This week was our first full five-day week of the school year, and it was definitely FULL. School and cross country season are in full swing. Jay leaves for seminary by 6am, and we don't get home from cross country practice until 5:30pm. Together-at-home time is brief at this time of year, and this week we were all so tired when we were at home together that we didn't have energy to do much more than eat dinner and drape ourselves around the family room while listening to the gospel library app read scriptures to us. My husband and kids were all tired from work and school, and I was tired from doing everything else that they weren't doing while they were away. And I had to get it all done before 2:30pm so I could have time to get ready for cross country practice.
Monday was my easiest day. We had four and a half loaves of bread leftover from the PBJ supplies I brought to the cross country meet last weekend, so I found a recipe for baked French toast. I prepped the French toast dinner in two pans and put it in the fridge to bake later, cleared the floor, and turned on the Roomba before school. After dropping Amber off at school, I picked up my grocery order at Walmart. It was my first time ordering a week of groceries for pickup at Walmart, and I have to say it was pretty convenient. The thing I dislike most about Walmart is going inside the store, so this was an excellent alternative. During the day on Monday, I talked with my Mom on the phone while folding laundry, etc., and I also played the piano for an hour. Those were my "luxury activities" of the day. I left the blazing hot cross country practice 15 minutes early so I could take Rose and Amber to piano lessons. We drove home first, grabbed dinner out of the oven (I used the delay bake feature, but the oven didn't turn off after baking ended so dinner was a bit crispy), and 10 minutes later were back in the car driving to piano lessons (the girls finished eating dinner in the car).
Tuesday morning I prepped dinner before school again. After dropping Amber off at school, I drove straight to the dealership to get the oil changed on our van. The shop happens to be right next to the bike path, so I wore my running clothes to the shop and ran the cross country workout on the bike path while the van was being serviced. I brought Jeff's car key with me and ended my run at the high school (everything is close in our small town), where I stole Jeff's car and drove myself home. On my way home, the dealership called and informed me of a few routine maintenance items that needed to be done. I okayed the ones we wanted and they said the van would be done between 2pm-3pm. Right during cross country practice. The dealership closed at 5:30pm--right at the end of cross country practice. Ok.
When I got home from my run and van dropoff, I knew it was TIME: time to take on the task/take up the slack and mow the yard. It had been at least 10 days since Jay last mowed, and the lawn was thick and shaggy. Our lot is 3 acres, including the house and barn. So probably about 2.5 acres or a little more of grass. It usually takes Jay 2.5 hours to mow. I ate lunch and started mowing, still in my salty damp running clothes. I mowed for 2 hours. The grass was so thick, the batteries on our electric mower wore down faster than usual, so I had to change them three times in 2 hours. At 2pm when the batteries died a fourth time, I had to call it quits and get ready for cross country practice. At least I didn't need to change into running clothes! I took my grassy sun-toasted body inside, had a snack, rested a tiny bit, filled and buckled the 5 gallon water jug into the front seat of Jeff's car, and then drove to the high school.
The van ended up being done just as I was leaving for cross country practice, so I loaded my kick scooter into Jeff's car, parked his car at the high school, and scootered like a crazy person a mile and a half down the bike path to the dealership to pick up the van. My scootering speed maxed out at 13.5 mph! (I clocked it on my watch.) I glided my scooter right into the service garage bay up at the shop all the way to the counter, paid the expensive car maintenance fees, scootered back out, loaded the scooter into the van, and drove away. I was 20 minutes late to cross country practice, but still in time to help with the workout. My family loved the dinner I made and we had a pleasant time eating together, but I kept looking out the window at the almost-finished partially mowed grass. After dinner, still in those same extra crusty running clothes, I went back out and finished the last 45 minutes of mowing. I started a new audiobook because I had finished my other one while mowing earlier. I parked the mower in the shed at 7pm and hauled my stiff skeleton inside to shower and collapse.
Wednesday I vowed to take it easier and prioritize myself. My activities of choice weren't all exactly relaxing, but I really wanted homemade bread, so I made some. I also got out my violin for the first time in months and played for about 20 minutes. Then I played the piano for nearly an hour and a half. Choosing piano music that is far above my humble skill level is fascinating, absorbing, frustrating, humbling, and fun! I took a nap before cross country practice, and it was a divine dive into the dark delight of deep sleep. I felt groggy for a while after I woke up. After a quick dinner, I drove the girls to their church activities. We picked up Kamila, Amber's best friend since first grade so they could spend time together. Since they go to different schools now, we have to work on finding time for them to play during our busy coaching seasons. Jeff took care of after-church pickup, bless him.
Thursday morning I cleaned the bathrooms and vacuumed the carpet before school. On the way to school, Amber and I went to Spanky's, the new car wash place in town, and used the free coupon that we got from the oil change. We cranked up the volume on Rachmaninoff's piano concert no. 2, opened the moon roof cover and watched the rainbow laser lights shine through the suds and the floppy mops beat on the windows while our van glided through the car wash. It was delightfully dramatic. Talk about ambience! After dropping Amber off at school, I took the van in to get new tires and an alignment, since that was another maintenance item that was flagged at the van's checkup. 90 minutes and $900 later...I went home and played the piano for so long that my pinky finger hurt. Jeff and I decided not to go on an international date trip this year, thanks to the various van maintenance fees that piled up this week. Blah, responsible adulthood!
Friday morning before school, I cleaned the basement. I was going to leave the dust bunnies and just vacuum the rug, but as usual I couldn't do a partial cleaning job. The kids haven't had time/energy to do much cleaning since school started, so I took over. (Side note, that's a parenting dilemma: do I force my tired kids to vacuum and clean--the forcing takes energy too--or do I just do it myself during the busiest times? Am I spoiling them or teaching them the wrong thing? I don't know. I just wanted our basement clean, so I did it myself.) I ended up moving our two spare twin mattresses around till I managed to cram them into two closets. Then I vacuumed everything in sight and picked up a whole basket of nerf darts. The vacuum died when I was halfway through vacuuming the rug!
Friday right after lunch, I met Jeff at the track shed to start the prep for our home cross country meet. We crammed equipment into our van and Jeff's car, then drove it across town (2 miles) to South Hill Park. We marked the course with orange surveyor flags, following the meticulous map that we made last year. Our map and memories combined together so well, we didn't have to use the measuring wheel to check the course distance! After we had the flags up, I quickly jogged one lap of the course to check the distance with my Garmin GPS watch. We were right on target! It took us less than an hour to put the orange flags around the course--so much faster than last year, when it took us close to 3 hours of marking and measuring to get it right! We got the bathroom key from the parks department and unloaded all of the equipment into the park bathroom, then locked it up tight. Since we were so efficient, we had 45 minutes to burn before cross country practice! We did some more meet prep in Jeff's classroom.
Friday night after family movie night in our basement, Jeff and I went back to his classroom at the high school to finish printing meet packets, maps, and stuffing envelopes with race numbers. We also loaded up the remaining timing equipment from Jeff's classroom, to take over to the course the next morning. When we got home 90 minutes later, we loaded a few supplies we had at home into the van too. Wrestling some spare rubber mats from our barn into submission was hilarious. (We used them for sidewalk crossings at the meet so runners didn't dull their racing spikes while running across the two sidewalks on the course.)
We hosted our second annual home cross country invitational on Saturday, September 14th. Jeff and I arrived at the park at 7am to commence phase 3 of setup. First we unloaded all of the gear from our van and then ferried over the other equipment that we had stored in the park bathroom. At 8am, four parents of high school runners as well as one of the middle school coaches (Freddy) came to help. Jeff set up the finish line chute and timing system. Coach Freddy and I put stakes in the ground at critical turns, and two parents strung banners on those stakes. The other two parents took a wagon full of cones plus a map and marked the course thoroughly. At 9am, I drove home, picked up our 3 kids, and brought them to the park. Setup was pretty much finished by 9:30am. The whole process was almost shockingly smooth, but we had planned out the various moving pieces of the morning meticulously, so it was gratifying that our plans worked.
Then the meet happened! 11 high school teams came, and 7 middle schools were represented. More schools came this year than last year, but it was still a relatively low key small meet, since the schools that came were small--all single or double A. Our large 4A team of 45 kids was nearly twice as big as the largest team that came to our meet. We held four races: one 2.5 kilometer race that included middle school boys and girls combined with the high school novice boys and girls. Rose and Amber ran this race--Rose, as a part of her middle school team, and Amber as an unattached daughter of the coaches. Rose started strong but about half a mile into the race she came down with a painful side stitch that would not leave. She suffered for the remaining mile of the race, taking a few walk breaks and looking utterly miserable. I felt so bad for her! She was so excited about this race, and so disappointed when it didn't go how she hoped it would. She still pulled off a 10th place finish in 13:34.
Meanwhile, Amber started slowly and methodically picked off runners throughout the whole 1.5 mile race, finishing with a time of 14:53, which was 15th out of 30 girls running (all of the girls in the race were 3+ years older than her). She ended up being the 7th girl from Sunnyside to finish, in front of several middle schoolers on our team and even some of our novice high schoolers!
The next race was the high school boys JV 5k, with 45 runners competing. Sunnyside High School's boys JV team got a perfect score (meaning our runners finished #1-5 in the race), which was super exciting and fun for the boys. After that came the combined girls JV/Varsity race, which had 37 runners (over twice as many as last year's 16). All five of our high school girls ran strong and we felt so proud of them. The last race of the day was the boys varsity race, with 42 boys running. Going into the weekend, Jay was our #10 guy on the team, but three of his teammates were unable to race on Saturday for various reasons. That put Jay in his first varsity race as our #7 runner! He said he was nervous, but he handled it well and ran so well! He even passed two of his teammates during the second mile, but then rolled his ankle and tweaked his knee (not sure which happened first or which caused the other) and finished the race #7 on our team, 22nd overall, with an epic grimace on his face. 24 hours later, his ankle was feeling fine but his knee was still making him limp.
It was an exciting fun day at our home meet! We had actual spectators and the whole meet felt way more like a regular cross country meet than last year. Building up a meet and a reputation takes time measured in years, but it is happening! Once the meet ended, I helped the team pick up all cones, flags, and fencing, then Jeff and our volunteer assistant Coach Krantz started loading gear into vehicles while I drove our 3 kids home. Then I went back to help finish cleaning up and driving the equipment back to the high school track shed. We were all home again together by 3:30pm. Jeff worked on untangling some race results for another 2 hours after that before the Sunnyside Cross Country Sunburn Invitational was officially over for another year.
Writing about our busy week made me even more tired! Before my nap, here are a few pictures:
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