November 2024

Basketball season is in full swing in November.  Kaden plays every Saturday.

Sadie started basketball and it was an intense season.  It is a short season so they have games twice a week most weeks, plus practice every day otherwise.  She was still in dance and that was also amping up, so finding a way to go to dance practice and basketball practice was really hard.  She ended up missing half of each, and staying late at basketball with the 8th graders to make up for her missed time.  And then she occasionally had indoor soccer games, which never went well because of her feet and then later her knee.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to help her feet.  They would hurt a lot between dance and basketball.  And at one point after practice she said her knee was hurting, but that was all.  After that she was having a hard time running, always limping around, always in pain.  When I would ask, she would say it was more her knee than her feet.  I kept thinking it was probably something about the way she was compensating for her feet.  I will say the first half or 3/4 of the season she played well.  She even started one game, which was fun (and of course the only game I was actually late for.)  But once her knee started hurting, she got less and less play time.  She also occasionally hurt her feet.  She said she came down on it wrong and it hurt really bad.  I think she was in the habit of walking on the outside of her feet to avoid the strain from going flat foot.  And that would backfire.  Anyway, we tried ibuprofen.  We put insoles in her shoes.  We tried a lot of things and her feet were doing better but her knee was doing worse.  The end of this story doesn't come until like February, but I will say this.  We were happy when basketball season ended and I didn't sign her up for another soccer season.  I had signed her up for club basketball, which she really just couldn't do so that was too bad.  There were some dance moves she really struggled with too but she did pretty well with dance for the most part. 

We thought taking time off sports would allow her to heal.  It wasn't until Christmas break in Arizona when something clicked for me.  Sadie had been saying it felt like something was catching on her knee.  She couldn't squat or lunge without her knee giving out on her.  She couldn't hold her leg out with bent knee and straighten it, her knee would get stuck.  We were playing golf and Sadie was just trying to jog over to her ball and still struggling with any sort of running even after not doing sports for like 6 weeks.  That is when I finally realized we may have a bigger problem.  I asked her what exactly had happened to make her knee hurt.  She said they were doing sprints at practice one day and it just started hurting and hadn't stopped since.  We made an appointment with the ortho.  And I will get to that in a few months!

I was invited to play indoor soccer with a friend of mine!! I was soooo excited.  It was with a women's league, so there were no crazy men kicking it at our heads as hard as they can (that being said I took at least two to the face during the season, but at least I wasn't knocked out because they were normal women kicking them).  I was really nervous because I am not technically a soccer player but it ended up being really good.  I have some weaknesses but I have some strengths too.  However, it was harder than I anticipated.  This was my heart rate readings for the first game.  The only time it came down was during halftime.  I'm pretty sure that most of the other games we had more subs and I was able to have more breaks.  But it was a good workout for sure!

Speaking of indoor soccer, I helped the club put up the indoor training facility again.  This is where we play coach soccer on Friday nights.  But there's turf and netting and stuff.

The Veteran's Day assembly is the best one.  Here is Kaden and the next picture is my favorite part where all the Veteran's in attendance come up when their song is played.

What is Kylee up to?  Well, let me tell you.  She was officially awarded the Presidential Scholarship at Utah State.  We didn't have any doubt, but it was really cool.  She's amazing.  

She went to a girls choice dance with her friend Maleya (and took Maleya's brother as her date).  The theme was heroes and villains? Or duos of some sort.  I don't remember but she found this costume in the dance closet and borrowed it.

Also with Kylee...  She finished soccer season strong.  And shortly after that she was doing the right splits at dance practice and felt two pops in her groin/butt area.  And then lots of pain.  She had definitely torn her hamstring in two places (that's my diagnosis anyway).  It was bad.  She was limited in what she could do with dance and took a little time off.  But then she just kept dancing and just had to modify some things.  This caused her pain for months (she's still in pain in July) and her dance coach started insisting she do things even though it hurt.  I wished she had just dropped dance but she didn't want to.  I think it would've healed better if she had.  I was worried about her club soccer season.  She was in constant pain.  We took her to physical therapy, which she hated.  She did the moves for a long time but it was really painful.  And Ryan was sure if she would just stop dancing and stop playing soccer she would improve.  But it was her senior year and she wanted to dance.  And it's her final year in club soccer so she wasn't going to quit.  It sucks that this happened to her.  She was and is very frustrated.  She's also very tough.  I would tell her she needs to stick up for herself to her dance coach but Rachael was not very sympathetic.  And Kylee just wanted to do what she wanted her to do.  Anyway, I'll get into dance and soccer more later, but yeah this injury isn't going away any time soon.

I took Sadie and her friend Evelyn to see the new Hunger Games Prequel: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.  We had all read the book and were really excited.  It was good!

And last but not least, we had to say goodbye to Grandma for the winter.  She has a whole community in Arizona and she loves it but we sure miss her!

 

Thanksgiving in Florida- the rest

 Swimming in my moms pool is fun, even more fun in the rain (according to Sadie and Kaden).

Our AirBnb was really cute.  It had 1989 vibes (Taylor Swift).  And a few games.

Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's was fun.  We all had to get cleaned up after the race, and then headed over and helped cook.  Then we hung out at the AirBnb and some people swam or sat in the "hot" tub (really only just warm).

We went out for a nice dinner on the water one night.

Running in Florida in Winter is one of my favorite things.  I ran over the causeway and to the beach.  And I ran in my mom's neighborhood too, which is where the cranes were (along with lots of birds).

We had a fun afternoon at the beach.  Still a little cold for me to want to get in the water though.

This was brunch at Too Cool, which is one of their favorite restaurants and they get to bring Sugar too.

Mom and Tom had a friend who decked out their house for Christmas.  Seeing Christmas lights on palm trees is different, and doing so in shorts was even stranger.  The fake snow was a fun addition.

Thanksgiving in Florida- 5K

We went to Florida for Thanksgiving break.  We thought it would be fun to be somewhere warm, and Jeff and his family thought it was a good idea too.  We booked an AirBnb for our fam and Jeff's fam.  We flew in Wednesday afternoon.  Jeff's family missed their flight and had to book another one last minute and so they got in really late.  But my family had decided to run the Turkey Trot 5K and I was SO excited that all my kids had agreed to run it.  In hindsight, this was not really that smart of an idea.  Kylee had torn her hamstring less than a month before.  Sadie's right knee had been giving her problems and she literally couldn't run without limping.  Dylan hadn't done any sort of physical activity and hardly left the house since soccer season ended.  Soooo yeah.  Grandma had knee surgery she was still recovering from as well so she was planning to walk a lot with Sadie.  Kaden had never ran that far before.  But still, I was so excited.  

The sunrise was pretty!

Look how cute my whole family is!! We are matching and everything, other than Sadie because her shirt was pretty big on her.  Also I only had mine on for the picture, I took it off and ran in my tank.

Dylan started off strong.  I think he and Ryan both had the idea to keep me in their sights and just try to stay close.  At some point maybe 3/4 a mile in, Dylan came up next to me.  How fun!!  I was hoping he would hang with me.  But after a few minutes he dropped back and I didn't see him again.  He told me later that he thought they must be at least half done, and then saw the 1 mile sign.  Realizing it was only 1/3 done was frustrating for him and he kind of slowed down.  I get it.  Mental toughness is a huge part of racing.  He still did really awesome, and he was very sore the next few days!

Can you see Grandma, Kylee and Kaden?  Kylee planned to stay with Kaden.  But at some point he wanted to run more than Kylee could handle.  She told him to just go ahead.  He did so great!!  He was sweating bullets because he made the odd decision to keep his sweatshirt on (it was slightly chilly to start but perfect once we started moving).  The order of finishers went Ryan, me, Tom, Dylan, Kaden, Kylee, Sadie, Grandma.

It's nice having tall children to be able to spot them in a crowd.

Here's me in my pink.  I ran hard!  I finished in under 24 minutes, which is always my goal.  But 20-30 seconds too slow for a PR.  Oh well.  Ryan, unbeknownst to me, stayed close behind me the entire race, allowing me to pace him.  And then, like a jerk, sprinted past me in the end, but not without saying something to me to get my attention so I could fully appreciate his betrayal.  

I don't ever expect to beat Ryan in a race.  He's very athletic.  I was annoyed that he used me as a pacer, telling me later he didn't think he could've held that pace without me pushing him.  But in the end, we both ended up with a pie.  Something fun about this race is the first 300 finishers get pies.  I was so proud of my pie!!  Tom also won a pie.  I think Dylan was just barely too late.

Kaden's final time was 34:10, which I think is fantastic!

Kylee and Sadie were both hating life at the end of this.  I feel bad, I'm fairly certain neither of them were injured when we actually signed up.