2014.4.13 weekly

We have spring break this week with a whole lot of nutin' planned.

Rachel had a track meet this week. She did high jump and discus which she'd been training for. At the last minute she did shot put too because the other events hadn't started yet and she had time. It was really fun to watch her in action. I thought she possibly had my "I can't jump" genes, so I was surprised that she did so well. She also did a good job at discus.

I've been a little frustrated with the track coaches. There are about 5 of them, but she's never had any coaching help in high jump or discus. Everything she knows about discus she learned from me. At the meet I was really surprised at how bad all the throwers from all the schools were. Back in the day, despite my ethiopian-like skinniness, I was a decent thrower, certainly not the best, but decent. My throws at meets were on average in the high 90's and low 100's. The girls at Rachel's meet were throwing in the 30's-60's! We are going to practice a lot this week so she can beat all those sissies. She also gave a talk today at church. She did a great job. Sometimes I have to to a double take when I see her in all her maturity!

Aaron is currently obsessed with building some kind of a tazer-zapper in his room. He's talking about getting transistors, connections, and capacitors. I don't really know what any of this means, I'm just hoping he doesn't burn the house down in the meantime.

Thomas and Spencer had their first spring soccer game this week. Spencer usually plays forward and he scored twice. Their team is fifth graders through seventh. People probably don't realize Spencer is one of the fifth graders, since he's so big. Thomas plays defense and does a great job defending. The other team has a pretty hard time getting past him. He doesn't usually score any points playing defense, but he doesn't seem to care.

Harry also had his first soccer game. He scored in the first couple of minutes. He's come a long way from last fall when he was a little green. His whole team consists of a bunch of his cute neighborhood and scout friends, plus two kids that the city added that nobody knows. Our next door neighbor is his coach. Going to his games is like going to a mini ward party. I told Stick that I'm going to have trouble actually watching the game because I can't stop talking to all the other moms.

Rebekah is a crack up as usual. Just the other day we were out on the back patio when a spider crawled by. She shouted hysterically, "MOM! A spider!" Then when I saw it, she said, "Don't kill it mom, I love all animals."

Last night after her bath when I was clipping her nails, first she asked me to kiss the top of her hand like I was a prince and she was a princess. Then she burst into dramatic tears when it came up in our conversation that she was going to be a regular first grader next year and not part of the Chinese Immersion program at school. I told her I could teach her a word in chinese and she sobbed, "I want to know alllll the words, not just oneeeee!"

Today we had Stick's home teaching partner over for dinner. If you've ever eaten dinner with us you know it is loud. For some unexplainable reason, every kid in our family talks at the same time carrying on a conversation with I guess him/herself. Everyone talking, no one listening. And if you add a dinner guest to this, things get even crazier. At some point in today's dinner there was a small lull in the chaos and I heard Bekah pipe up, telling our guest, completely out of the blue, "I potty trained myself!" Never a dull moment, I tell you.

I'm still on my stoopid diet. I will admit this week has been hard. I'm bored with all the food (or lack thereof) and I'm grumpy at all the time it takes to get things ready. But I'm (grumpily) hanging in there. I'm now six weeks into it and I haven't noticed a single difference. Well I have lost 14 lbs, but that wasn't really the goal of this diet. Keeping my pants on is starting to prove to be a challenge.

over and out.

-saf