School's out for the summer!

Time to catch up on everything that's happened! The end of the school year was busy as it always is. This year, we had a fifth grade graduate! A bunch of us parents organized a graduation party at Hartman Park on Wednesday (the 21st) and it was a fun way to celebrate our kiddos moving on to fifth grade:-). Friday morning was the graduation. Nathan and his friend Zander had composed a song about graduation that they performed that was so good! I was so proud of Nathan, he is a talented kiddo.

Friday afternoon we packed up the van and off we went to Alberta! We stopped in Kamloops for night (as has become quite the tradition!) and went the rest of the way on Saturday. We let Lynsey do quite a bit of the driving (not through the single lane mountain roads, she can work her way up to that). We had a nice few days hanging out in Calgary, visiting with Mark and Frances and some friends, getting ready for our big trip! Speaking of which, next post is about THE BIG TRIP! Stay tuned:-).

   

Summer weather, school winding down

June is almost half over and only two photos taken even remotely worth posting - good thing summer is coming up and I always take a lot more pictures in the summer! What has been happening around here since my last post . . . Brian continues his work on the garage, as you can see from the photo he's got the walls up! He is working on a bulkhead over some pipes right now and then he will call for a framing inspection, then it's on to the electrical wiring! 

Lots of year end stuff going on, Nathan has a field trip to the Capitol building in Olympia tomorrow. I was planning to go with him, but we got our citizenship interviews scheduled for that day unfortunately so I can't. I mean, it's good that we got our interviews, but the timing isn't great. We also don't want to get sworn in tomorrow because they take your green cards at the swearing in, and that makes traveling out of the country complicated. Of course we have two trips to Canada in the next 6 weeks. Our plan is to do the interview, and we have heard that you can defer the swearing in, so we will try and do that. Swearing in in August means we can just go and get passports through the regular passport offices and not have to pay huge fees and go through huge hassles to get an emergency passport. So wish us luck in all of that tomorrow! I think a part of me wants to delay the swearing in because I can't even believe that I'm about to become an American citizen. I understand the reasons for doing it and I am on board, but that is definitely a weird feeling. I am glad that I'll be able to vote in the next election! I mean it's not like Washington is a swing state by any stretch of the imagination so my vote won't matter but still - it's the principle!

We booked a trip to go to Hawaii at Christmas! We are going to Kauai and spending 6 nights, then flying over to the Big Island and spending 6 more nights. It's the longest vacation we've ever done as a family, I usually try to keep them at 9 or maybe 10 days but this one is 12. We do have condos with kitchens and laundry, so that helps with costs of eating out and not having to bring so many clothes. I am excited! I love beach vacations! Kauai and Big Island aren't purely beach destinations, we will do some hikes and see some volcanoes, we will see how it goes. Knowing our family, it won't be a jam packed itinerary lol. 

Speaking of vacations, our trip to Canada is coming up! We leave on Friday the 23rd, and then Brian and I leave from Calgary on the 27th to go to Portugal! Definitely some details to iron out but I think we've booked things we need to book. Some stuff we will just have to figure out when we get there. Looking forward to a little break from regular life! And then at the end of the trip, I will look forward to getting home and getting back into routine:-D.

 

A trip to Seattle Children's ER

Since volleyball ended, life has pretty much settled down and gotten a lot less busy. Except, of course, when Nathan falls off his bike and gets a concussion:-(.

Last Thursday (the 18th) I was on my way back from Boys and Girls club volleyball around 7:15pm when Brian calls me - Nathan has come home from biking with friends at the bike park where he fell and got a concussion. He was repeating himself a lot, talking in a loop - it was very disturbing. As soon as I got home, I take him to the Urgent Care in Redmond. I got in to see the doctor right away and after looking at him for one minute, he tells me to take him to the Seattle Children's ER for a CT scan. I was pretty scared at this point. It's 8pm, about an hour from the accident, and he is still repeating himself, asking what day it is, it was all very disconcerting. I take him over to Seattle Children's ER and we get set up in their system. I am naively thinking that he would be pretty high up on the list to be seen because, you know, his brain might be bleeding and all, but no - we waited there for two hours. I did get a bit pushy at this point, I mentioned several times that a doctor in Redmond took one look at him and told us he needed a CT scan, this was his brain, etc. Thankfully by the time these two hours had passed, Nathan was starting to be a lot more coherent and I was a lot less worried, but I still wanted him to be checked out again by another doctor - we had gone all that way and waited two hours already after all. Thankfully we got seen after that last conversation (I don't know if it was because of me being pushy or if he was due up at that time anyway, we will never know!). They x-rayed his shoulder because it was pretty sore and checked him out, said he didn't need a CT since he was regaining his memory (still doesn't remember the accident but remembered things before it happened again) and he didn't have a headache or nausea. We got home at 12:15am. It was quite the evening! Very tiring and stressful. So glad he is okay, his arm has been a bit sore but he is otherwise completely back to his usual self which is beyond a relief. I haven't had a lot of moments like this in my parenting journey thankfully, but it was one of those times where you are driving to the hospital and asking yourself, "Is today the day that our lives completely change?" Thankfully, it was not that day.

What else has been going on . . . last Saturday Brian and I went to the Trey Kennedy comedy show in Seattle which was fun - it had been a while since we had a date night. Not much else has been going on, Brian is still plugging away at the garage project and I have been working away at weeding the yard, trying to make it look somewhat presentable. I love our yard but I am so tired of pulling the same weeds year after year. I miss those first two years after we put the mulch down, the cardboard did such a good job of stifling the weeds! Oh well. It's a nice problem to have, a big beautiful yard that needs maintenance:-).

 

Playoff fun comes to an end, along with the volleyball season

Well, it's a bit of a sad day around here today:-(. The Oilers are out of the playoffs. It's definitely disappointing, as there was a lot of hope going into these playoffs, but Vegas was a good team and we just couldn't keep it together against them. Sad, but life goes on. Next year will be our year!:-)

It has been a very busy few weeks, phew! Both Nathan and Lynsey had volleyball (Lynsey lots more than Nathan, but Nathan had a few games as well!) and Brian went on a work trip last Tuesday, coming back Thursday evening. Lynsey and I went to Centralia for tournaments both of the last two weekends. The team did okay on the 6th-7th weekend, it was the Power League finals and the competition was tough. We didn't play our best, though. This past weekend, the Mother's Day Classic tournament, we played a LOT better! We actually won the U16 division (although to be fair, the competition wasn't quite as good as in Power League). I do think if we had played as well in the Power League finals as we did this past weekend, we would have done a lot better. I was coaching the whole weekend with the exception of a set here and there where Sabry was on a break from his 13s. There were a few rough sets, but I was really proud of how the girls bounced back and ended up winning the match. The only two matches we lost were against 18s teams, and we actually played very well against them. They were just stronger - two age groups older and hitting pretty hard. It was neat to see the girls play up to that level, I'm glad they had the opportunity to play them.

It feels weird that there's no practice this week. I'm ready for a break, but I will miss the girls and the challenge of coaching. Lynsey will try out for the U17 team for next year, and the director said they would consider me as the assistant coach but ultimately it was up to the head coach to choose their assistant. We will see how it works out! I don't even know if Lynsey will make the U17 team. I am going to sign her up for U16 tryouts as well as a back up (they are after the U17 tryouts thankfully).

Life after club volleyball and Oilers playoff hockey! As Brian's brother Mike says, we have been given the gift of time with the Oilers exit haha. The weather is going to be so warm this week (and was this past weekend, whew!) so I am hoping to get some more yard work done. Going to enjoy the sunshine! Spring is finally here properly!

 

Playoff time! And other things:-D

May is here and we are back in the full swing of life after vacation. Brian left for Berlin the day after we got back from our vacation and I was solo parenting for a week. It went okay, there were a few conflicts that I just couldn't work out so I did miss one volleyball practice, but it was pretty manageable. The Boys and Girls Club volleyball started that week and I left the boys at home alone while I was there, and of course Adam had some kind of crisis with his playlist on his tablet that Nathan couldn't work out so he kept calling me. I couldn't leave so it was very stressful. Thankfully Adam did work it out himself and everyone was safe so we got through it okay. I think work trips are harder for me to manage now than when the kids were young! At least back then we were just all at home all the time and I didn't have to be in two places at once! So many scheduling things I had to work out, and Brian is going away again next week for just a few days and it's going to cause a conflict with Nathan's volleyball game and mine and Lynsey's practice - seriously. Thankfully he doesn't travel much, the Berlin trip was a one off and he only goes to California about every 6 months. We can make it!

Playoffs are upon us and they are bringing just as much joy and anguish as they they always do! So far the joy has outweighed the anguish, but we all know that the likelihood of heartbreak at some point on this road is high. Only one team can win it all! The Oilers pulled off a game 6 series win on Saturday which was super exciting - what a rollercoaster to get there! We're winning, yay! Skinner coughs up the puck and they score an easy one and tie it - boo. Yammer scores an unlikely goal with 3 minutes left - do we dare hope this can hold up?? Thankfully it did! The next round starts tonight and the way the schedule is, I'm going to miss a bunch of the first four games because of volleyball:-(. They just need to make it past this round as club volleyball will be over on Mother's Day - you can do it Oilers!

What else has been going on . . . oh yes, speaking of volleyball, we had a tournament on the 23rd. The team did not do very well. Some might even say some kind of implosion took place. Sabry lost his mind after they lost a bad set and made them run - yes, run - in front of the other team and all the parents. He has quite literally never done this before - even in practice, he has never made them run as a punishment. It was absolutely ridiculous and made them play worse. After that match, he told them to go to the team area and talk as a team - no parents, no cell phones. It was actually not the worst thing, Lynsey said it had been really nice to chat together with no distractions. They came back and played another match, lost again, and then officiated. While half of them were officiating, the rest of them were in the team area where I was sitting with them and chatting. I was getting some really good insight about what does and does not motivate them to play better (shocker - yelling and punishing them doesn't motivate them, how about that). Sabry walks by and sees a couple of girls on their phones and tells them to go home. No explanation, just "go home". I was like, "wait, why??" and he claimed it was because they were on their phones and they weren't supposed to be. One of the girls started crying and the other girls were just shocked as he walked away, high on his big power trip. I collected myself and tried to figure out what to do - I knew this couldn't stand, it was completely unfair. He had NOT been clear that his "no phones" instruction was for the rest of the day, and honestly, he doesn't have the authority to decree this anyway. I tracked him down and told him this was completely unfair, they had all been on their phones so he should send the whole team home if that was going to be his hard stance. He argued with me a bit but did relent, not with any kind of apology to the girls he told to go home, but more with a vague threat of, "well you'll pay for this in practice". 

Several of the girls on the team played for him last year and they are all saying he wasn't like this last year. I don't know what the heck is up but they played so scared the rest of the day, it was a complete disaster. There was a team that just free balled it over the net in two hits almost every time. We couldn't beat them. It was awful. I led practice on Monday because Sabry was in Alaska (which he knew when he made his threats) and that just irked the girls even more - they were like, "he knew he wasn't going to be here and he still said that?". Yes, he did. It's been a journey coaching with this guy. He really isn't always like this, I don't agree with all of his decisions but he isn't a jerk like that even close to the majority of the time. I honestly think he truly believes that he is motivating them to be better when he's like this. It's that old school mentality that has long since been debunked in favor of different methods, but not everyone has caught up yet.  Anyway, only three practices and two tournaments left (and I think I will get to coach that last tournament because his 13s team will be playing at the same time). We can make it!

Nathan's piano recital was that same day (definitely a crazy day!) and I rushed over there after the tournament to watch him perform. He did amazing once again! He is such a performer! I've never heard him play that song better. I was so proud of him, and I know he was really proud of himself. Hope he sticks with piano!

The weather is finally getting nice and it's time to pay attention to our jungle of a yard again. I did some weeding yesterday but will have to do more this week. So much going on with volleyball and the playoffs, who has time for real life responsibilities anyway! I guess I'll have to make some:-D.