February Family France Trip!

 Ever since we took our kids to France 6 years ago in the summer of 2019, we have planned to do another family trip to France. Calendars, finances, and plans aligned this year for a family France trip in February! Jeff had plenty of personal leave days saved up, and the kids all had good enough grades to miss 8 days of school. Two days after high school boys' swim season ended, the five of us flew to Paris for 10 days of pastries, history, art, views, trains, secondhand smoke, and walking. It was a whirlwind, and it will take far more than a single blog post to document satisfactorily. For now, I'll post some highlight pictures and the breakdown of what we did:

District Swim Meet

On Saturday, February 8th, Rose, Amber, and I drove to Moses Lake, WA to watch the district high school boys' swim meet. Jay competed in 2 relay finals (the 200 medley relay and the 400 freestyle relay), 1 individual final (100 backstroke), and one consolation race (500 freestyle), finishing off his sophomore swim season with a flare. He was one of only two boys on his team who qualified for an individual final at the district meet. Both of the relay teams Jay swam on got school records, and he shaved a few more tenths of a second off of his 100 backstroke PR. Jay won the consolation heat of the 500 yard freestyle with a 7 second PR of 6:20, after a goggle malfunction at the beginning! Jay works so hard and it was so fun to watch his consistent effort pay off.

Happy Birthday Rose!

Happy birthday to our Rose! She turned 14 on Friday, February 7th. The big 1-4! Fourteen is basically the beginning of the end of a teenager's time at home! Waahhh! It seems like everything goes full steam ahead once they hit 14. Rose will start high school later this year. She will get her driver's permit in one year. Etc. etc. etc. the ball keeps rolling faster and faster after that. 

Birthday celebrations started off with a slice of "birthday preview" cheesecake the night before Rose's birthday. Jeff and Jay were at a swim meet, so it was just us girls at home. We had leftovers for dinner and then Rose had a piece of her Costco cheesecake for dessert. Since Jeff (and Jay) didn't get home from the swim meet till 11pm that night, I wrapped Rose's birthday gifts all alone and placed them with the birthday banner by the fireplace. I placed each individual item in its own gift bag to expand the special birthday present vibe as much as possible.

Ice skating with Amber

On the way home from school on Thursday  afternoon (February 6th), Amber asked her daily question: "is the canal frozen enough to go ice skating?" For the first time in 2 weeks, the answer was yes! The weather had been windy and cold all day long, so the canal was frozen solid. I was feeling cold and tired just driving in that weather. To me, cold plus wind equals hide and hibernate. I can do either cold OR wind, but when they combine it is painful. Amber asked Rose if she would go ice skating with her, but Rose said no (ice skating is not Rose's favorite thing). 

"I really want to go ice skating, but I don't want to go by myself," Amber lamented. As my motherly heart softened to the plea of my youngest child, my immediate future started looking frosty. Steeling myself, I volunteered as tribute and went ice skating with Amber. 

Canal skating & coach conference

My top three highlights from the week are: 

1. I went ice skating on the canal twice! 
2. I reached an ambitious personal goal by playing the piano for a cumulative 30 hours in the month of January.
3. Jeff and I went to the Nike Track and Field Coaching Conference in Portland on Friday and Saturday.

Sun, snot, & swim

It was sunny every single day this week--a pure anomaly for January in Sunnyside. The sun was COLD, though, with temps in the teens every night and frost on the ground every morning. It would warm up to the mid-30s by afternoon though, so the ice on the canal never got firm enough for skating--much to mine and Amber's dismay. The words sun, snot, and swim pretty much sum up the week, but I'll add in a few journal entries to round it out. 

Piano Joy

Almost 20 years ago, my parents upgraded the Baldwin upright piano of my childhood to a gorgeous glossy Steinway grand piano. At the time, I was in my piano draught era between the end of college and the end of childbearing, where I played the piano like once a year at most. Jeff and I didn't even own a piano for 7 of those years. In 2015, a kind friend gave us her old piano--a much-loved beat up old Gulbransen spinet. That piano was an enormous blessing. I had been wanting a piano for years, but pianos are expensive--even low quality pianos. Once we had a piano of our own, I was able to put Jay and Rose in piano lessons! I played the piano a bit more at that time, but never enough to really learn any songs. This was during Amber's intense early childhood, so sitting down to play the piano without the house blowing up behind me felt like too great a risk.

Jaylene's Baptism

While I was sitting in church a few months ago, I glanced to my left and thought I saw a familiar face sitting a few rows over. It took me a few minutes to place the face in my memory, and then I side-eyed her profile and second guessed myself for the rest of the meeting. After the closing prayer, I gathered my courage and went over to see if this was the person I thought it was. 

"Is that you, Jaylene?" I asked. 

"Yes, Mrs. White, how are you?" she replied, and gave me a big hug.

A Visit from Mom

Usually the first week of January is my least favorite week out of the entire year. Christmas lights and joy are over, my entire family leaves early in the morning for school, and I am left alone in a rumpled house to find my rhythm again under dark gloomy cold skies. The first week of 2025 was different because my Mom came to visit! She and my Dad both came last weekend for Jay's priesthood ordination, but my Mom stayed all week after that. Mundane tasks like driving, cooking, and cleaning were magically transformed into fun quality time. 

Happy New Year!

2024 is somehow over, and 2025 has begun. We enjoyed a peaceful second week off of school to welcome the new year. We didn't go anywhere or do anything drastic; we just stayed home, relaxed, and enjoyed the glow of our Christmas tree for the entire week. On New Year's Eve, we had our traditional crackers, dips, and special drinks for dinner and then stayed up till midnight. Jeff played a computer game with the kids. I watched a k-drama. The kids watched a movie. Jeff played a different computer game. I watched a k-drama. I was so tired, I wanted to go to bed at 10:30pm, but there were random fireworks popping and echoing across the fields and my whole family was awake. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep in a house full of AWAKE people, so I propped my eyelids open and watched another k-drama episode. We reconvened at 11:57pm to watch the new year begin. We counted down the last five seconds, said "Happy New Year!", had a family hug, and then crashed into bed. Sometimes staying up late watching shows or talking is super tempting and fun, but when I am actually trying to stay up till midnight, it is murderous! 

Christmas!

Journal excerpts from the week:

Sunday, December 22nd: I gave Amber a haircut this afternoon. This morning while I was doing Amber's hair before church, I noticed a suspiciously short hacked section near her forehead. "Did you cut your hair?" I asked. Sheepish eyes answered me. "It was annoying me so I cut it off." Thankfully it was only a small section, but Amber did say she wanted shorter hair again, so I chopped and hacked at her insanely thick hair until I got it shorter and even across the bottom. It's totally cute. When I was done, the bathroom floor had more hair on it than I have on my entire head, and my thumb was red and aching from the pressure of the scissors. Amber's hair is that thick. 

Wintering

 Last week was dark and rainy and bleak. The temperature hovered one or two degrees above freezing, making it pure misery to set even one foot outside into the damp cold. I did five consecutive runs on the treadmill--a new personal record. This week we had less rain, which made life a little more pleasant in spite of the short days. We even had a sunny day where the temperature climbed up above 50 degrees! Spring-like weather around here in December is very rare, so we made the most of it.