Cross Country Meet

Carter had his first cross country meet yesterday! His middle school is the Woodland Warriors.

Practice started back on August 3rd and is every weekday afternoon. One of Carter's baseball teammates is also running which makes practice so much better. They run together at every practice (except for the few Braden has missed).  Carter hasn't made any new friends yet but hopefully that'll come.  It's still tough being the new ones at school and then not even going to school (and going to the middle school that less than 20% of your elementary school moves on to).

The meet yesterday was at Sunset Middle School.  Because of Covid, it ended up being against just one school instead of three (the other two schools ran later in the afternoon against each other).

In middle school, the races are 1.5 miles. 

For the Sunset course, the kids run 2 laps.  There is a hill to start the race but most of the course is pretty flat.  Unfortunately there was a crazy mud section (I saw a lot of the girls who ran the first race finish with no shoes).  Here's what coach said about it when he emailed the results: I apologize for the “Mud Trench Monster”. I did not see that during our warmup and was not told about anything to look out for on the course. We’ve ran there 3 of the past 4 years and never had an issue with that area. Most shoes were collected and I’m very thankful that there were no injuries.

Here is Carter coming by at the end of the first lap.

And then approaching the finishing line.

Done!

Carter did great!  He finished 50th with a time of 11:47.  Coach Swanson said this course is actually 1.43 miles so that means Carter had a pace of 8:14/mile. Both the boys and girls teams won the meet!

Katie and I made Braden and Carter pose for a picture :)

Gray's First Day of Kindergarten

Gray started kindergarten last Thursday!

Thursday and Friday were half days for him and then he's been going full days since Monday. So far, he's liking it, which I knew he would - he really loves school.

Until the older grades go back next week, Gray's class of 17 kids has been divided between adjoining classrooms to help with distancing the kids. I can't figure out exactly how much they wear their masks by asking Gray - they are definitely wearing them and definitely taking breaks too.

Gray is playing baseball again this fall (tonight is the first practice) and he's figured out that one of his teammates is in his class and they play with another teammate on the playground.  All 3 of them went to the same preschool but Gray didn't know them there. I'm super happy that Gray has already made friends! Visitors are currently not allowed in school so it'll be awhile before I get to meet the rest of Gray's classmates. 

Gray's teacher this year is Ms. Bauer. Neither of the older boys have had her. She has seemed nervous but very sweet - and Gray likes her so all is good!

Garden

Our container garden has been doing great!  For being our first year of attempting to grow anything, we've been super happy.

GG sent us this stacking planter.  The boys and I planted seeds in it - cucumber, green onion, cilantro, jalapeno, and green bean seeds.  And they all took off.

We planted way too many seeds in each section.  I ended up taking all but one cucumber plant out from the top layer.  We bought some new pots and put the extra plants in four more pots.  We've had some cucumbers already from those.

I took all the green bean plants out from the bottom layer and put them all in their own pot.

Then I separated the jalapeno plants and split them up between the bottom two layers.  I also had to just throw some away because there were so many.

Our strawberries are still producing fruit (usually a least a few strawberries a day).

The grape tomatoes have done awesome.  And we've had enough regular tomatoes to add a slice on hamburgers when I make them for dinner.

Carter has become my pepper eater.  He loves them sliced and to dip them in ranch.  The gypsy peppers are his favorite.

The zucchini and cucumber plants that Jen's mom gave me are doing awesome.  We've had zucchinis to add to the chicken curry I make.  And Brian and I snack on cucumbers almost everyday.

Braces

Carter got his braces off last week (July 30th)!  He needs to get some more baby teeth out, and then he'll probably have to have some permanent molars pulled to make some room.  He currently has molars coming in on the roof of his mouth!  Carter started this round of braces back in 2015 - he's ready for a break!!!

With braces:

Without braces:

First Day of School

Carter and Rylan started school today!  They are both currently doing all their classes remotely at home (though they may end up in school whenever the number of active cases in our county are low enough).

Carter is starting middle school this year (6th grade).  Woodland is about 10 minutes away and starts an hour before elementary school (7:50 am).  He already started cross county practice and has been going all week. He has a buddy from his Smash baseball team also doing cross county and they've been running together which has made the really tough practices okay. They've been running 3-4+ miles a day with speed work mixed in.

Carter's current set up in the dining room:

Rylan is going into 4th grade at Clovercroft (which is next to our neighborhood).  He starts his remote classes at 9:15 am (the kids are supposed to read for 30 minutes before this - it gives parents time to drop off younger kids that are in the school building). Rylan has Mrs. Tall and Mrs. Wells (Carter had different teachers for 4th grade).

Rylan's current set up at my desk in our guest bedroom:

Gray starts kindergarten next week at Clovercroft.  He has a half day on Thursday with just the boys and then a half day on Friday with all the kids.  Right now K-2 are doing in-school classes.  The classes are split between two classrooms with a support teacher supervising half the class when the teacher is with the other half.  Gray is SO EXCITED about school.  He really loves school.

Right now I'm just trying to keep Gray quiet so I can help the other two if they have technology issues.  The county supplied all the kids with a Chromebook but there are going to be issues.  And I'm still not sure how much we can be doing at the same time and keep quality Zoom calls going!  So Gray's playing Minecraft :)

Everything may change as the county is supposed to reevaluate every two weeks.  Basically, if less than 0.5% of the population of our county have active cases of Covid, all kids can be at school (other than the kids that opted out before the semester and chose 100% online school).  When the active cases are between 0.5-1% of the population, only K-2 will be at school.  Above 1%, all students are remote. The numbers spiked for a bit in the last month but have been going down (yesterday we were at exactly 0.5% active cases). 

We're just rolling with it and keeping a positive attitude as much as possible. Luckily it's much easier since I don't work and Brian is still working from home.

Last Day of Summer!

Today was the last day of summer in Williamson County!  Carter and Rylan start school tomorrow (Gray starts next Thursday).

We went to a creek with Jen's family for a bit today and got in one more day of summer fun!

And thankfully no ropes broke!

Pictures from This Week

One of Gray's preschool friends (Elyse) sent him a sort of chain letter for a sticker club.  You send the letter on to 6 friends and then you'll get a letter back from their friends with stickers.  Gray got 2 letters in the mail (which is pretty fun).

His favorite is definitely the Baby Yoda sticker!

Wednesday would have been Gray's last day of school.  His school did a wave parade for about half the school that day.  We made a sign that said "Good-Bye Otter Creek".  We totally made Gray's teacher cry since she realized we wouldn't be returning since Gray is our youngest.  I got a picture of Gray with Ms. Melissa (who also taught Rylan too).

Carter and Rylan's school had a wave parade on Thursday since that would have been their last day.  We quickly made a sign that said "Thank You Teachers / Have a Great Summer!".  I asked Gray to take pictures of his brothers with their teachers.  Here is Rylan with Mrs. Miller (his homeroom teacher who teaches ELA) and Mrs. McKeown (who teaches math, science, & social studies).

Gray got a picture of Carter's homeroom teacher, Ms. Guerre (who teaches ELA), but had Rylan in the foreground.

So I took a picture of Carter on our way out :)

The boys have still been killing wood bees.  Carter even made a poster about it.

We spent most of the weekend building a trailer for our kayaks and installing a hitch on my minivan.  We are hoping to go kayaking super soon!

The tomato plants are doing really well!  Our first tomato showed up this weekend!

Window Cliffs

For Mother's Day, we took the boys hiking to a new place.  Window Cliffs State Natural Area opened in 2014 (though I just learned about it a couple of months ago).  It is close to Burgess Falls State Natural Area and about 1.5 hours from home.  The round-trip hike is about 5.5 miles and requires you to cross the Cane Creek 18 times.  And it was awesome.  This may be my favorite hike within 2 hours of our house!

The hike begins with a descent to the river.  The trail was marked exceptionally well.

The water in the creek wasn't flowing too fast, but it was deep in spots (past my knees) and very slippery at times.  There were permanent cables at all the crossing but we were trying our best to avoid using them due to the current pandemic.  Unfortunately this caused a few falls by Rylan.  And he was NOT HAPPY about it.  I somehow caught this picture of his first fall (and as soon as he took another step he fell again).

It was a cool day and the water was freezing.  I was able to convince Rylan to wear my long sleeve instead of his wet sweatshirt.  It took about 10 minutes, but he got over it.  It may have taken me about 3 days to finally be warm again though :)

We hiked in our Chacos and it worked out well.  I think the water may have been higher than usual because we only saw a few other groups of people wearing water shoes.  There was no way to rock hop across the creek on this day and keep your shoes dry.  We didn't see many people the whole hike, but some were wearing jeans and boots and it could not have been fun hiking in those when soaked.

We carried Gray across the creek at some crossings, and he walked at others.

It was really pretty along the creek and the scenery changed a lot during the hike.

All the creek crossings had these nice little signs.

Rylan fell again at some point.  Luckily Carter was willing to give up his sweatshirt.  Rylan didn't get hurt but there were a lot of tears and frustration again.  But, again, he got over it.

A picture with my boys!!!

At about 2 miles in, we got a view of the Window Cliffs (see the two "windows"?).

Then we came to pretty waterfall with multiple tiers. 

After crossing the creek above the falls, we took a short hike up to the Window Cliffs.

The cliffs ...

We ate a snack up here before heading back.

We hiked closer to the waterfall on the way back.

Looking upstream from the falls ...

Luckily no one fell on the hike back and we took our time enjoying some of the creek crossings.

We got back to the car after about 3 hours and 45 minutes and 6 miles of hiking (according to my watch).  It was a great day!