Volleyball

Adelie just finished up her season of in-house 5th grade volleyball.  She had practices and games a few times each week throughout January and February.  Many of the girls in her class played on the travel volleyball team, so there was only one in-house league for 5th grade.

With only one 5th grade team in Eureka for the in-house league, Adelie's team played against a number of other local teams on Monday evenings in El Paso.

Adelie improved throughout the season.  Although not the most aggressive player, Adelie went for the ball and got it back over the net generally a few times each game.

Getting her serve over the net, even from closer up, was a work in progress.  She rarely got to serve in games, but she got a serve over the net the last game of the season.  She was very excited!

Adelie enjoyed the girls on her team.  Since her friend Lola is home-schooled, it was a fun opportunity for the girls to spend more time together.

It was a good season.  Adelie had fun, looked forward to playing, and improved throughout the season.  I call that success.

Good-bye, February!

February is typically my least favorite month of the year.  It is well documented that the cold, gray, uninspiring, unexciting month does little to win my favor.  And although we had a few big events, like the drama club production and the dance state competition, there were a few other events, big and small, that rounded out our month.

We had some nice, warm weather sprinkled throughout the month.  On one of those nice days, I took Adelie and Briggs to the Peoria Zoo.

Adelie won her class spelling bee and competed in the school-wide spelling bee.  She ended up getting 8th place out of the 20 participants.  She did great!!

Staley and I went to see 'Mean Girls: the Musical' at the Peoria Civic Center as part of her birthday present.

We ended up running into a number of NTA friends at the show.

Adelie and Zach went to the Daddy-Daughter Dance put on by Fight For Life.  This was the last year that Adelie gets to go.  It's been a fun tradition for Zach and the girls over the years.

Briggs had his classroom Valentine's Party.  Although I wasn't able to attend, Grammie went and enjoyed getting to see Briggs with his friends.

Staley performed in her band and chorus concert.  She enjoys band, but she LOVES chorus.  She was so excited about the chorus concert, especially performing for the first time with Honors Chorus.

Our biggest "event" of February was a Valentine's Day date at the hospital.  Zach had back surgery.  We spent a night in the hospital, and then Zach spent the remainder of the month recovering (both from his surgery and the illness that Briggs brought home from school and shared with him.)

There was a lot that happened this month.  There was spelling and dancing and performing and outings.  There were warm spells and cold spells and rain and snow.  There was surgery and recovery and sickness and wellness.  And now February is over, and we can move one month closer to spring.  Hooray!!

This is Parenting

A year or so ago when I got my new phone, we just kept my old phone, added a line, and relabeled it the "family phone."  One of the primary reasons we added another phone was so the kids would have a way to get in touch with us when they are home without us.  Today Zach and I went for a walk.  The kids were all home together.  We told them to call or text if they needed anything while we were gone.  We hadn't made it to the end of the block when we got a text from the family phone.  It read "Briggs is being obnoxious and bothering us."

Long distance tattling.  Maybe not exactly what we had in mind.

Truth

Sometimes I need the constant singing in my house to stop.  Just for a bit.  Just for some quiet.  Just for my sanity.  Just sometimes.

Dance Team

Staley just finished up her first season as a member of the EMS Dance Team.  It was a LONG season with lots of opportunities to learn how things work in the world of competitive dance, but Staley really enjoyed it.  I was unsure of how it would work in relation to all her other activities, but thankfully her dance coach was very flexible and somehow Staley made it all work.

The team consisted of 9 girls, with 4 8th graders and 5 7th graders.  They tried out in March of last year, practiced all summer long, danced for all the home middle school boy's basketball games, and competed in 3 competitions that culminated in their advancement and competition in the IDTA state competition.

They had 6 different basketball dance routines that they had learned (mostly over the summer) and performed during the basketball games.  Most of them could be performed with 2 different songs so they had a different routine or song for every game throughout the season.

They also had both a jazz competition routine and a lyrical competition routine.  Throughout their competition season, they qualified both routines for state as well as placed 2nd for their jazz routine at 2 competitions and 1st for the lyrical routine at 1 competition.

Staley liked her coaches.  Although none of her closest friends were on the dance team, Staley enjoyed the girls on the team, especially Elsie, Delilah, and Emily.

Without having a dance background other than theater, Staley did very well throughout the season and improved with her dance technique.  Her lyrical routine was her favorite of the season.

I learned a lot about being a dance mom throughout the season, including the fact that the state tournament starts at 7 in the morning and doesn't end until after 11 at night.

This was a picture of ALL the dancers at state on the floor waiting for awards to start...at 10:00 at night.  Grammie and I had a lot of suggestions on how to make things go more quickly and run more efficiently.  No one asked.

The girls ended up getting 5th place at state for their lyrical routine and 7th place for their jazz routine.  

Staley really enjoyed dance.  Although it was sometimes a lot and sometimes interfered with her other activities, she found a way to balance it all.  She has already said that she wants to do it again next year.  Until then, here's to another successful activity in Staley's never-ending calendar of things that keep her busy.

School House Rock Live, Jr.

Staley and Adelie just finished performing in their EMS Drama Club production of School House Rock Live, Jr. in early February.  Although I was not really familiar with the show or most of the songs before seeing it, it ended up being a very cute show.

The cast of School House Rock Live, Jr.

The show was cast differently than shows in the past.  This was more of an ensemble show where there were not really specific character roles.  Instead, each song had a featured singer and the dialogue between the songs was split up between different individuals.  Staley's song was "Just a Bill", she was a featured dancer/back-up singer in "Conjunction Junction," and she had a handful of different lines in songs or between songs.

There was one main character role in the show.  The teacher is the main character who does not sing or dance, so they originally cast a girl who did not want to do either.  However, this girl did not learn her lines, did not show up consistently for rehearsals, and then did not attend the mandatory tech rehearsals the week of the show.  So on Monday of show week (with shows opening on Thursday), they asked Staley to learn the lines/role of the teacher and step in.  So she did!

In one night, Staley learned all the teacher's lines.  So she played the role of the teacher as well as most of her original songs/lines/roles throughout the rest of the show.  There were a lot of lines to learn, but Staley managed to do it in one night and flawlessly stepped right in.  It was pretty incredible.

Staley even had to change the words to her solo song.  The song Staley had been practicing for months was a first person "I'm Just a Bill" song.  With the change to her teacher role, she wouldn't have had time to change into her bill costume, so she had to change all the words to a second person perspective and sing "You're Just a Bill."  I'm not sure how she remembered that in the midst of all her other changes, but she did.

Kelleen, the director, said that Staley really saved the show...and made it better than it would have been.

Adelie had a number of featured roles in songs, as well as a solo.  She was the engineer and a friend in "A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing".  She was 27 in "Three is a Magic Number".

She was Uranus in "Interplanet Janet."

Her featured solo was in "The Great American Melting Pot."  She was fabulous!

Both girls are just so confident and expressive on stage.  I love watching them!!

A number of Adelie's close friends were in the show with her, and they loved that some of their teachers came to see them.

On the other hand, Staley was just one of three 7th and 8th graders in the show.  This initially made her hesitant, but she got to know some of the younger kids, was a great mentor/example to them, and her director was counting on her for her leadership and experience...and she delivered.

Grammie and Grandpa were there to support the girls.  Grammie enjoyed the show so much she even came again the next night.

And, of course, Uma and Papa were there too.

The girls enjoyed that some of their NTA friends came to help run tech backstage.  Staying after the last night of the show to strike the set is always a fun way to end a show.

It ended up being a great show.  Both the girls were fantastic in their parts, both their original parts and the ones that they stepped into at the last minute.

Hooray for my little thespians.  And hooray for another successful EMS Drama Club production.

House Refresh

Last summer, our nephew Cade needed a summer job and we wanted some painting done in our house.  It seemed like a win-win situation.  What started as giving our nephew some summer work and having our dining room painted morphed into a complete house refresh that is still underway.  (We cannot take credit for most of the painting throughout the house refresh.  Cade got things started and helped out again over Christmas break.  Jose, a Eureka college cross country runner, has done most of the rest.)

Getting rid of the red dining room was Zach's first goal.  After almost 20 years of red, he was over it.

When we bought our house back in 2005, we chose bright, bold paint colors for most of the rooms.  Although I still really liked many of the colors we had chosen, it was time to do something different.  With our home refresh, we chose a greige color throughout the entire house.  It lightened, brightened, and refreshed all the rooms.

As we moved along with the house refresh, we didn't just paint.  We did little things, like getting new dish towels and new lampshades and new shower curtains and new decorative pillows.  We also did big things, like getting all new kitchen appliances for the first time in our adult lives.  It was very satisfying.

Although we didn't change out any furniture, the addition of new wall colors, small accents, and rearranged artwork really made the spaces feel new and different.

As we were busy refreshing our home, we decided it was time to revisit our bedroom situation as well.  Staley had been asking for her own room as she and Adelie had shared a room since Briggs was born.  We hesitated to give up our main floor playroom since Briggs still used it on an almost daily basis.  However, upon further discussion, we decided to make some major room changes.  So the playroom instead became...

Briggs' new bedroom.  Since Briggs was the primary user of the playroom, we combined the two and gave him a fresh coat of paint, a new loft bed and dresser...

as well as room for all his Legos, Magnatiles, trains, and cars.  We were a little worried about how Briggs would handle having the only bedroom on the main floor, but he has been fine...and loves having lots of space to play.

In order to make room for Brigg's new bed and dresser in his new room, some major reorganization was in order.  The girls cleaned out an entire closet in the basement that was dedicated to their American Girl dolls.  They each kept their dolls, a doll bed that Zach had made, and a small assortment of their favorite outfits and accessories.  Using a local online garage sale site, we sold TONS of American Girl clothes and accessories.  We then turned the basement closet into storage for all the kids' arts and crafts supplies that were previously kept in the playroom and made an "art corner" in the basement.  It's always a hot mess of creativity down there (hence why I don't feel compelled to have any pictures of it at the moment), but it works well and was a big step in the room reassignment process.

Briggs' old bedroom, by far the smallest of the bedrooms, was first an office and then a nursery.  It was still painted/decorated from its days as a nursery.  We had initially planned for Staley to take the small room since she was the one who really wanted her own room.  However, Adelie insisted that she had always wanted a "tiny" room.

Adelie chose a pretty lavender color for her accent walls, cleaned out much of her clutter, moved in the fishtank and her plants, and has been loving her "tiny" room.

A trip to Ikea supplemented our house refresh with some of the decorative touches as well as some new bedroom furniture.  Adelie's new wardrobe is perfect for her closet-less room.

Zach had repainted Adelie and Staley's room not that long ago, so he was insistent that we would not be painting it again.

Resurrecting Staley's full-size bed from her toddler years, painting the old playroom desk, and getting a new bedspread and some decorative accents really made Staley's "new" room her own, regardless of not changing the paint color.

After seeing how much brighter and cleaner everything felt with the refresh, Zach decided it might be time to refresh his Bear's themed office as well.  A massive cleanout of books, CDs, and bookcases opened up so much more space in his office.

Although he was a little sad to say good-bye to the blue and orange, he loves his brighter, simpler office and reconfigured furniture.

He still kept a few Bear's touches in the room, but the refresh also opened up more opportunities to display other things he is passionate about.

The office leftovers also provided a few Bear's touches that Zach added to his newly redesigned bathroom after the coral walls and floral accents were removed.

I love our refreshed home.  Although I still liked our brightly colored walls, I do love how light and fresh everything feels.  I love the simplicity of all the rooms being the same color.  I love my new modern appliances and their fun features.  I love that we have cleaned out and minimized and reorganized and rearranged.  I love that the kids each have their own space.  And I love that even small things, like my new hamper that is actually functional rather than just a tall lidded basket that everyone just threw their clothes on the floor in front of, make my days a little easier and a little happier.   Sometimes it's the big things in life.  Sometimes it's the small things in life.  With our house refresh, it's a little of both.