In the past 8 days, we have had six track meets. Jeff went to four of these high school track meets, and I went to one middle school meet and two high school meets. It has been an intense 8 days! Track season is our despot king, and we are mere lowly microscopic servants doing his bidding. Grinding weeks like this one are exactly what I dread all winter as track season approaches.
Amber gave her first sacrament meeting talk at church today! She was asked to speak one week beforehand. We talked about it on the way to school back on Thursday, and Amber already knew which conference talk she wanted to use for her talk. But then it flew out of all our brains, and I forgot to write it on the family calendar. Working all day at the busy track meet yesterday fried even more brain cells.
In our church pew after the opening song, Amber looked over at me with wide eyes and whispered "I'm supposed to give a talk today!" My initial thought was maybe she just shouldn't do it--how could an 11 year old be expected to give a talk without any preparation? Jeff said "just go up and bear your testimony." Rose remembered which conference address Amber liked best, so she found it on her phone and showed it to Amber.
We are in the thick of track season right now. I don't want to waste time bemoaning the weather yet again...but for track coaches, the weather makes or breaks a practice, a meet, a week. This week we had moderately good weather on Monday, then three back to back cold WINDY days that about destroyed my will to press on. On Friday, the great outdoors finally stopped trying to ruin our physical and mental health and gave us a sunny warm-ish afternoon with a light breeze. Saturday was even warmer and more windless. Wow, writing all that down made me realize that the weather was a 50/50 split this week between good and bad. But the toll of standing outside in 20mph sustained winds with a real-feel temperature hovering at or below 50 degrees for three days in a row skews the memory. Whoops, I tried not to write an entire paragraph about the weather and failed!
Ah, sweet spring break. That blissful breath amidst the swirling vortex of track season. Our break involved daily track practice, mountains of yardwork, and enough screen time to recover from it all. The highlight of the week was our one family outing: on Thursday, April 9th, we went to the temple together to do baptisms for the dead. It was the first time all five of us have gone to the temple to do baptisms all together. We have only all been in the temple together one other time, at our ward youth temple trip back in January. It was crowded and Amber didn't even do baptisms that day, so Thursday was her first time doing temple baptisms! Our family temple trip was so small and quiet and sweet. I savored it.
Jay reached his big goal to break 5 minutes in the mile!! It was so exciting! He was so happy to achieve the goal that he worked so hard for!
It has come, like it does every spring: the time when track season takes over basic life functions. I managed to squeeze in a few non-track things amidst the planning, prepping, coaching, and clerking this week, but mostly track is life right now. Journal excerpts are keeping this blog afloat right now:
Middle school track season started this week! While I made the spreadsheet with all 65 kids who signed up for MS track, I officially crunched the middle school track numbers. 86% of last year's 7th graders on the track team joined the team this year. 66% of my 8th graders last year joined the high school track team. Retention is looking pretty snazzy, but that's not all: middle school kids kept registering throughout the week, so by the end of the first week of the season, 77 kids were on my roster! I believe registration closed on Friday, so that should be it.
50 of those kids attended practice at least once this week, with a daily average of about 40. That's a 44% increase in attendance since last year! 8 more kids have COME to track practice this year than the total number of kids who REGISTERED last year! I don't know why numbers are up so much this year, but I am here for it! Every afternoon during and after practice, my neurons were exploding with the effort of learning and remembering so many new names.
High school track season started this week! The first day of practice was Monday, March 2nd. The weather was eerily perfect: sunny, mid 50s, with a light breeze. I kept waiting for the wind, rain, and cold blustery weather to come, but that waited till Tuesday. Monday was lovely! Being a track coach is a master class in savoring the golden moment and accepting that it probably won't last, haha.
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:
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!
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.