On his actual birthday this year Matthew was to cool to race his dad. He was sulking a little bit about not having grown as much as he wanted to for the past year. A week or two later he changed his mind and challenged his dad to their annual race. They actually did three races this year. Matthew won the last one by a smidge but we told him the only one that counts is the first race, and he lost. Dad gets to keep the bragging rights for another year at least.
Matthew turned 14 this year! Time really does fly. We have done a few test drives and I have him signed up to take the written drivers test next week. He thinks he is going to ‘wing it’. If he fails he has to wait a bit to take it again so I am encouraging him to study. I am actually looking forward to him being able to get himself around a little bit in the next year or two. Shuttling everyone around can be a full time job.
He decided to have a few friends spend the night for his b-day. Ryan took them all to an Escape Room. They were able to figure it out and escape with a few minutes to spare. They ate pizza and candy the rest of the night while playing video games.
The past week of so I have spent a lot of time reminiscing and thinking about being his mom the past 14 years. I have been blessed with a very good son. A lot of the qualities and strengths he has I have seen in him since he was born or very young. They have become more pronounced or developed more but I’m always amazed at how much of their personalities are present and distinguishable when they are born, some even before that. Matthew has always been sweet and kind and tender hearted. He is quick to pick things up in all aspects of his life-physical, emotional, mental. He is a very good friend and likes to have meaningful friendships but his shyness can slow the process down a little for him. He is a happy person. He is hard on himself and tries to improve, he hides this so well that sometimes I forget he tends to put too much pressure on himself until it boils over sometimes. He wants to do good and be good. He internalized things far better than I ever did at his age. He has a good sense of humor and is fun to be around. He has empathy, compassion, and kindness. His sisters look up to him and love it when he gives them attention. His dad says, “The gospel rests on his shoulders well.” I agree. He listens and understand the gospel well and works on his testimony. I am glad that I get to be his mom, I am excited to see what he is going to do with his life over the next few years. He is good.
His best friend not girlfriend Campbell (she is his girlfriend) has a birthday the same week as Matthew so she came over and I took them to lunch with the family and they exchanged gifts. They each got each other candy and a sweatshirt. She is a very sweet girl and I like her. Matthew has liked her since she moved here in 4th grade. They just started talking and becoming friends at the end of last year, and over the summer have become “really good friends”. The discussions of dating, expectations, guidelines and family rules have been reviewed A LOT in our house lately. The sweet spot the Terry family has been riding the past few years of self sufficient low drama children has sprung a leak. I have heard myself saying many things to him that I know I remember rolling my eyes at when my parents said them to me when I was his age. My number one goal right now as we tip toe into learning how to guide him through relationships with the opposite sex for the next few years is keeping the lines of communication open. He knows I don’t want him to get serious and have a girl friends for several more years down the road but if he is going to do it anyways I don’t want him sneaking around doing it. I want him in my house under my supervision. His sisters are also excellent information gatherers and reporters and chaperones as well, and are very willing to help.
Matthew started his new baseball team for Fall. I mentioned it a little before but Ryan and Jimmy joined with another coach named Robby and they combined part of three teams into two teams. For Fall they will be mixing and matching the boys up different for each tournament and then settle into more permanent teams in the Spring. It is still new but we have played several times and are getting to know each other and learning to play with each other. Matthew caught a ball with his cheek bone the other day and has a nice black eye to show for it. They have finished in the top three for several of tournaments we played which is fun and encouraging.
Well, it was delayed 2 weeks and then middle school and high school were changed to virtual only for an undetermined amount of time based on a ridiculous skewed made up ‘gating criteria’ but we had the first day of school this past week!
The principal kept all the walkers until after the car riders were gone so Allison sat in the class room an extra 45 minutes, got home an hour after school ended, and crossed a four lane road without a crossing guard, but after what I can only imagine was a full inbox, many phone calls, a meeting with the teachers, and even more in person conversations she decided against that and let the kids go when school was over the next day. This was a big issue several years ago but the principal in her never ending attempts to control every single thing tried it again. Four years left of this woman…four years.
Allison rode the bus the first day with Emilee so she wouldn’t be by herself and is in 5th grade. Her last year of elementary school. Her teacher is Mrs. Brown and seems to be pretty awesome so far. Back to school night was all virtual and she did a good job so you could actually hear and see what was going on. I think she will be a good fit for Allison. As I mentioned, she can ride the bus but most of the time wants to walk or ride her bike to see her friends because none of her best friends ended up in her class. We have made the deal that on days I work and dad isn’t working from home she has to ride the bus, other days she can pick. She is going to do one more year of girls scouts. She is doing cheer one last time (hopefully) and has gymnastics twice a week for 2 1/2 hours. She color coded all of her school supplies to the correct pencil box they go in. As usual she is up to date on all the school gossip and happenings, even some from the middle school, despite being with her class and her class only all day long. Lunch is in the class room, and recess is rotating to different areas with your own class. She is glad to be back in school though and see and interact with more people.
Emilee is starting 2nd grade. She will ride the bus each day. She puts her mask on and they take her temperature then she is whisked away to the school. Once she is dropped off she walks around a one way loop at the school until she arrives at her classroom. Her teacher this year is Mrs. Trimble. Allison had her for 2nd grade as well and I wasn’t impressed. I requested a change but the principal said she can’t do anything about it. For now we will keep her there and hope that it goes well. If it doesn’t I will have a meeting with the principle about it. Anyway, she is doing good so far. There are 18 kids in her class, 6 of those are girls. She seems to be pretty comfortable now since she knows most of the kids and is familiar with the school. Recess rotation on the grass with no balls and not allowed to play tag is pretty boring but she did find two frogs so that brightened her day. She is not going to do Girl Scouts this year. Hopefully activity days will be starting again before to long. We will get her on a basketball team in the winter. We are also looking into horse lessons with her bestie Reese once a week.
Matthew is in 8th grade. He started conditioning this summer with the intentions of playing football but ended up deciding against it. He has put on a grand total of 5 pounds this last year and 1 inch making him 5 feet even and 85 pounds soaking wet. He decided to focus on getting better at basketball and baseball instead of getting squished in football. He was supposed to start school full time in person, but the school switched a few days before school started to all virtual. Apparently it is safe enough to play sports…but not sit in a desk at school. So he has four classes a day for 1 1/2 hours each via zoom. That is a long time to be staring at a computer screen. We are trying to make the best of it and hopefully it will not last much longer. He is pretty social and is finding and settling in with a good group of kids it seems like. None of them are close enough to hang out after school without parent assistance in getting there but they are close enough it is pretty easy to get them together. There is one boy in particular we are glad he is buddies with. Tyson Beshore. The whole family is a great family, anytime we can get them together we are more than happy to do it. Matthew can get his learners permit for driving in October. That is pretty crazy.
So the 2020 school year if off to a start. It is going to be a different, frustrating, and hopefully end well but we will see. I hope my kids can learn and grow mentally, physically, socially, and emotionally.
Spring baseball for Matthew didn’t end up starting until June, so it was more like REALLY HOT SUMMER BASEBALL but Matthew and the rest of the boys didn’t care. They just want to play and have fun. We did lots of tournaments and played League games so we were able to get plenty of games in. The girls have a good group of friends that they run around with during the games (other players younger siblings) so they love it just as much.
We had a fun tournament scheduled in Branson Missouri in June. We decided to post phone until July to have more/better competition. Then to make a long story short a few lame parents were able to manipulate the head coach into canceling it all together. Instead of Branson Missouri we went to Liberty Missouri which is not the same, but we tried to make the best of it and planned some team activities to get the boys together on the days we were supposed to be in Branson. They had a sleep over with the whole team and basically stayed up all night. We went to a baseball museum and lunch at Chicken-n-Pickle were they could play pickle ball for an hour or so. We also scheduled a parent vs player whiffle ball game but that hasn’t happened yet because of weather.
One of the highlights of this season for Matthew was his double that ended the game with a walk off. I made a little ‘news shot’ from the Game Changer recap of the game. I was the one keeping score and I know the score would actually be 4-3 since it was a walk off hit, but since he hit a double the App recorded both runners that came in. Anyway, it was an awesome hit and the boys were pretty excited to win.
The parent that takes all the awesome pictures for us is moving so this is probably the last season she will take picture for us. After this the quality of pictures will change drastically because I am the one taking them. I am trying to improve my photography skills though.
Another big change for baseball is that Ryan and Coach Jimmy Adams didn’t like the way the 14 year old program is run so they have decided to leave NBA (the academy Matthew has played for the past three years) and do their own team for at least the next year. They are combining teams with another coach and are planning on having two teams that will practice together and mix and match through the Fall then be divided into more permanent teams in the Spring. Matthew will now be on a team called FBC (Fire Birds Baseball Club). We played a tournament with some of the boys on his new team this past weekend. There were a few bloopers because they had never played together but they ended up winning the tournament. Matthew is pretty excited, they will be a pretty competitive higher end AAA team. Ryan likes to say, “They will be a really salty team.” Once they practice with each other and get to know each other. I think it will be good for Matthew because instead of being closer to the top of the team talent, he is more mid range so he will have to challenge himself more to get better and have more kids to learn from.
Emilee and Allison have a group of friends they hang out with during the game. The younger siblings of players group. They all have a good time together. At one of the last games, the boys dugout had some weird holes in it, probably for drainage, but the girls decided to make good use of them.
The last two league games for NBA were back to back. The first game was a blow out. The final score was 18 to 3 or something like that. One of their players ended up getting hurt and they didn’t have enough so we lent them one of our just so we could keep playing. The coaches let the boys try spots they usually don’t play, one player even tried batting left handed and got a double. Matthew got a chance at pitching, which he has been begging for all season. While he was warming up the score was 17-0 us, the catcher and him were joking around that hopefully their lead was big enough Matthew didn’t blow the game. He only gave up 3 runs though.
The last event of our season and time with the NBA-Adams team was a parent vs player wiffle ball game. It was a lot of fun. A lot of cheating from the parents, but a lot of fun. For example, after each hit I relocated second base to give us the advantage of them not knowing were the base was to get them out.
This is a day that I usually prefer to pass by unnoticed and then pretend to be disappointed when someone remembers we missed it. Most of my family seems to be on the same page with my opinion, with the exception of Allison. She anticipates it for months and has almost the same giddy excitement she has for Christmas or her birthday when it gets close. With the entire Nation on stay-at-home orders I think in general most people paid more attention to it this year, simply because of lack of other things happening. Allison had a long list of tricks ready to go.
She placed a piece of card board in all the toilets. Thank goodness she hasn’t discovered other ‘options’ for this classic trick, that I will not even mention here because she does eventually read this.
She put tape across several doorways. This happened to be the day I did laundry and often was carrying things in front of me so I couldn’t see as well. So I personally ‘fell’ for this one at least 5 times and so did others. She was very pleased with herself.
I also found tape covering the faucet when I turned it on in my bathroom.
The one she did that made me chuckle the most was drawing on Emilee’s arm while she was sleeping. Emilee came in and said, “Mom, I don’t remember drawing any of this on my arm.” She still draws on herself enough that it was a total possibility she did it, but was confused she couldn’t recall it.
Allison’s pride and joy prank for the day was getting a hold of Matthew’s cell phone and changing her contact to “Campbell” who is Matthew’s crush. She then texted him like she was Campbell. Matthew figured out pretty quickly that it wasn’t Campbell but he thought it was her sister. He even told Allison about it and she was giggling while she sat right next to him and continued to text. He figured it out shortly after that. Then I helped him change it back and change the password on his phone so she couldn’t get into it anymore.
The winning prank of the day was by me though. Thanks to my neighbors. They pranked me first with the following pictures.
Once they new they got me they said they were looking it and would send me more info when they found it. A minute or so later she said here is what we found. and send me this.
Emilee’s Answers (Age 7)
Allison’s answers (Age 9)
Matthew’s Answers (Age 13)
As I have mentioned part of the reason for our pre-Spring Break is because it is parent teacher conference time.
I went and saw all of the kids teachers and saw how they are doing. Matthew was supposed to come with me and show me a presentation that he had made about how his year has been going. He was sick so I just went myself and his teacher showed me. He is doing great. He catches on pretty quick most of the time and things seem easy. His biggest area to grow in is challenging himself more. Not just doing the minimum and being done. Pushing himself to go above the minimum even if it is uncomfortable (because it will be) and growing more than the ‘requirement’. When I was telling him how his conference went I told him this is a nice way of his teacher saying-don’t be lazy, and I agree. He rolled his eyes and said ‘okay mom’. Then I gave him a hug and told him I am proud of his effort he does put in. I know a lot of moms that have to remind, nag, beg, threaten their kid to not just do homework but turn it in, and even admit they have it. I ask Matthew on occasion if he has done his homework but more so he doesn’t feel like I don’t care than I am worried he hasn’t done it. Since Kindergarten he has come home and done his homework on his own unless he needs help without being asked.
Allison was also supposed to come with me to her conference. She did and showed me her slide presentation she prepared for me. Then we went through some of the papers she had written the first part of the year. She is doing very well and her creativity shows just as much in her school work as it does in other areas of her life. I took a picture of a couple so share. Even her research reports are fun to read. She is a talented girl. She excels in many areas. One of her favorites right now is Math. She seems to have a good portion of her dads engineering brain. I am very proud of her and how hard she works. Her area of improvement is to slow down and take her time. It isn’t a race to finish everything. Then she gave me all the sticky notes she had collected from various teachers on the board of “items needed” for their classrooms, while she was waiting for me to finish Emilee’s conference. When I tried to explain the items are for the kids/parents to get that are actually in that teachers class and picking one was enough she was mortified at my “lack of caring for others and their needs.” When I told her I would split the cost of whatever she wanted to get for the teachers she put a few back and kept a more reasonable amount of sticky notes. 😘
Emilee was the only one that was not supposed to come to her conference. While I enjoy my children’s company this is the way I prefer to have a parent teacher conference-with just the people listed in the title of the event. Emilee has improved her reading a lot this year. I will admit I was a little bit nervous at the beginning of the year. It was a bit of a struggle to get her to even try to read. She has tried hard and is doing really well now. In Emilee’s life in general I feel like she has started to accept the fact that she can do a lot of stuff for herself. While she is the youngest and all of us are guilty of just doing things for her because it is easier-and quite frankly she prefers it that way- I think we have made great strides in her willingness to try doing things on her own and for herself. She has shown it in playing basketball and not taking herself out of the game because she is ‘done’, making her own peanut butter sandwich, and reading books on her own even though she might not know every word. Her teacher said she is a happy fun girl to have in class and I am proud of her too. She had a very good folktale about how guinea pigs learned to run I got to see at her conference.
Matthew missed about half of the basketball tryouts because we left for Florida for Christmas. He was nervous he wouldn’t be able to make the team but he ended up getting put on the Junior Varsity team. He has been loving it. He has been getting better each week too. There team is 10-1 so they have had a good season. One of the games they were down by more than 15 points almost the whole game then they came back and won in triple overtime. He loved the excitement of the whole experience. The jersery’s are already made and the bigger the number the bigger the size of the jersey. His usual number he likes to be is 14 butthat jersey was to big so he had to settle for 11. He is very aware of his lack of height compared to almost everyone else on his team but he makes up with it with speed and effort. He is getting really good at darting around and stealing the ball from the other team.
The range of flexibility in our family goes from Allison doing full splits and bending over backwards to Ryan and Matthew who can barely bend forward let alone touch their toes.
The past year Matthew has started having issues because he works out so much and then doesn’t stretch enough. On top of his lack of flexibility his muscles tighten up from working out and make him even less flexible and more tight. He has had to do several rounds of physical therapy. Of course Ryan and I have been nagging, harping, reminding, lecturing, begging, threatening, and anything else we can think of to get him to stretch 1-2 times a day. I’ve made him do Yoga with me. He is pretty ornery about it ,mainly because it hurts, he doesn’t like it, doesn’t get the importance of it, he is not good at it, and he is a belligerent teenager.
Our chiropractor gave us a video to use with some basic stretching. Ryan realized he needs to do it just as much as Matthew so the two of them have been doing it together at night. It is so ridiculous watching them. I switch between laughing so hard my eyes water to rolling my eyes as they moan and complain and roll around on the floor supposedly stretching but looking more like they are having a seizure or full body muscle spasm.
Kudos to them for trying though. They get an ‘A’ for effort. Well Ryan gets a ‘B’ and Matthew gets ‘C-‘
