June 2023

 The 6th graders got to party at the end of school.  It's exciting to move on from Woodland Hills, but it also makes me a little sad that she's growing up and a little apprehensive about the next few years.  Junior High age is tough no matter who you are.

Sadie was having a lot of emotions about school ending.  I don't think it would have hit her so hard if it weren't for her teacher moving away.  She loved Mrs Olson and at the end of this year she moved to Arizona.  It's not like Sadie would've seen her much ever again anyway, but knowing that so much was changing and she couldn't go back and say hi, that was hard.  She went back to the school to help her pack up her classroom.

Kaden started swim team and I texted him while I was out of town.  His response had me laughing.

I see the best sunsets here.  Driving home from golf is always a great view of them.

Sadie and her team did great at the Yellowstone Cup.  They won pretty easily.  Her team is so great.  Sadly, she's done playing with them.  All the kids had tryouts.  Kylee missed because she was at an ACT boot camp in Salt Lake for a few days.  But her team wouldn't have changed anyway.  There were a bunch of Sadie's old team who left for Renegades a couple years ago that decided to come back and tryout.  So we were nervous.  They ended up moving two girls up from the lower team, taking two girls from Renegades, and dropping Sadie.  It was rough...  All in all it probably worked out for the best because immediately following this she started having a lot of feet pain and she's been having knee pain off and on.  It has really affected her ability to run, which obviously affects how she plays soccer.  I was thinking it was all just growing pains, and it partly is I think, but it's more complicated and I'll get to that later.  So this was the last time she played with her Premier team.

I don't have pictures, but Kaden had to try out for his team also.  I was so hopeful that he would make the claret team (they changed the names to claret as the highest and cobalt as the second tier team).  I knew he had some ball skills to learn still but he is so athletic and did so well.  I was asked to help out at tryouts so I spent a lot of time out in the sun those two days.  And there were a lot of kids that looked a lot better than Kaden out there.  It's frustrating because at least one of them was on my team and he does have some ball skills and a strong striker kick, but he really didn't do much out on the field because he would shy away from contact and just wouldn't hustle the same.  I preferred Kaden, but I also understood that this other kid looked good at tryouts.  Kaden and a handful of others fell in the "bubble player" category, meaning they could do well on either team.  They pretty much had 9 that definitely belonged on claret and only needed one more.  I made arguments for Kaden, but I also understood that it might not be what is best for him.  If he were put on that team, he would be the weakest player in a lot of ways.  It would probably make him lose confidence, etc.  But if he spent the next year on the cobalt team working hard, when they tryout again next year they will be taking more players because they move up to 9v9.  But I was so bummed.  I wanted him to have Ian as a coach because I knew he would be a great coach and I wouldn't have to worry about who was working with him.  And Ian wanted to do tournaments and such.  But it wasn't meant to be this year.  It still worked out okay, but I'll get into that later.

Hiking starts in June!  Sometimes a little colder than and gloomier than we like... Lower Palisades was kinda ugly this day but all five of us got to come which hasn't happened in so long!

Kylee had a dance camp she had to go to.  Dance is really demanding.  I was kind of hoping she would decide not to dance this next year because of how frustrated she was a lot of the time this last year.  But she couldn't give it up.  She loves the team and she loves to dance so she deals with all the early mornings and all that is demanded of them.

Another hike to scope out the wind caves and make sure it would work for Girls Camp.  It was a bit treacherous at the very top but we decided to just stop the group at the campsite and only take a few girls that I trusted to be responsible and listen a little higher.  We still couldn't get into the cave without getting super wet so we didn't do that.

Kylee's team played in the Far West President's Cup in Boise.  Playing soccer in Boise in June is kind of stupid.  It gets up past 90 degrees at times.  But they survived.  There were teams from all over the west.  Kylee was hoping they would get to play someone from Alaska or Hawaii or somewhere cool but they didn't.  They lost 1-2 against Colorado, won 5-1 against Montana, and lost the semifinal.  They proved they deserved to be there.  What a year this team has had!

We got together at the park after the first game to hang out and the girls played soccer tennis.  Apparently you can make any game into a soccer game.

Last but definitely not least, Dylan had his birthday!  We found a recipe for this layered dessert that looked good and we went out as a family to celebrate.