October brought with it... more football.
Carma came prepared to Clyde's game with snacks, books, and toys:
aaaaand pom poms!!
Clyde made this tackle on the kick-off and ended up at the bottom of a good ol' fashioned dogpile.
Carma June cheered her little heart out in the stands....
I just died watching her down there imitate all of their moves!
She had the time of her life.
Aaaand got a shout out on their instagram!!
Just for documentation, nice to remember how ridiculous this guy was/still is. Way to ruin something for two different football teams of high school boys trying to find some sense of normal during covid. What a guy.
Cute Carma with a general conference recap.
Cute picture after Jack's football practice one night:
Volleyball! I got recruited to coach, probably one of the worst decisions I've ever made - I suck at volleyball, really don't understand the rules and strategy. But I'm a decent hype girl and I loved these athletes with everything I have, so that made up for some of it.
Please enjoy the (mostly) coordinating braids and ribbon hair things that I LOVINGLY MADE FOR EACH GIRL.
Let's just focus on my good traits, coaching volleyball not being one of them:
Nice note from Clyde's seminary teacher:
Love this girlie.
Little documentation of covid times as the kids returned to school part time - these letters came regularly from all three schools!
Another Clyde football game - there he is being a captain and going out for the coin toss and such:
Carma and Chuck were at this game... Carma got to go down with the cheerleaders again!
I was across town watching a Jackers football game:
And then Jack and I came to watch Clyde's game too!
Instagram caption: Our kids will never be able to say their dad made it to every game (legit how do people do that? What are these crazy flexible jobs that also make enough to have a kid on a sports team? 🤔💸😅)... but they’ll definitely know how much he loved watching them when he could. Football and his kids are two of Chuck’s main interests so it’s extra awesome when they combine 🏈➕🧑🏻🧑🏼👦🏼👧🏻Also,Chuck hit the big 1️⃣5️⃣ year mark at work this week and they’re lucky to have him and we’re lucky to have him and if I’m really lucky, he won’t realize I posted this for a while 😬😂.
Oh my gosh, I found this and it's my favorite thing ever. DON'T GIVE POWER TO RUDE PEOPLE. Their unkind words are a reflection of issues they are dealing with, don't feed into it. Own who you are and your quirks and fun, interesting things about yourself. If I could gift this confidence to every middle schooler I would.
Chuck's co-worker shared this and I laughed so hard.
I love when other team parents take awesome pictures of my kids and share them! Here's Jack and Aidan, so cute.
Flu shot time:
I think I ended up deleting this because I felt like it was too mean... but it's also hilarious and Jack says it's okay to post here because, "No one reads your blog, Mom." He's not wrong ;).
This made me laugh.
Okay, I laughed a lot at this.
Working on being better at these responses both at home and at work:
Another Covid life documentation - these screening sheets, filled out during first period every morning by each teacher as they did a visual scan of their students. I collected them and turned them into the school nurse. This was in addition to visual checks that we did as students entered the building.
Instagram caption: At 2:08pm I sent Chuck a whiny text that said “Today has kind of sucked”. At 2:42pm a sweet kid gave me a package of Smarties he earned in one of his classes today. He and I have been buddies since I helped him at device check out and he calls me “Miss” and last week he excitedly told me about earning candy for right answers and I teased him about not sharing with me. I tried to refuse the Smarties today (in general I enjoy stealing candy from MY kids, not other people’s kids😂) but he was insistent. It’s easy for me to dwell on student (and athlete 🏐) interactions that didn’t go as well as I hoped. Current plan is to process those and improve... but also push myself to dwell on the interactions where everyone walks away feeling better, the kind that bring joy and warmth and affirmation in my heart that I’m doing the right thing with my life right now 🧡.
Instagram caption: “My Mom is Coaching Volleyball so I Get Her Office and Phone to Myself: A Story in Pictures”.
Anyone else getting Voldemort vibes from that last selfie? 👀😩🥴😅🐍
Finally leaving school at almost 6pm after a long day of school and then volleyball.
I took this picture on a Thursday morning at 6:30am before I left the house for the day.
it was a woman's voice, crying and asking if I was Jana and saying that she had just hit my son with her car.
Aaaand my heart stopped.
And then it started beating again and I calmly stood up and packed up my things and walked to my car, all while staying on the phone with her and hearing that Will seemed okay but was crying and upset and that 911 had already been called.
I drove to the parking lot where it had happened - super close to our house, just at the bottom of an overpass hill.
The fire truck was arriving just as I did. I haphazardly parked the truck and ran over to where Will was on the ground, being guarded by two sweet passersby - an off duty nurse and EMT, of course.
I recognized the woman who had hit him - an acquaintance from work out class. I hugged her. I hugged two East Valley girls who had watched it happen as they hung out outside their dance class waiting for it to start.
I stayed next to Will while the EMTs came and assessed him.
Will was VERY grumpy. Alert, conscious, and sad. It was so heartbreaking.
Next couple hours were rough. Will doesn't do well with needles and so it was really really hard to get an IV in so that they could run all of the tests they needed to. All I wanted to do was comfort him, but my usual best way of connecting and getting through to Willy boy is by being silly and making him laugh and move on from whatever difficult thing he's fixated on. In this circumstance, I was less than successful. He was just so sad and grumpy and in pain and uncomfortable. It was a really humbling parenting moment for me - to not be able to meet his needs and provide the comfort that I wanted to.
Chuck initially went home and took over for my dad, and then once Clyde got home, Chuck came to the hospital to switch me out - covid meant that only one parent could be there at a time. It was really hard to leave, but I was also so grateful that Chuck could be the parent that Will needed right then.
Coming home late that night in my sweatshirt since they had to cut off his shirt and his sweatshirt was bloodstained.
The next morning after some good sleep:
All together, he had a bloody nose and a fat lip and a concussion and some bumps and aches. Pretty miraculous. Will was riding down the hill on the sidewalk, the woman was waiting to pull out from a parking lot and when an opening in one direction appeared, she didn't check back again the other way and hit (we think) the back half of Will and his bike, spinning him around and propelling him forward, up and over his handlebars. Could have been SO much worse.
I got this text late that night from her:
I'm grateful for the peace I felt towards her - such an unintentional, simple mistake that we all could (and do) make while driving. So grateful that we mandate helmets and that Will has never pushed back or argued with that. So grateful for the people that stopped to help until I got there. So grateful for the sweet girls who stayed by and asked about Will for days and weeks afterwards. So grateful that Clyde was only a little sad (I was VERY sad!) that I had to leave the one game that he got the most playing time in. So grateful that Will wasn't hurt more.
Aaaand to end this post on a lighter note:
Instagram caption: Monday morning = time to flip this sign to ‘in’ and get back to work 🧙🏼♀️🤗✌🏼
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