17 year old Jay

Jay turned 17 on Thursday! He was also born on Thursday, May 21st so it felt extra birthday-ish, to me at least. I can and can't believe my firstborn is 17 years old. Jay summed it up when asked the question "what is scary?" on his birthday interview. Jay answered, "The future."

A fine mist of horchata

We hosted the high school track awards "banquet" (potluck) in our backyard on Tuesday, May 19th. Jeff and the 7 other coaches presented certificates and awards to the track athletes and we feasted on the potluck. The team brought mountains of food and beverages, including a 4 gallon clear plastic barrel of horchata (a sweet creamy vanilla Mexican beverage), and another plastic barrel of agua de pepino (cucumber agua fresca, or cucumber water--a divinely refreshing sweet green cucumber limeade). Cucumber agua fresca is my favorite! There was also a large assortment of sodas (not my favorite). The abundance of beverages led to lots of leftovers--mostly in cups that were tossed half full into the trash bags we set out.

Weekly Album

I spent the whole week recovering from last week, and the week before that, and the weeks before that. My body felt dully, heavy, and lethargic. My brain wasn't much sharper. The end-of-season slump is a phenomenon that we experience after each sports season, but it hits a little differently each time. This time it hit me harder than it has in the past. My motivation plummeted. My energy was nonexistent. Even though my middle school track season was over, high school track was still in full force! So I couldn't just completely surrender to the fatigue. I managed to get a good amount of recovery in anyways, and by Saturday I had a bit more spring in my step.

3x3 + Mother's Day

3 track meets in 3 days: 3x3 = 9 times as tiring. It wasn't just having three track meets in a row that wiped us out; we hosted back to back track meets this week: a middle school meet on Wednesday (the last meet of my MS season!), and a high school meet on Thursday. Then on Friday, we drove nearly 6 hours round trip to Issaquah, WA (and got home close to 1am) for the Liberty Twilight distance-runners-only track meet, where they ran 30+ heats of the 1600m race. Loud spunky music played the entire night, with music videos on the stadium scoreboard screen. The ambience was quirky and fun--a total cross country meet vibe. 

Placeholder

This week was a placeholder week--a sort of calm between storms of busyness. Only two track meets (one middle school, one high school). Mild beautiful weather. It was a welcome breather between the two busiest weeks of track season. The eye of the storm was so calm that I found myself relaxing into it maybe too much. We only had family scripture two times. I barely took any pictures. I watched an entire 16 episode K-drama series. Work hard, rest hard, right?