Easter

Easter! The kids really understood the true meaning of Easter this year.  They even drew pictures of the empty tomb. We went to church before hunting any eggs to try to keep everything in prospective. We had Ima and Pops over after church for French toast and then we went to their house for lunch and dinner.  Delicious food all day!

All was good until I was taking dinner out of the oven and tripped over Auggie.  The good news was the pizza made the counter, bad news was I had an epic fall that resulting in taking the entire weight of the fall on my knees.  Not good.  I was well cared for with ice, an adult beverage and as much pizza as I wanted.  Honestly, 4 weeks later, I still can't kneel on my left knee.  What a moment!  Regardless, it was a great family day and Grandma and Grandpa Briggs even joined us for lunch!

I know you all wanted a picture of this!

Easter Cake Pops, only Aunt Sandy!!

Basketball

Elizabeth decided to give basketball a try this winter.  It is a short season and apparently this is something that a lot of girls try in kindergarten because by 1st grade it is mostly boys playing!  This did not at all phase her.  She was glad to have another girl on her team but many teams they played were all boys.  A lot of the boys she knew from school and it was fun to see how they interacted with each other on the court.  The interaction typically being like they had never seen each other before!  Once during a practice when they were sitting down to wait their turn for a drill a few of the boys were messing around near her and she actually moved away from them because they were horsing around and not paying attention.  The look on her face is what we refer to her as "our aloof Elizabeth" which we better learn to tone down or a "miss goody two shoes"  label might follow.  Then again it's not wrong to follow directions and pay attention! She just needs to smile as she scoots away from them, and loose the glare and eye roll!

She had a lot of fun and her skill set progressed throughout the season.  The kids all wear colored wristbands to color coordinate who they defend.  One game she was paired up with an extremely athletic boy who she has been in class with the last two years.  He was blocking her shots, which at this level is not allowed.  The ref finally called him on it and he was a little upset, so the next time they met up, he stole the ball from her, something that is also not allowed, but he made his point!  He was not going to let a girl get the best of him and Elizabeth took it all in stride.

Signaute tongue out of the mouth

I think Grant appreciated basketball season because a) it only lasts 6 weeks and b) games are only once a week for 1 hour.  He is gearing up for spring soccer.  Cold, wet spring soccer...yeah!

Swim Season

Our little swimmers! Grant did technique school right before Elizabeth's practices so he got be in the picture too!

Anyone who knows us knows that our daughter is a swimmer! We are very proud of everything she has accomplished.  She has been swimming for over 3 years, but only starting competing last summer and has never wanted to stop!  We didn't do a lot of meets this fall/winter because of scheduling conflicts, but managed to squeeze a lot in as of recently.  She swims as part of the Peoria Y team that is affiliated the USA Swimming.  They have championship level meets.  She qualified for districts, meaning she meant the time standards in all of the individual strokes, but you can only have so many meet entries.  I really thought we selected butterfly and breast, but she ended up swimming the 25 fly and 25 free.  These are all 8 and under age categories.  In addition the coach put her on two relay teams, the 100 medley and 100 free.  She typically swims the fly on the medley relay.  She didn't really understand what it meant to swim at districts, but we we tried our best to explain.  There are 15-20 in our district.  At anytime in the season if you meet the state time standards you also qualify for the state meet.  The district meet was a two day event.  The top 8 in each event swam again on Sunday.  She finished 11th  in the fly and 35th in freestyle.  The medley relay team only had 8 teams entered in the event and the freestyle team only had 4, so the relay teams qualified to swim Sunday before they even swam Saturday.  As we were leaving on Saturday one of the coaches pulled me aside to let me know that Elizabeth's relay team had qualified for state and we needed to discuss if that was something we wanted to do.  We discussed and of course she was thrilled!  She was really excited to be going to state.  And even though it was a relay team and we knew they were going to get smoked, she is 7 years old and can say "I went to State!"  The relay teams finished 6th (out of 7) and 3rd (out of 4) at districts.  As proud parents we were happy to support her and promised Grant we would make it a fun weekend since he has had about all of the swim meets he can take.

We went out to dinner to celebrate and Brandon and I took her back on Sunday to finish out districts.  She had a really fun day with her teammates.  When they swam their last relay they were giddy.  7th place is exciting because the ribbons are PINK!! (insert screaming girls).  I took the girls into the locker room to get showered and one of her teammates said to Elizabeth "want to come in the double shower so we can talk?"  Well one of the showers was a handheld with no holder and so I warned the girl using it "be careful and keep the water pointed in your direction!" Elizabeth interrupts and says "She is sensitive" and for a brief moment I think I have maybe offended this girl and then she completes her sentence "about her shoes!"  Me...she was talking about me! Even though she was totally making fun of me at least she had the decency to do it in front of me and we all got a good laugh!

The chlorine in the air was so bad it was burning our eyes, especially Grant.  So he put on goggles and curled up for a nap on Ima's lap.  She keeps saying he is too big for this, but somehow he wiggles his way in!

Unfortunately the coach that had invited her to swim on the state relay teams was mistaken.  Another coach had reviewed the times and they offered her an alternate position to which we declined.  We had a very sad little girl but nothing can take away the wonderful swim season she had.  Learning life lessons usually aren't easy.  We will take a few months off and both kids will be doing summer swim team!