Busy Xmas Season

Hailey Shooting in a Game

I've been gone the past two weekends with Austen for club soccer games in Arizona and in Kansas City so the weeks have flown by and my to do list has grown. 

I did get to see Peyton cheer on Friday night at a basketball game before I had to leave but I missed two of Hailey's travel basketball games. Excited to see her play in 2025. She traded her three times a week soccer practices for three times a week basketball practices and really seems to be enjoying playing as well as learning the game better. 

Hailey has also been my busiest right now with Girl Scout Meetings (cookie sales coming soon!) and her school's Battle of the Books program - which she is doing for the second straight year. In fact, on Tuesdays she stays after school for Battle of the Books, then I pick her up at 4pm to go to Religious Ed and then at 5:15pm, I run her straight to basketball practice so she can catch the last 50 minutes of it. Then she's home by 7pm. Good thing these 5th graders don't have a ton of homework! 

Peyton's cheer has been very manageable as they don't practice every day after school. She has added 1-2 tumbling classes a week to her schedule so she can get better faster too. She has shown a lot of improvement and will start getting more serious in early 2025 as spring cheer tryouts approach. Right now she is focused on her freshman year, first semester finals. It's been an experience for her but one I'm sure she'll learn from. I told her they aren't going away - you will have them in college too so get used to them and make sure your grades are solid beforehand so you don't need to rely on a final to bring up your grade or if you do poorly, it doesn't affect your grade. 

Austen is on a two to three week break from soccer right now which is good timing so he can focus on finals and securing solid first semester grades Senior year. He decided to take so many AP/Honors classes this first semester and it's been anything but easy for him with a full high school and then club soccer schedule. But there's one thing about that kid - he really tries and puts in the effort. My other two, I'm willing to bet if they took an IQ test are much smarter than he is but the effort he puts in is bar none to those two. He just wants to do well in everything. 

Anyway, we all are really looking forward to having some time off during this holiday break with our whole family to just connect and enjoy each other's company.  Maybe throw a little sunshine in there too (wink, wink).