Thirty-nine

Jeff turned a venerable zesty 39 years young on Tuesday, June 1st. We love him. Whenever I think I'm low maintenance, I look over at Jeff. The man is so easygoing, it's hard to make a day special for him! When I asked him what he wanted to get, do, and eat for his birthday, he didn't have much to say beyond "brownies and ice cream, please." Jeff finally admitted to wanting a new Garmin heart rate monitor, some headphones, and a sampler of chicken sandwiches for dinner. I had actually already ordered the heart rate monitor and ended up giving it to him two weeks early so he could enjoy accurate data from his athletic activities. He ordered himself new headphones and I wrapped the box (ahem, shoved it into a gift bag) so he could open it on his birthday. 

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend was a taste of summer. It was hot and sunny. It was a four day weekend. We barbecued with local family and watched the kids swim. Our dishwasher died and we did a lot of handwashing. Thankfully our landlord had the dishwasher replaced after only 4 days, so it wasn't too tough. I am so thankful for labor saving devices that liberate me to do more meaningful activities!

On Sunday, Jay gave his first ever official talk in sacrament meeting on May 30th. His topic was prayer, and he did a wonderful job writing his own talk. Jeff checked it once to make sure Jay was on the right track, and he was, so we left it to him. It was a thoughtful personal talk. We love our Jay.

April BOOKS!

Books books books books books. I love books, so I read twenty books during April. I'm not big on social media marketing... unless it's for books. I follow several beloved authors on Instagram, and they often share other good books written by their likeminded author-friends. This social media book marketing has become a gold mine for my discovery of several new delightful authors recently. 

In April I fell in love with Sariah Wilson's snarky fun love stories, and I embarked on a quest to read all of her books. It was an enjoyable quest. She writes fun celebrity and royalty love stories, and I thoroughly enjoyed escaping into those sugary sweet worlds after feeding my brain its daily dose of healthy whole grain nonfiction. I did think that her kissing scenes were too long, though. Like, we get it! They enjoyed their kiss! Let's move on! Haha, nothing more than kissing happens, but it just feels... long sometimes. Kiss-a-thons aside, Sariah Wilson adds just enough grit to ground her fluffy unlikely celebrity love stories so the sweetness isn't cloying. And her humor kept me grinning!

The South Sound All-Comers Track Meet

While searching for open track meets for Reid, Jeff found a family meet in western Washington called the South Sound All-Comers Track Meet. It was scheduled for Thursday, May 27th at 6pm. After doing the math to see if we could make the 3.5 hour drive to Olympia in time for the meet after school that day, we decided to sign our entire family up for some races, each kid for a different race. We signed up a week before the meet, so I barely had any time to feel prepared to run my first track race in 14 years, but I did join Jeff and Reid at the track for one pacing workout. The workout eased my mind about running on a track just enough for me to feel excited about my race!

First, we had to get there. Google Maps informed us that Olympia, the illustrious capital of our large state, was a 3.5 hour drive from Sunnyside. But once we had picked everyone up from school and headed west in the van on Thursday afternoon, Google told us that there were three accidents on I-5 that were causing 51 minutes of delays. The alternate route was on curvy narrow highway 12 through White Pass. We decided to stick to wide smooth freeways to prevent our carsick-prone daughters from puking. We figured that the accidents would be cleared up in the 2.5 hours it took us to get to I-5. We figured wrong! In true Seattle style, the traffic was still there waiting for us in a slow sludge when we reached I-5. We sat and rolled and sat and rolled and the clock kept ticking closer and closer to the projected 6:40 start time for Jay's 1600 meter race. Tensions mounted in the White family van. Jeff and I both snapped at our antsy inquisitive kids. "For the hundredth time, we don't know when we're going to get there!" Sorry, kids. Jeff and I had several moments where this all seemed so pointless. But we were stuck in traffic, so we kept trudging forward.

Home Improvements

Memorial Day weekend marks FOUR YEARS since we moved into our house. We never thought we'd rent this little place for so long, but now we don't want to live anywhere else. Over the past month, we have had several significant home improvements: book sorting, basement overhaul, a fresh coat of exterior paint, and three door replacements. But first, a bird horror story that also kind of falls under the home improvement category. 

I. Birds

For a few weeks, I noticed that every time I opened our garage door, a bird would fly in. It would perch on the handlebars of a bike or sometimes even venture further inside the garage. Every time I closed the garage, though, it would fly right back out again, so I figured it was just an oddly inquisitive bird. Our garage door is pretty decrepit, so on nice days I often leave it open while I'm home to avoid the battle of closing the warped door (our landlord has a new garage door on backorder). Sometimes the kids would open the garage to get their bikes out and then forget to close the garage over night. The weather was nice and we live in the country away from many prying eyes so it didn't seem like a big deal.

Jay's Birthday

Jay turned 12 on Friday, May 21st! We did presents at 6:40am before school. He opened a costume Halo Helmet, a special high-power Nerf gun, and a big kick scooter. Rose and Amber wanted to give him 12 packs of gum, but I didn't manage to get them before 6:40am on Jay's birthday, so I went to the store later that day and they gave him the gum at dinnertime. I sense a family tradition in the making--to fill out Rose's birthday gifts back in February, we gave her 10 packs of gum. Every day for the next few weeks, Rose gave everyone a piece of her gum to chew during screen time. Jay has taken up that same mantel of sharing. It warms my heart. 

Everyday May

May is slipping away! We have had a huge swing in weather over the past two weeks, from blistering 95 degrees to cold rain to strong winds. The weather in Sunnyside is usually so dependable, it's been weird-but-exciting to have such a variety in such a short amount of time. How about some journal clips and random everyday May pictures to fill in the gaps? First, the journal clips:

Sort-of Mother's Day

Mother's Day always falls right in the middle of track season, when Jeff is hanging on to his life-work-mental-health balance by his fingernails. He rarely has anything more to give on the second Sunday in May, and I should be totally fine with it. I mean, I do understand and I love him no matter what he does or doesn't do for me on Mother's Day, but I can't help feeling rather bereft anyways when nothing happens on that day. The past few Mother's Days have been somewhat underwhelming at best, and painfully disappointing at worst. Not that my husband and kids love me less or try to make Mother's Day awful. No, it all has boiled down to two things: my undefined hopeful expectations of being pampered somehow, along with Jeff's utter life fatigue and overwhelm. Add to that mix a clashing of love languages, and my whole family is left feeling a little abandoned, unloved, and underappreciated in different ways. 

Cut and Run

After almost two hours at the church on Saturday morning, helping with setup and prep for a large funeral meal, Jeff and I went home to get ready for a date-like excursion to Vancouver to watch a track meet. Jay would be the man of the house while we were gone. He had already been the man of the house while Jeff and I were helping at the funeral. During that brief time, Amber managed to sneak off with a pair of scissors and a mind for mischief. When Jeff and I got home from the funeral, Jay and Rose were brimming with concern and indignation: Amber had given herself a very thorough, very short haircut.

May Week

May is in full sunny blooming force! The persistent winds of March and April have eased up a bit in frequency and duration, and we have all been feeling the pull of the glorious irrigated wonderland that is May in the Yakima Valley. This week was an exercise in balance, and even though I'm not sure I managed to find the right balance all in one day, the week as a whole appears far more balanced than each day taken individually. Perspective matters! 

Covid Containment

Friday, April 23rd was the kids' LAST DAY of online school. The school district moved to 5 days a week in person on Monday, April 26th! The kids still have to wear masks and all of that jazz, but they are allowed to sit only 3 feet apart in classrooms instead of 6 feet apart, which is what made it so the schools could go five days a week. I'm pretty sure I've written these details lots of times, so I'm not working too hard to explain it thoroughly. It all seems so normal right now in the moment, but I wonder if any of this will make sense if I ever look back at my feeble explanations in the future. 

Same Song, Different Verse

Just over a week ago, our Sunnyside School District announced that hybrid learning was ending, and students would be going back to school in person for five days per week starting on Monday, April 26th. It felt so sudden! I was scared to believe it because every time I have thought I could depend on my kids actually going to school full time over the past year, it has been ripped away from my bosom and left us with one to two days of in-person school and three to four days of at home online learning per week. But this was real. Real school was going to happen for real!