Sports for the Win

In a time when the girls are largely limited from social/school interaction, sports have come through for the win.  Being able to get out of the house and go to practice, see teammates, and be active have been lifesavers for morale and well being.  Nina’s team participated in a small meet last weekend at a high school in Maryland.  It was her first competitive environment in 8 months!  It’s hard to believe it’s been that long since she last competed, but they were at the culminating point of the indoor season when COVID shut things down in early March.  There is still no high jump, but she did get to run a new event (the 300m hurdles) which she really enjoyed, so that was great!  It’s a different race completely than the sprint hurdles, which she also runs, so it will be good for her to add this new event.

  

  

The next day we were in Arlington for a soccer game for Lyla.  The field has a nice backdrop of the Washington Monument, and it was a beautiful day to sit out and enjoy some soccer.

 

Another parent on the team took this picture of Lyla, so I can’t take credit for it, but I like it!

While Cayenne has no sports participation to report on, enjoying some beautiful fall walks during the day have been highlights for her. We’ve had some warm fall days to enjoy so far, and fingers crossed that we get a lot more of them before the cold weather sets in.

A Beautiful Start to Fall

In Virginia, we’ve had a beautiful start to fall.  While the school year has been somewhat isolating in 100% virtual school, at least fall sports have been moving forward.  Lyla’s team started playing regular season fall games this month, and we’ve enjoyed getting the chance to watch her play.  Mark is also coaching with Loudoun Soccer, so he and Lyla keep busy with games on the weekends.

  

 

 

Cayenne is still loving the family set up at the moment.  The kids are home all day, and Mark works from home, so the pre-COVID times she used to be home alone when I was teaching, she now has people to keep her company and beds to rotate to for most of the day.

  

One of the things we try to do every fall is get out to Middleburg for a walk around town and a trip to Scruffy’s Ice Cream Parlor.  They have a season pumpkin ice cream that is worth making the trip, so we get our ice cream, Cayenne gets her pup cup, and everyone’s happy! We also managed to get a few fall decorations out at the front of the house.  We don’t do a lot, but decorating for fall is one thing Nina and Lyla really look forward to.

  

   

While the track season hasn’t officially started yet, Nina has been training with her club, Ashburn Elite Track, to keep fitness.  The team has off-season workouts three times a week, and while she’s only getting limited hurdle time and still no high jump time, it’s been good for her to be able to get together with her team, run, and train.  This week the team had to do their work out sessions on their own, so we’ve been going over to the track at Independence High School (where she attends).  It’s a gorgeous facility, and we hope one day in the not-so-distant future, we’ll actually be able to watch meets take place there in person!

 

 

 

First Day of School 2020

The first day of school this year was most likely a historical one.  With a large part of the country turning to a virtual school year (at least in part) this year, things looked very different than the first day of school from years passed.  Loudoun County is 100% distance learning at this point, so Lyla’s first day of 7th grade and Nina’s first day of 9th grade were virtual this year.  

 

Virtual learning certainly has it’s pros and cons in this day of COVID awareness, and while I’m hoping all kids get to return in-person to school at some point this year, we’re focusing now on making the best of virutal school. The pros so far seem to be a more relaxed pace to the day, getting to go to school every day in sweat pants, walking downstairs for lunch (and for me, NOT PACKING LUNCHES!!!), the obvious minimal COVID exposure, and having Cayenne as your school-time buddy.

 

The cons so far seem to be the obvious lack of friend/people interaction,  the experience of actually starting high school in person (for Nina), being able to get instruction in the physical classroom from teachers, decreased physical movement throughout the day, and having to spend most of the school day on a laptop.

 

So, while this may not be the way we envisioned the start of the school year in 2020, we’re committed to doing our best to keep the morale up in the Simpson house while this stretch of virtual learning lasts. We don’t know when things will return back to “normal”, so for now we’ll focus on the present and identify what’s working well with virtual and what’s not working well, and count our blessings that we do have all we need to make this work effectively.  So many other families are in a truely difficult place with virtual school, so recognizing that this is more of an “inconvenience” or “unfortunate situation” for us rather than something dire, helps keep the perspective that we’re thankful to be healthy and managing to do alright in this unprecedented time! 

Labor Day Weekend 2020

We had a really fun Labor Day weekend just here at home.  On the Tuesday before the weekend, I hurt my back pretty badly teaching, and I didn’t do much all week other than just sit around and try to rest.  A visit to our favorite sports therapist friend on Thursday though did wonders for me, and while I didn’t know if I would be able to do the hike with the family, I decided to give it a try and just do what I could.  It was too nice of a day to sit inside or not go, and I figured that the worst case scenario was that I’d have to stop part way up the trail and just meet up with them back at the car, but all worked out for me to do the full hike and it was an awesome day to be out hiking!

  

Ravens Rock is one of our favorite hikes, and Mark and I have probably hiked it 6 or 7 times.  It’s a pretty strenuous hike, but Nina and Lyla do a great job with it.  I still remember the first time we tried to take them when they were much younger and they coudn’t make it to the top and had to stop so many times.  Now there’s a lot of enjoyment to be out hiking with them, and it’s a reward to get to the top and look out over the valley and just sit and enjoy the view (which my camera phone does not do justice to) before hiking back down.

 

 

It’s gotten to be a bit of a tradition that after hiking Raven’s Rock, we stop by Bear Chase Brewery afterwards for more great views, music, beers, slushies, enormous soft pretzels, and pizza.  It’s such a cool place, and we were really looking forward to going back there after this hike, but it was beyond packed when we arrived - so much so that we wouldn’t have even been able to find parking, and with COVID still being an issue, it definitely didn’t seem like a safe place to stop in unfortunately.  Although we were a bit disapointed about it at first, we decided to go home, make the girls Frappuccinos, pour a cold beverage, make a plate of snacks, and sit on the deck.  It was a great solution and then we ended up just cooking burgers and hot dogs over the fire pit and followed those up with s’mores.  It ended up being a great finish to a fun day.

  

Sunday was slated to be another beautiful day, so we had planned to try a something with the bikes we had never done before.  Fountainhead Regional Park is known for their mounain biking area.  They have three trails of varying difficulty but say that even the beginner loop should be approached with extreme caution, and now we know why.  It was tough!  Even though it was a real chalenge, we were all proud of ourselves for finishing (and in one piece!), so we treated ourselves to ice cream at Peterson’s afterwards.  

 

  

We rounded out the holiday weekend by having a good friend family over for BBQ.  Mark smoked a pork shoulder (which clearly had Cayenne’s attention) which was delicious, and we plenty of good food, good conversation, and a fun way to close out the last day of freedom before school started!

 

 

August Adventures

We’ve been at home all of August, but we’ve tried to stay busy with some local adventures that have been fun.  One of the great finds was an area on Goose Creek with a rope swing into a deep water hole that kept the girls and Nina’s two friends occupied for hours.  They had so much fun swinging off into the water, swimming in the creek, and running and jumping into the water.  It was definitely a super fun spot, and they are anxious to go back!

 

  

After that, we got hooked on taking some fun bike trips around the area.  Of the first trips I did with the girls when they were little was biking to Dairy Queen in Herndon.  At the time, it was quite an accomplishment for them to bike there and back, but now it was so easy (too easy, in fact), but they were more than happy to bike their and “earn” their Dairy Queen in Herndon before biking back.

   

On the way back from Dairy Queen, we spotted some Lamborghinis in the parking lot of a car dealership that backed up to the bike trail.  Nina and Lyla wanted to stop and take a look at the cars from the fence, but I convinced them we could “sneak” into the back of the parking lot to get a closer look.  We oogled at the four Lamborghinis we saw, took some pics with our favorites, and were pretty certain that somewhere on a security camera, someone was laughing at us.  Either way, it was a fun little bonus to the trip!  :)

  

The next week we were back on the trail - this time biking to Fireworks Pizza and bringing Uncle Bo.  He drove out to our place, then we parked at the trail and rode out to get pizza lunch and biked back.  It’s one of our favorite spots to stop on the trail and really fun to bring Bo with us.

 

August also thankfully brought back sports!  I didn’t realize how much I missed them until they were gone.  It has been great for the girls to get back to regular practices during the week, seeing their teammates, and keeping active.  Nina doesn’t have any meets on the calendar yet for the fall, but the team is training.  Lyla had two scrimmages in August before her first regular season games this weekend.  It was fun to have a game on the weekends again to watch.  I realized I missed it, and I’m so glad that at least soccer teams in VA are going to get to play this fall!

 

Our next biking adventure was a new one. We drove to Belle Haven Park in Alexandria, had a picnic lunch on the water and fed some ducks, then we hopped on the trail with our bikes and rode to Mount Vernon. The ride was really nice!  A large portion of it was along the river, so the scenery was great, and the path was mostly shady, so it was a nice 15 mile round trip there and back to the park.

 

   

 

 

 I figured the girls earned themselves a stop at the Custard Shack after the ride, so we got ice cream then made our way home.

 

Our biking adventures continued this week as our summer is on a bit of an extension.  The school year was supposed to start this week, but with the switch to 100% distance learning, the county pushed back the first day of school until 9/8.  So, with some extra time on our hands, we got to try out another new ride - this time driving to Bo and Brittany’s apartment in Ballston and biking from their place to the Custis Trail, connecting to the W&OD trail, and riding that into Falls Church for lunch at Liberty Barbecue.  

 

The four of us had a great lunch then biked back to their place for delicious cold brews at Bo’s favorite coffee shop, Compass Coffee. We met up with Brittany at the coffee shop and took a little tour of their super cute neighborhood, then they showed us around their building.  It was the first time that Nina and Lyla had been there, and they loved it!  They’re now convinced they want to live in a city apartment! :) After hanging awhile with Bo and Brittany at their place, we packed our bikes back up on the car and made our way home.  We had such a fun time, and I’m glad for this little extension to our summer before school starts to get in a few more fun adventures while we can.