June Sports

Let's get this summer started! Play ball! We took in a Space Cowboys (formerly Skeeters) game in Sugar Land. Aunt Jenn and Addie came too. Addie spent a lot of time at the splash pad and playground, like we did last time, but the big kids are too big now. 😢

As usual, the neighborhood swim team dominates our calendar in May and June. This season we were downgraded from Division I to III, and it was a much better fit. We ended with a record of 2-2. Both kids made the team pic this year. Owen is on the back row on the right, and Hadley is directly below him 3 rows down.

The kids' favorite part of swim team is hanging out with their friends. These boys have been swimming together for years, although O and Jonathan moved up to 13-14 this year, while the rest got to swim in 11-12 again. Owen held his own as a 13 year-old swimming against 14 year-olds, some of whom definitely had a year of high school swimming under their belt!

Here's Owen with an exciting freestyle win. He's in Lane 4. Although he improved on all of his times from last year, his best stroke is still his breaststroke, for which he got to swim in the top medley relay a few times. He made it to Meet of Champs in the free (33.2s), breast (39.8s), and butterfly (40.97s) and finished with personal bests in all of them.

And here's Hadley with a beautiful backstroke in Lane 5. She swam the backstroke leg in the medley relays. Hadley improved in all of her times too, but just missed swimming the breaststroke and butterfly for 3 of the meets again. She did get to swim them in our last meet, and made it to Meet of Champs for freestyle (18.61s), but her goggles popped off when she dove in, which really threw her off in the saltwater pool.

We got whaled! Cute fundraiser for the team and a great photo op.

This seems like it was probably our last year of swim team. Both kids said something to that effect. Owen's friends are choosing other sports to focus on, and he doesn't like swim enough to focus on it without them. Hadley was frustrated that she couldn't get a blue ribbon every time. It's been a fantastic way for them to become strong swimmers, but we probably won't miss sweating during 7-hour swim meets and satisfying our 5 volunteer requirements every summer.

I'll leave swimming with our annual picture with our ribbons and medals. We swam in larger pools this year, due to changing divisions (down to Division 3 this year), so we had an interesting spread of colors, all the way up to 7th or 8th place (Heat 1 usually 😅). 

In other news, Owen is biking with neighborhood boys to the Mustang Athletic Camp 4 days a week throughout the summer. It's a Strength and Conditioning camp (Comprised of outside conditioning, weight room, and football skills) at the high school they'll go to in a year (!) and Junior High is from 12-2pm.🌞 Hot and sweaty time! But he loves it! 

To round out the month, Hadley tried out a tennis camp for a couple of weeks. She enjoyed practicing the 7 different strokes and might take some more tennis lessons down the road.

Okay, it's not sports, but the window installers got quite a workout, replacing 24 windows on the front of our house. You can see the old (top) with solar screens and the new double-panes (bottom) on the left. On the right is the makeshift scaffolding they put in place to replace the big window above the front door. Yikes!

And voila! The final product - double-paned windows just in time for our record heat wave! I definitely don't feel heat seeping in around the edges anymore. (We just have to figure out how to put the solar screens back on without using screws.)

June Service and Camps

If we thought May was busy, June did not bring much relief. Lots of camps and retreats in June, 2 weeks of dog sitting, holidays, and parties filled the calendar. On top of that, neighborhood swim team practices started May 1 after school and continued just about every weekday morning through June, plus the JH Strength and Conditioning (SAC) camp every M-Th afternoon. Whew! At least the kids can bike themselves to swim and SAC.

Owen and I started off our June at our Junior High service camp, Bridge. We went to Galveston and met up with a couple of other Katy-area churches for Thursday-Sunday. 40-ish people slept in a church there, worked in the community during the day and played, worshipped, and ate dinner back at the church.

The kids were broken up into small groups for discussions and planning. Owen was in the Blue Bombers. Most of the missions had to do with helping the homeless, so the kids had some learning opportunities to understand the causes and impacts of homelessness. They even did a simulation where they were given a budget, a few resources, and real life challenges (transportation, rent, etc.) and had to try to make ends meet with a minimum wage job.

On the first day, Blue and Red teams went to help Artist Boat, an organization dedicated to reclaiming wetland habitats on Galveston Island. 

The kids spent the better part of a day (8a-3p), in the heat, digging holes in a field and planting native plants in a grid every 6 feet. While some kids were too small to really get a shovel in the ground, they became plant runners, going back and forth between the trailer and the shovelers. The teams worked together to plant 600 plants in that time! The AB guide was impressed with their work ethic when they blew through what he had expected them to do and asked for more. The Blue team even returned the next day and planted 70 trees in a different area.

I was on the kitchen crew (1 of 2), so I had early mornings to get breakfast ready by 7 and had to be back early to get dinner for 40+ started. In between, I went around with the camp leadership to check in on each site, so I got to see all of the teams' efforts. Over the two days, besides planting, we had groups organizing a food bank, making 300 lunches for distribution to the needy, painting doors, signage, and ramps at St. Vincent's House, and cleaning a clinic. They were working hard! So at night, they got to have some fun, like human hungry hippos!

The weekend centered around worship and living out our mission as humans to make the world a better place. I think it really opened some kids' eyes to what they have to be thankful for and what they can do to make a difference. Some of the kids shared their takeaways during the church service on Sunday, and they were so heart-warming and wise! What an exhausting and yet refreshing weekend!

Before we left the island, we spent a couple of hours at Pleasure Pier. Because kids!

The following weekend was our church's Church Without Walls, meaning they had oodles of projects to go out into the community and do good works. John was excited about replacing a fence, so he and Owen actually went on Saturday to dismantle the old fence, pull out concrete, and set new posts to dry overnight. John then returned on Sunday to finish the job, when the cameras were out. 

I let Hadley choose the job for us, and she picked decorating the church for VBS, even though she decided that she's too old to actually attend VBS. The theme was "Ready, set, go!", which meant lots of paper on the walls to make streets, cars, trains, and all things that go. She and I worked on the train, but ran out of time before we got to make the engine.

This year, Owen tried out a new camp with some friends, Great Adventure Camp, which was his first sleep-away camp. It's only about an hour away, but he was gone Monday afternoon through Saturday morning. Here he is at drop-off and with his cabin. The cowboy is his college-age cabin counselor.

From the pictures the camp posted, it looked like they had a good time. Lots of paint, mud, and water activities to keep cool in the record heat wave. Owen is easy to pick out in his bucket hat in most of the pictures.

The whole camp: About 140 campers, 3rd-8th grade, boys and girls. I think Owen enjoyed it, but he was exhausted. He said there were some talkers nearly every night in the cabin that kept him awake.

Here he is at pickup: tired, hungry, and sweaty. On the way back home, we stopped for some donuts/kolaches a la Homer. 

Lastly, Owen went to a Beach Retreat with the church youth. Looks like they had a pretty swanky house on Crystal Beach! I didn't get to go to the beach, so Owen sent me these pictures of the view from the house's deck and the large hole he dug. 

Other than that, all I have is this montage they sent out. Looks like fun! 

No Longer Elementary

Wow! May really screams by there at the end of the school year. Our dear Hadley finished up her elementary school years with a bang! First, there was a big ceremony for 5th grade awards.

It was an interesting year. H started out with a long-term sub who ended up not coming back after winter break. After a few weeks of rotating subs, they finally got Ms. B to finish out the year. Hopefully, there won't be any lasting educational effects from an inconsistency in teachers... Here's the class pic - one of only 5 classes in our small school.

Hadley really cleaned up at the awards, including awards for Presidential Education, Citizenship, and Attendance, in various accolades for her grades, STAAR test, behavior, and presence. She was one of only about 6 kids in her grade with Perfect Attendance this year! And who could forget the Basic Fishing certificate from a field trip. 

Here she is on her first day of Kindergarten and her last day of 5th grade. She has been ready to go to Junior High ever since Owen went, maybe even before then. We know she'll do well there, but we enjoyed our years at Hayes. It's a great little school (#1 in Houston if you believe Niche)!

The last time riding her bike to school for a while. She loves her independence in getting herself up, ready, and biking on her own to school. We'll see what she thinks of taking a full bus with her brother next year.

On the last day, the school made a big to-do for the 5th graders. Nothing but a big ol' party for those kids once they rolled up. They took over the gym with music, food, pictures, crafts, games, and dancing for 2 hours before early dismissal.

A friend took this for me, because some of us had to work... Glad she had a genuine smile on her face at the party!

I stole this pic from the school's post - my kids' favorite 5th grade teachers, Mrs. Tritico (she has the best in-class library, according to H) and Mrs. Reese (she's funny, according to O)!

I did make it up to the school for the 5th grade clap-out. It's a fun tradition where the 5th graders go up and down every hall in the school just before the last dismissal, and the kids in the younger grades applaud them and give them high fives as they pass by. It was so sweet; I got a little teary. (Also of note: the graduating 12th graders came back for a clap-out from Hayes in their cap and gown a week earlier.)

One of the moms made a bulletin board with Kinder/5th pictures of the 5th graders too. I sent in school pictures to make it more official.

Our neighborhood is right across the street from the school, and some parents have another tradition on the last day of school. Once the kids are in the 'hood, they get squirted with water guns and treated to popsicles. I went with our Super Soaker to surprise H on her bike with her friend. Let summer begin!

But the 5th graders weren't done partying quite yet. They rented out our neighborhood pool and had even more candy and laughs. H started out her summer with a sunburn. Woohoo!

Not to be outdone, O also got an Academic Excellence Award. It's just a little more low-key in JH. He got his at lunch one day!