2 Visitors and 5 Track Meets

The past nine days have been our busiest of the entire school year! We hosted two home high school track meets--one JV, one varsity. On the same day as our home JV track meet, the elite track high schoolers went to a different, more competitive track meet in Pasco. A few days later, on the same day as the home varsity track meet, we had our first middle school track meet of the season (in Toppenish, a tiny town half an hour away). To cap off the intensity, yesterday (April 20th), Jeff took a van of elite kids from the high school track team to a huge meet 3 hours away in Snohomish, on the west side of the state. He left our house at 6am and got home 17.5 hours later, at 11:30pm Saturday night. Somehow we still love track, probably because of the great kids we get to coach. 

Amidst this busy-ness, we also had visitors: my parents came to visit us last weekend! I wasn't sure I'd manage to clean our house sufficiently before they arrived, but with some grit and determination, I made it happen--mostly. My parents arrived on Friday night (April 12th) and left Tuesday morning (April 16th). It was their first time seeing our new house since the renovation was completed, and we loved having them stay with us. They also dusted off their track meet volunteer skills and were enormously helpful helping hand time and record results when our automatic finish line camera took a tumble to the turf and broke at the last minute. Seriously, my Dad entered results on the computer ALL DAY LONG, with a tiny handful of breaks to time events and during Jay's races to cheer him on.

My parents were super patient and supportive of our busy season with our many comings and goings while they were here. We did have a lovely Sunday at home together, where our only outing was to church. The weather was practically perfect the whole time they were here, so my Dad and I got to go for a run and work out in the barn together. We also had an impromptu family piano recital of sorts, with contributing musical numbers from Amber, Rose, me, my Mom, and even my Dad, who recently started taking piano lessons. A house full of loving family, music, and good food is my ideal of home-bliss, and we worked to carve that out amidst the busy track schedule.

The nicer weather had us hitting the yardwork hard whenever we can spare time and energy (so not quite as often as the yard needs our TLC, but often enough that the gophers don't take over). There was no school on Friday, April 19th, and Jay did not go to the elite track meet on Saturday, so the kids and I were able to make noticeable progress on the yard this weekend. Jay mowed the almost 3 acre yard and did some weed-eating. Rose sprayed the stubborn driveway weeds and moved rocks. Amber moved landscaping rocks. I cleared the weeds and debris from around the shed and weed whacked whatever weeds I didn't pull out manually. I also did a lot of rock-throwing. Landscaping rocks look nice, but when the tarp underneath them degrades and weeds grow through, it is nearly impossible to pull the weeds from the root while those heavy fist-sized rocks are weighing the weeds down. So we are moving all of the rocks in order to pull weeds. I don't want to put the rocks back--they're heavy! My shoulders, arms, and legs got very sore from all of the rock-removal, and we are not even half done yet! 

Track meet updates: Rose ran her first-ever middle school track meet on Thursday! She raced the 1600 meters and finished 4th out of 8 girls with a time of 6:45. A new PR! She also ran the 400 meter race in 1:25, finishing 7th out of the nine 7th grade girls who raced. Rose's final event was the discus--7th grade girls division. She threw it 38'8'' and came in 7th out of 13. As for me, I spent the meet watching track events, directing traffic of the 28 kids from my team who came, and even bandaging up a poor girl who fell hard during the hurdle race. We shared a school bus to and from the meet with Sunnyside's other middle school, and the kids were crammed 3 to a seat for the entire 30 minute drive to our meet. It felt extra crowded because everyone was holding their backpacks and duffle bags on their laps! The kids just handled it without much complaining that I heard. 

Meanwhile, on the same evening back in Sunnyside, Jay ran the 2 mile race in the varsity league meet and smashed his previous personal best time, finishing in 11:25. He ran two back-to-back miles, both faster than his one mile PR from last year! I was so happy for Jay and so sad that I missed his race! Amber walked over to the high school track after school and hung out with Jeff in the timing tent until the bitter end of the meet. Jeff, Jay, and Amber got home at 8:40pm, a few minutes after Rose and I got home from the middle school meet that night. We ate a dinner of leftovers and/or Burger Ranch hamburgers and fried asparagus at 9pm in the kitchen while entering field event results onto the website. Jeff is much faster at this than me, but I did manage to upload a few event results. At 10:30pm, Jeff drove back to the high school to sleuth out where the final page of girls discus results had ended up. He found it, but it was locked in the press box and Jeff did not have a key. So he sent the athletic director a message and the next day, the AD retrieved the results paper and put it in Jeff's mailbox in the high school office. Whew!

Jeff did a stellar job handling the stress and hours upon hours of setup and cleanup and timing and directing the two track meets this week. I was the head clerk for the JV meet on Saturday, April 13th, and I did much better with that job than last year. Even with the timing system malfunction, we finished the meet a mere 15 minutes after Jeff's projected finish time. As all of the other school buses pulled out of the parking lot, we ran a coaches' 4x400 meter relay. Exhausted after 7 hours of standing and running around in the warm sun working at the track meet, we lined up four willing coaches and had a one-team mixed-gender relay where each person ran one lap. Jeff ran the first leg. Then Coach Giselle Sanchez, who handed the baton off to me. Our relay was anchored by Coach Steve Razzo. Even running just one lap of the track was a suffer-fest, thanks to our long day of work. I wasn't even in running clothes, although I did have running shoes. It was a silly whimsical fun way to end a tiring day. Rose and Amber went with my Mom to get fried asparagus for the four finishers. They convinced their Grama Meri to also get them ice cream cones while they were at Burger Ranch, haha. 

Ok, these pictures span two weeks, from April 9th-21st:

The lot in front of our house had the thickest carpet of little purple flowers! I took a portrait-effect picture with my phone for fun.

Our two scraggly raggedy pear trees blossomed in perfect puffs two weeks ago! Last year the actual pears were nasty, and this year I'm pretty sure it froze after the blossoms came, but they were pretty while they lasted!

During General Conference, I felt inspired to work on going to the temple regularly again. I usually only go during non-coaching seasons, but now that I'm coaching both a fall and a spring sport, that is half of the year that I was missing out on the temple. I realized that I don't have to do a full 2 hour session and it was like a light went on--I could do initiatories during my busiest seasons and still get the joy and boost of going to the temple! I found three family names and did initiatories for them on Thursday, April 11th. I was in and out of the temple in less than half an hour! It wasn't my goal to make it that fast of a temple trip, but I loved the short concentrated burst of spiritual inspiration injected into my week.

Amber participated in the primary kids' pinewood derby activity on April 10th. We could NOT get the wheels to stay on her poor car, so we hot glued the axels to the undercarriage and hoped for the best. When Amber rolled her car on the gym floor, it moved in an arc. When she rolled it down the pinewood derby ramp, it scraped the rails so much that it finished last in every race, haha. Amber was too busy running around playing with her friends to notice or care too much, though, so it was fine.

Primary Pinewood Derby picture.

Amber had a very hard spelling test on Friday, April 12th that I helped her prepare for. She hated every second of it! This picture is of her grumpy spelling face on the way to school on Friday morning.

That same Friday, I wanted to make bread but didn't have time to stay at home for the requisite 3 hours, so I buckled the bread bowls into the van and took them with me like two little bread babies. It totally worked, and when I got home I put the fluffy bread dough into pans and eventually had delicious fresh bread ready for when my parents visited.

Ugh, this is the middle school sports equipment storage room. Track gets four of these lockers. The volleyball stand hovers in the middle of the room blocking the lockers so we have to shift it side to side to access our uniform bins. It felt like a spelunking expedition when I had to return to extract one more uniform for a member of my track team.

With my parents at the Crowe Classic JV track meet! This was taken in the morning after we dealt with the finish line camera problem and before the meet began, when we still had energy.

Jay shared his spikes with his teammate--Elijah ran the first leg of the 4x800 meter relay wearing Jay's spikes, and then took off Jay's spikes so Jay could put them on to run the third leg of the same relay race! 

Jay ran a 5:25 mile at the Crowe Classic--not a PR, but as I told him, his off-days are getting faster and faster, which means his good days are getting faster too.

The volunteer hand timing crew at work, led by Jeff, the head timer, meet director, head coach extraordinaire. He passed off his head coaching duties to one of his assistants for the day. As head clerk of the meet, I had several Sunnyside kids asking me head coach-like questions, which I answered and gave permission as needed, head-coach style. I was totally in protect-my-husband's-sanity mode, so I gave kids permission to scratch from events and asked questions about injuries and gave encouragement as much as I could so Jeff could do his other big jobs that day. It was a bit of a heady feeling to just jump in and make those decisions but when I told Jeff about them after, he agreed with everything I had done and I felt less like a usurper.

The remaining Sunnyside high school team after the coaches' relay at the end of the meet. I know I say it a lot, but this is a fun group of kids and coaches. Our coaches' relay team is in the center of the front row, from right to left starting with Jeff (wearing the black tank top, holding fried asparagus): Jeff, me, Coach Sanchez, and Coach Razzo.

Rose made cookies on Sunday while my parents were here. Snickerdoodles!

Family piano time! My Dad is a very meticulous pianist. We were all impressed! Our piano bench cushion was handmade and needlepointed almost 30 years ago by his mom, my Grama Lamona Brown.

Silly Amber, aglow in the orange sunset.

Post-run picture in the front yard with Dad!

My Mom--my best friend.

On to the first middle school track meet of the season! This school bus contains: 60 middle schoolers and five coaches, plus one cranky bus driver. 

Rose, running her one mile race!

The splits I took for Rose during her mile race, with Rose resting in the background. As head coach I was pulled in so many directions that I never got around to taking a victory picture of Rose after her race.

My nemesis: the rocky front flowerbed. It looks like the rocks are half cleared, but the flowerbed is much bigger than it seems at this angle, and this has about a third of the rocks cleared.

I made the mistake of doing yardwork in the strong wind with no hat. This is what my hair does now: these wisps never grow longer. I get Smeagol hair if I ever get caught in the wind sans hat. I was so close to shaving my head after this windy rock-throwing session.

On Friday, my three kids and I found ourselves all eating lunch at the kitchen table together at the same unlikely time: 1pm.

Mt. Adams view from my run yesterday. I love sunshine and clear horizons.

Rose made a massive purple smoothie for her siblings' lunch today. Cheers!