids asked for ice cream. Amber relished her first ever ice cream from an ice cream truck.

I forgot to take a sibling picture at the meet, so Jay and Rose humored me when we got home. I love my sweet cute kids. This was the triumphant power pose they chose first. Then I told them to look like siblings, and they put their arms around each other for the second picture:

We definitely all got sunburned at the Sunburn Invitational.