Happy Spring to everyone. We’ve been experiencing the spring weather of cold/rainy then warm/sunny as we transition from winter into summer. We’ve been enjoying the longer days and chances to go outside in the evenings. We spent the kids’ spring break vacationing in Hawaii and had a great time there. We spend three days at a resort swimming, snorkeling, and having a great time. Then we spent two days on the East side of the island and hiked around the volcano. Tim and Alicia celebrated 13 years of marriage. For the rest of the month we’ve been working through the day-to-day challenges and successes.
Cordelia is participating in her school’s debate competition in May, so her class has spent focused time working on what a debate looks like. Some days she’s still struggling with the student-teacher dynamic. But she has a good time with her friends and is doing well on her work. At ice skating Cordelia passed Basic 6 and is now in Academy Prep. She’s only done two classes at the new level but she says it’s a lot more challenging. She continues to have good friendships there and has one friend moved up to the Academy prep level with her.
Anthony has also been doing well in school. He’s working hard on his subjects and things seemed to have mellowed out on the friendship dynamics. Anthony participated in the school’s poetry competition at the end of the month. He had his poem very well memorized but was a bit nervous in his presentation. He continues working hard in soccer and is now in Skills level 3. His soccer league continues to be a bit of a challenge. He’s working hard and he played a great game in the at the beginning of the month. Some of his teammates are quite lackluster, so that’s made it a challenge. In piano Anthony moved into his level 2B books and is a fairly good piano player when he chooses to put forth the effort.
Lydia continues to work hard at school. Her class room had their open house this month and we got to see her starting on a division bead board, which was pretty impressive. In ice skating Lydia passed Basic 2 but decided she does not want to continue in ice skating and wants to switch back to soccer. Starting in June, she will join soccer for the summer session. Our swim class attendance has been pretty sporadic with spring break vacations and Anthony’s soccer games on Saturday afternoons. We’ve been trying to get her some make ups during the week but we’re planning on getting back to her regular schedule more in May.
Natalie is now potty trained! We pushed her to make the transition at the beginning of the month so we didn’t have to deal with a bunch of diapers on our Hawaii vacation. She’s been doing great and is getting more and more responsible about going. Natalie did great on the vacation and traveled very well on the long flights and layovers. She’s getting very communicative and tells us about her days at school and all the fun she has.
Alicia really enjoyed the week away in Hawaii. We had some great family times and lots of good memories. Getting back to the home and work routine was a bit rough and took about a week to get resettled. Work continues to have some bigger bumps and things are piling up. Several of her projects are all trying to push themselves over the finish line and she had some additional issues requiring customer interfacing that took a fair amount of time. Hopefully during May all these things will settle down in order to support more work from home tasking for the summer. Alicia’s parents helped out a few days this month, and also gave us some date nights. AWANA is heading into the final month of the club year, which means lots of year end preparations are beginning.
Tim’s problem project may be turning the corner. Tim was able to get some better models for the system and the team is working to test those out. He’s getting to have some fun on his side project, so there have been some positives as to work. Tim continued with his workout routine in the gym but started suffering from a cold towards the end of the month. At home Tim put up supports for the new grape vines. Tim started working towards re-doing the laundry/pantry area but then we met with a contractor about a larger home remodel. We’ve stopped progressing on the laundry re-do in view of a potential larger kitchen/laundry overhaul. Tim’s been spending time building up a CAD model of the house and we’ve been discussing more details.
The Spring break get away was a great pause in the middle of April, but now we’re back to the daily life. We’re praying for focus on the present and not getting drawing into the future. June and summer are quickly approaching but we have the whole month of May and want to be intentional about focusing on the time we have in the moment. We’ll be celebrating Tim’s birthday in May and are taking a weekend away without the kids for memorial day weekend.
