Busy Winter

Normally winter feels very slow to me, but we’ve had a busy winter this year, so I’m actually surprised that we’re already nearing the end of February.  Lyla has been kept active with her team’s indoor soccer trainings and weekend futsol games, and we’ve had four indoor track meets since January, three of which have either been in North Jersey or New York, so we’ve logged some miles up and down Interstate 95.  Mark and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary at a track meet in Lynchburg, VA, and we’ve had some snow days, some Mouse Kondo help, Nina going to Jr. High Winter Camp for church, and Valentine’s Day.  Before we know it, we’ll be celebrating Lyla’s 11th birthday!  Time certainly is flying!

    

Here we are celebrating our anniversary with Nina at an awesome little Italian restaurant in Lynchburg.  We had a wonderful dinner and enjoyed celebrating our anniversary with Nina along.  Her track meet was the next day at Liberty University’s Indoor Track and Field complex.  So, we went back to the hotel after dinner and got ready for the meet. We were very thankful to Mousey and Poppy for hosting Lyla and Cayenne all day Saturday and Sunday.  They had a great time, and I think it’s safe to say that Lyla made the most of the full attention of the grandparents!

  

This meet was a learning experience for us.  It was our second track meet ever, but I feel like we got a better understanding after leaving here of how to approach the long days of future meets.  Nina struggled a bit to find her groove in this meet, but we kept encouraging her to keep working and everything will start coming together.

  

While Nina was at her next meet with Mark up in Jersey City, Mousey, a.k.a Marie Kondo, came over to help tidy up Lyla’s room.  It was a massive undertaking, but thanks to the Mouse, Lyla’s room and her dresser drawers now look radically different! Lyla and I enjoyed the weekend together going out do dinner, watching Secretariat, going to her soccer game, and spending some time with the Mouse.  While up in Jersey City, Nina started making some real progress with high jump.  While she had jumped 3’8” at the Liberty meet, she jumped 4’4” in Jersey City.  This video was from her first jump where she had to start at 4’0” after never having cleared that height before.  She was so nervous, but pulled it off (and you can hear the excited Mark at the end of the video).  She continued to jump 4” higher after this video. https://youtu.be/IfeNV2OMYmc

Nina was back out of town again the next weekend for Jr. High Winter Camp for church...

…and we participated in the 5th grade pasta dinner on Friday evening with Lyla, and since Ryleigh and Emme were away at church camp also, Layne came over to spend the night on Friday night with Lyla, then Lyla spent the night at the Williams house on Saturday, so even the sisters who didn’t go to camp had a fun weekend together! 

The girls had a fun Valentine’s Day, but sadly, Mark’s back was in bad shape, so he spent much of the week laid up and uncomfortable.  Cayenne made sure everyone still had plenty of Valentine’s Day kisses though!

 

The next weekend, Nina and I headed up to Staten Island for her 4th meet at the Oceanside Track and Field Complex.  We got to the team hotel on Saturday evening and got a good dinner together, then settled in for the night.  We were up and out early the next morning.

   

We had quite the hectic start when we got there as her hurdle event went off much earlier than we anticipated (literally immediately after we walked into the building) which made for a crazy start, but despite taking a fall over the last hurdle, she rebounded and got a personal record in high jump (4’5”) and her second fastest 200m time, so everything ended well despite starting kind of frantically.

 

 

Her gains in high jump qualified her for Nationals in Landover, MD, the weekend of March 8-10, so we’re really proud of her for her hard work, and we’re so happy to see that she’s found something she loves to do and is willing to work at to keep improving.  It’s been a lot of learning for her in the past few months since joining this track team just after Thanksgiving, but it was a great decision to try something new, and we’re happy to see her enjoying herself so much.

 

Right after we got back from the track meet, we got more snow, and the kids got more days off school.  Up to this point, they haven’t gone to school a full week since Winter Break!  This week we’re currently in might be their first full week of school!  Not that they mind though.  They love the snow days, the sleeping in (well, Nina), and the lazy days. Cayenne seems to enjoy it too!  She loves having the girls home and all the extra attention that comes with it!