Spring in February

After a gloomy wet Monday and Tuesday, we had the best February weather ever this week! It felt like such a treat to enjoy sunshine without wind at the end of February. It was a nice little gift during the one and only week between swim season and track season. Here are some journal excerpts:

Driving and adapting

Over the past 2 weeks, Jeff and I have had a lot of quality time in the car with Rose practicing driving. Rose's total hours spent driving since she got her permit on February 9th (13 days ago) is close to 13 hours! That's a lot of time for a full-time high school student who also attends early morning seminary and a 2 hour driver's ed class 5 evenings a week, while also preparing for the science fair and trying to sneak some running in to get ready for track season. Rose is cranking! She also performed four songs in the piano ribbon festival on Saturday. It's a lot, and she has been tired. I did all of her dishes and laundry this week because Rose wasn't home long enough to do them. One week done, two more weeks of driver's ed to go!

Swim Season Recap

Jeff has been too exhausted to write about the swim team, and our local paper has not stepped up to report on the team's progress all winter, I took matters into my own hands and wrote a swim season recap last weekend. It was weird tempering my snark in order to focus on the theme of overcoming barriers, so I felt like my writing was a little off, but this is what I came up with. 

Jury Duty

I had jury duty last week. I have jury duty this coming week. I will not have jury duty next week. This sounds like an English language learner's lesson. Maybe I'll revert to journal entry excerpts to tell the tale:

Sunday, February 8th: I made my first call-in for jury duty tonight. My group has to report to the courthouse in Yakima at 8:30 tomorrow morning! So Jeff has to take Amber to his classroom 1 hour and 15 minutes before her school opens, she will walk to school from there, and Jeff will somehow take her home after school during swim practice. He also has to take Rose to the DMV to get her permit. I will probably miss my doctor appointment. It's also piano lessons for the girls tomorrow night. It feels like I'm the only one who ever remembers about piano lessons. Will I be home by then? The court didn't say. I'm worried that Jeff might forget some of these necessary activities. I don't know why it's fair to ask any busy parent to be on a jury. What do other people do in this situation? It's so frustrating! I feel no sense of civic duty. All I feel is annoyed at being pulled away from my #1 duty. Ugh. I have to leave home at 7:30am tomorrow and drive all the way to Yakima in a dense fog advisory to stay at the courthouse for an undisclosed amount of time. 

Happy Birthday, Rose!

Rose turned 15!!! Her birthday was on Saturday, February 7th. We planned her family birthday dinner for the day after because Rose was originally going to be at the district swim meet all day on her birthday, serving in her role as team manager. When that meet was moved, however, Rose suddenly had a full Saturday birthday at home! She opened her birthday presents in the morning, and later I took her out to get Thai food for a mother-daughter birthday lunch. On Sunday evening, our local extended family came over for  Rose's birthday dinner of choice: pulled pork, mac and cheese, (also veggies, coleslaw, and salad), and cheesecake. 

All or Nothing

The saga of the swim season sans swimming pool continued this week. The district prelims were scheduled for Thursday, February 5th in Moses Lake (1 hour 45 minutes away) at 5pm. I chose not to attend the prelims, and instead just attend the finals on Saturday at the same location. Soon after the team school bus arrived at Moses Lake High School on Thursday, they were told that the pool facility HVAC system had blown out and the meet was cancelled. So the bus turned around and drove that long winding hour and 45 minutes back to Sunnyside. 

Sunrise from Monday morning (Feb 2nd) because this post needs something pretty. Even the sky was all or nothing this week: all colorful glory or nothing thick smudgy fog.

Coach Conference & Music

I coughed my way through the week, grinding my gears back into regular life routines as my body slowly worked on recovering from the flu. Journal excerpts from the week: 

Monday, January 26th: So. Tired. I went back to normal life post-flu today, and it was exhausting. I cleaned bathrooms, cooked dinner, played piano for an hour, did a pull-up prep workout, ran 30 minutes, and drove the girls to piano lessons, the library (Amber, for fresh books), and the hardware store (Rose, for science fair supplies). I am so sleepy. My slow run felt hard thanks to my cough and my feeble legs. Hopefully I can get all the way healthy again soon! I don't have anything else to say. I need sleep most.

Weak week

 It was a weak week for me. On Sunday afternoon, I came down with the sickness gifted to me by my family, and it was a rough one. I haven't been that sick in years. We think it was the flu. That fever was so painful! Once the 48 hour acute fever phase subsided, the cough-n-snot phase hit with full force, compounded by bone-deep fatigue. I barely did anything all week long. I was too weak to play the piano for more than 20 minutes at a time, and I definitely couldn't run. I didn't even start driving Amber to school until Wednesday, and I spent most of the week sitting: on the couch, in my recliner, in bed. I drove Amber to school and then existed until she needed to be picked up.

Sickness and sunset

About the same time that freezing fog descended on our valley, some sort of sickness struck my family hard this week. The sky was sick; my family was sick. Was it the flu? A cold? Covid? Who knows! All I know is that it was a rough one: prolonged high fever, chills, and congestion, with a body-wracking cough. Jeff fell first, on Tuesday afternoon, followed by Jay on Wednesday night. But Rose was definitely in the mix, coming straight home from school and taking a 2 hour nap every day this week. The full-on fever didn't hit Rose until Saturday. Amber remained unscathed and went to school every day this week. I haven't gotten it yet either, but there's a telltale tickle in the back of my throat... so I feel haunted and hunted, since seemingly inevitable suffering is in my near future. 

After all that, this GLORIOUS sunset from Monday night feels like a lifetime ago.

Grinding gears

We survived our first week back in the school routine after Christmas break! It will involved some grinding gears as we adjusted to getting up early again and being busy all day, but we made it. Jay came down with a cold on Sunday, and stayed home from school on Monday. His lingering cough and congestion plagued him the rest of the week. Rose already had a cough from who knows what, but when she fell asleep for two hours after school on Wednesday, we figured she had come down with the cold as well. Between Rose and Jay, our house has a chorus of coughing and a NyQuil/DayQuil habit. So far the rest of us are fine...famous last words, I know. Yay winter! 

A New Year

 2026 is here, ready or not! I love seeing a few basic stats from the past year. It's fascinating to see where I spend my time. This year I had a piano practice app which allowed me to track exactly how many hours I spent playing the piano. It was a lot this year, and I like to think I have improved my piano skills since last January. I spent over 40 hours practicing scales in 2025, so that has to mean some sort of improvement, right?

My 2025 stats:

Visitors and an invasion

We had visitors after Christmas! Mel, Braxton, 2 year old Dahlia, and Pancha the dog came from their home in Seattle and stayed from Saturday-Monday. My parents came at the same time and stayed till Wednesday. It was so special and fun having my family here! I love them. 

Petting Pancha