Projects, Outings, and Celebrations

A few random things have been sitting on the back burner to write about. Life is happening so fast with kids already counting down to the end of another school year...which means the time is quickly approaching the day that Katya leaves for college---aaaah! I catch myself thinking about it quite often now...

Anyway! In no particular order... We celebrated New Year's Eve with a party at the Wests. We played a few games and had a music talent show for the kids who wanted to perform. It was a lot of fun!

This is our backyard. We have a slope that used to have wooden planks and rocks as steps when we moved in, but the wood rotted away in the last couple of years, so Robert took all of the wood out and was going to build the steps himself. After weeks going by of him researching, drawing plans, pricing everything and checking out Lowes, we decided that it was most time and even cost efficient to just hire someone to do this project. So we did.

And here is the final result. I love the English pavers (that's their name). Now we have to move on to the little fence-hahaha and another part of our big fence (we have a lot of fence to take care of...).

The other weekend, Robert and Alex found a Park Run to participate in. It's a 5K race like they had in Huntingdon, England and we'd done that one a number of times! It's a free race, so a lot of people from the rowing team participated as part of their winter training. The missing part--beautiful nature and footpaths...

Robert and I had a week of outings one week in February. On Tuesday night, we left the kids at home and went to the Hurricanes game at the PNC arena as part of the work get together. It was super fun! Free food and awesome club level seats:) And hockey. Brought me back to my volunteering in the Salt Lake Olympics days when I had to translate for the hockey teams at press conferences.

And on Thursday, we got to experience The Piano Guys live! What a show! So much talent and just good spirit about these "dads from Utah", as they call themselves. I was watching them play and thinking to myself how we need to keep encouraging Alex to continue to play, he definitely has something special in the way he can just sit down and arrange cords.

Oh, here is a random picture of Mark (trying to grow out his hair) and Robert. Still looking similar but not the same-hahaha.

Alex participated in the Geography Bee at his school. He was chosen to participate after answering 19 out of 20 questions right (the most of all 6-8 graders). Unfortunately, he got bumped out of the competition when there were three or four students remaining. Katya had a day off school so she was able to come watch, and Mark begged me to let him go to school late and go support Alex as well. 

We still do lots of tennis tournaments. I am the main tennis parent but we take turns with Robert who gets to watch him too. It's surprising how stressful it is to watch your own kid-haha. I never-ever felt like that with basketball or soccer, but tennis--man...it's a tough individual sport. And matches take a long time sometime....I think the longest so far was 2 hrs 15 minutes, but on average they are around 1 hour and 20 minutes. We have decided to time them now and tell Mark (he loves all things numbers still). And we try to record mini videos of us driving and talking about the tennis match, expectations or results. 

For Valentine's Day Robert made me this sweet salad and a bouquet of flowers:) They were meant to last a very long while. They didn't. A very sweet gesture indeed--but the one that totally sabotaged any efforts by me to not eat chocolate.

Of course, the night before Valentine's Day, Mark remembers he needs to make a box to collect his candy and cards. So he told us what he had imagined he wanted to make and we helped him find the materials. It was his idea to cover it with duct tape like this though and name it Peaceful Brexit. Seriously...

One day before church we tried to take a "tripod" family picture. You'd think with bigger kids it would be easier, but noooooo:) Sometimes Robert was the worst offender though:)

Back in December I got in touch with our Wake County Tennis Association to see if Mark's elementary school could receive FREE tennis equipment to include tennis in their PE instruction (because that's what they had advertised). That started the ball rolling and finally in January, our principal, PE teacher and the tennis lady met and decided that although at the moment PE unit in tennis was not going to fit into their schedule, a tennis club would be something that they could arrange--they just needed parent volunteers:). Then one of the other teachers mentioned she had a son who played high level tennis in high school and right now had free time, and he agreed to help with the club. Mark's teacher and her daughters also agreed. And then there was Mark and ME. And that's how we started a tennis club at Mark's school. We have 23 kids enrolled and meet on Mondays after school, right before Mark has to dash to his own tennis practice. Mark is one of the main instructors! 

I also wanted to share Mark's Christmas present to Robert. I found it the other day while cleaning out my dresser. I know I want to keep it because it's so funny! So far Robert has had one free lesson. 

The end!

Lyana.