As summer break winds down, I've realized that I never brought you guys up to date on the Winter and Spring, so here we go!
The new year brought a new sport in to our lives-skiing. I grew up cross country skiing, but downhill I had only done twice before I got pregnant and I was a little intimidated. Add to that, the amount of work it takes to prep, pack up, load the car, dress sleepy children in layers of snow clothes, drive up the mountain and then get them booted, helmeted, gloved and skied up? It was a lot. Good news was, everyone loved it. We did the program at Sky Tavern which is solely for teaching kids how to ski and because parents have to volunteer as part of the deal, it's way less money than lessons and passes to other resorts and a great environment for learning. I volunteered to work the line getting on to a lift and Dave of course taught lessons. He has skied his whole life and actually did this same program when he was a kid. Riley has found the sport he truly loves and is good at and it is skiing. He ended the season at level 4 and ready to take on the world. Aaron liked it too, and moved up to the top of level 3, and Emily, when she wasn't resting flat on her back in the snow, made it to a 3 also. I am proud to say, I also made it to a level 4! I noticed my tail bone hurt whenever I sat a certain way and couldn't figure out why. Two weeks after skiing ended and it felt better I realized it was from all of the falling on my a*%. True story.
Riley decided to play baseball again in the spring which is an entirely different sport than in the fall. Aaron, after seeing Riley play in the fall, said he wanted to switch from soccer to baseball and play also. Riley stayed in the farm division which has an automatic pitching machine and is typically for kids ages 6-9. Aaron played T-ball, and Dave coached his team which both of them loved. Spring ball has a draft, they keep score, there's a tournament at the end, and it's all anyone talks about or cares about. Some a little too much... Baseball is INTENSE. 3-4 nights a week, all games, plus a practice thrown in if the coach can fit it and add in two boys playing on different teams? The real kicker was that Skiing got delayed almost a month due to the crazy winter and record snowfall we got this year so for 2 or 3 weeks we had 3 nights of baseball during the week, 2 games on Saturdays and skiing every Sunday. It was A LOT. Skiing ended which guaranteed one day off from baseball and then the boys' schedules stopped overlapping whatsoever so that there were 2 weeks in April where we were at the field 11 out of 14 days. BUT the boys LOVED it. Emily was a real trooper. With that kind of schedule, there was no way she could do a sport or even dance for the whole school year and she was dragged to every single baseball thing ever. Grandparents took turns taking her out to lunch or somewhere so she could get away a few times but she did so well. Riley's team lost every single game they played all season except for 2. They were in 5th place out of 6 teams. It was sad. Tournament started and they lost their first game. They won every single game after that to win the entire tournament! It was incredible. Something he will never forget. By the last game, he was playing half the game as pitcher and half at first, a far cry from being in the dugout for two innings and the outfield the rest-how he started the season. He saved one of the final tournament games with a hit that got him on base in the 7th inning with 2 outs bringing a runner in to tie the game. Dave learned that he never wants to sit next to his wife at a baseball game ever. She's loud and yells the whole game, constantly cheering the team on at the edge of her seat and asking a lot of questions. *womp womp
Baseball ended on such a high note that when we came down from the clouds and back to reality, we couldn't believe there was only a week left of school. We celebrated our very last Kindergarten graduation. *sniff sniff Our baby turned 6. * double sniff sniff
Aaron celebrated his birthday at home with a couple friends. He wanted a party that had a house theme and a cake shaped and decorated like our house. We decorated graham cracker houses, played minute to win it games, and ate some pizza and ice cream. Dave took a turn at the cake decorating and it really did look like our house! He's pretty amazing. Aaron was a happy boy. I was a teary momma.
Easter came with lots of family, food, egg hunts and fun!
Dave and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in March. 10th! We took our first trip and it was together and kidless thanks to Dave's parents who took the kids for us. We left on a Thursday at lunch and didn't come back until Monday. We flew to Denver and toured the Coors Light facility, visited a few shops we wanted to see, spent 1 night in an old Bed and Breakfast and then finished our trip staying downtown and seeing an Avalanche hockey game. It was fantastic! What a 10 years it has been.
That pretty much brings us to summer break which I'll save for another post. Since yesterday was such a big day for us, I'll go ahead and add on what happened to Emily.
Friday morning the kids wanted to play in the sprinklers in the back yard. We have a sprinkler that is a big ball and shoots the water out of the sides. It's about 2 feet high and the kids were taking turns jumping over it. After a dozen passes, it was Emily's turn. She jumped over and her foot caught, just barely, on the top as she went over, causing her to head straight for the ground and land on her shoulder. I heard the thump and knew it was bad. We thought she dislocated her shoulder as she couldn't lift her arm up so we took her to an orthopedic urgent care to have x-rays done and see a doctor. First picture, it was clear she had broken her collar bone very badly. They don't fix that kind of break, just let the body build up bone around it. In 3 months she will be as strong and ever. She can't do the monkey bars (her favorite thing to do) for 6 weeks and has restrictions on PE. First week, little brother (whose classroom is right next door to Emily's) and I will help her get her backpack in and big brother will come by her room at the end of the day and help her pack it up and carry it out. There are serious advantages to being born between boys. She is doing very well today and working on doing things with one arm-the other is in a sling. She can use her hand and lift the bottom of her arm but any joggling of her body causes her a lot of pain.
I will keep you updated through Facebook and Instagram on how she's doing and thank you to everyone for all of your well wishes!
