Kindergarten (non)Bliss

Most of  this school year I have had recurring morning struggles with Adelynn not wanting to go to school.

What!? You are in kindergarten! Isn’t that the best year of school?!

At fall conferences we spoke to her teacher about her displeasure of kindergarten. We heard how she doesn’t finish her work in the allotted time, how she seems bothered by other kids who don’t want to follow directions and overall engaged. We heard how she loves being the teachers helper and is even listed as a substitute teacher helper. What is going on?

Her biggest complaint is they sit too much and she wants more time at centers. It’ll be a long 12 years if she doesn’t start finding things to look forward to at school.

Bluetooth

Adelynn gives a whole new meaning to Bluetooth after eating a sucker at the rink.

Filtered

Sam spends quite a bit of her time on Snapchat. It’s the new craze with kids that has taken over texting. They maintain steaks where each person has to send at least one picture to the other within 24 hours. With the convenience of snapping they tend to send what I’d consider worthless snaps. Mostly if the ground or weird faces with a ‘s’ scribbled across the picture. Sam and I are sitting around a 43 day streak. She bombards me with snaps which I don’t mind since I can see what’s going on in her day.

Snapchat also has filters which will change your voice, make you an animal or someone else. On our drives to hockey I have to be aware of what she’s doing. I’ve been busted belting out a song or ad-libing by her recording me and sending it to whomever is on her list.

Other times I’m minding my own business and check my Snapchat and find this...

Or this...

Then I look up just in time to do one of these...

We’ll hold Bitmoji conversations and laugh. It’s a great app as long as your kids don’t abuse it. We have a lot of fun with it.

The Life of Saturday’s

Saturday’s have been our busiest day of the week since October. With Adelynn and Noah starting u6 hockey this year we’ve been spending a lot more time at the rink. They both are on the ice at different times. Mostly back to back with an occasional 45 min break in between. They’ve been practicing their skating skills and doing fun little games since the season started. Adelynn LOVES hockey and can’t get enough of being on the ice. Noah on the other hand has better things to do. His most common complaint is that he falls a lot. We continue to reassure him that his 12 year old sister falls often as well. It’s part of skating. Just go have fun. I’m not sure he’ll be on the ice next season. If he chooses to not skate then at least he had the opportunity.

Sam and my morning started at 10:45am on the East rink. I picked up Locker Mom duty and she did her thing the hour before game time. We played Woodbury and lost 0-3. It was a good game. Sam took the puck from behind the net and made a shot on goal. She’s in white surrounded by four Woodbury girls.

Nick and Noah missed the last 20 minutes of Sam’s game and headed to the West rink to get ready for his 12:30pm practice. He’s still trying to figure out how to skate versus run. He had a lot more fun this practice than he has in the past. 

At 1pm Adelynn started getting ready for her 1:15pm practice. She joined the boys for the last bit of their practice. It makes me so proud to see her skate do well and love hockey as she does. All of the girls were playing Toilet Tag and chasing the coaches.

After practice Adelynn and her friend Anni, went to the outdoor rink to skate some more. They’ve become good friends within the past two days. Not sure how they missed each other through the whole season since Anni’s dad coaches Sam.

Seven hours later we headed for home. A delay in leaving to watch a bit of Anni’s u8 game against Rosemount.

You’re Going to Embarrass Me

Today Sam’s team was invited to play hockey at The Shinny in Hastings. It’s a private rink in the back yard of another hockey players yard from the boys team. They have two warming trailers and a zamboni to resurface the ice. The parents put together some pizza and snacks after practice today. Since I was on the ice with Sam yesterday, I was excited to get back out and hone in on my skating skills in preparation for the parents vs. kids game next week.

Sam was excited to go until I shared that Adelynn and I planned to skate as well. “No mom, you’re going to embarrass me!” Excuse me?! I can skate and I’m better at stopping. Way to turn that knife after stabbing me. I then felt the need to teach Sam what embarrassment really was.

On the way into the rink for practice I made her hold my hand. Then I started skipping and swinging her arm. All the way through the lobby. A few teammates said I should skate and they wouldn’t be embarrassed. She was a bit upset I was making a scene. Oh well.

On the way to The Shinny she texted me this...

I held off for most of the night not skating. Then ended up playing, or aimlessly skating around on the rink during a game. Occasionally I’d get the puck passed to me by her coach but I never amounted to anything. I’m going to blame my inadequate skills on using a righty stick and I feel more comfortable with left.

Adelynn skated all night and had so much fun. She told others how she doesn’t need to score a goal. It’s all about having fun. What a great attitude.

Sam played goalie in full gear. She did great. Let me call out that I scored on her twice. She’ll deny it.

Let’s Play Hockey

After Sam's hockey practice today she left the ice wanting to skate more. We were supposed to have Adelynn’s game night since it was a rare instance of all six of us being home. We walked in the door, sat for dinner and Sam hesitantly brought up the request to skate with Adelynn who was so sad on Tuesday when we had to cancel game night. How would she take a second cancellation? With incredible excitement that’s how. We all raced through dinner, changed, geared up hopped in two cars and off we went.

Everyone was very excited to go play hockey. We all had our own agendas. I need to learn how to stop quickly which has to be similar to my pre-snowboarding days when I would go skiing. I spent most of my time shoveling the 3” of snow off the ice and playing zamboni between hockey time. Seth wanted to learn to skate in general. He gave us a lot of good laughs. Nick just wanted to shoot pucks and outskate the kids. Sam wanted to outplay Nick and to be our coach by setting up back to back drills measuring our speed and agility. Adelynn wanted to improve her skating skills which look pretty similar to Seth’s skills. Noah spent most of his time walking on his skates and falling. He resorted to ditching the skates and playing boot hockey.

It was a chilly 11° outside but we kept warm and had a lot of laughs. We’ll be going again real soon. Maybe even pull out my snowboard and hit the slopes with the kidlets. 

Let’s try this again

So much has happened since my last post. With some effort I’ll try to fill in days and close the gap. 

My babies are growing up.

Seth, 14, is busy with his recent interest in Civil Air Patrol out of the Stanton Airfield. He’s attended two meetings and is looking into their boot camp.

Sam, 12, is busy with hockey and has been invited to two AAA teams this spring and summer. She has taken off and we’re loving every minute at the rink.

Adelynn, 6, is enjoying u6 hockey and is skating pretty good. Maybe I should join her in the rink to work on my skills. She’s reading and a little ‘meh’ about kindergarten. 

Noah, 4, is in preschool three days a week and hangs with Grandpa Jim 4-5 days a week. He isn’t a fan of u6 hockey. Instead he’s working his social butterfly skills in preschool and does things on his own time.

Nick still volunteers on the RH Fire Dept, Boy Scout chair, and has been going to crossfit since I introduced him to CF3 a few months back. He opens shop at Schmitty’s by 3am and seems to enjoy being a diesel mechanic. 

I’m pulling my 13th year at HealthEast, now Fairview, and my 10th year building out the electronic health record program. Currently an Epic Application Analyst on the new Patient Experience/Virtual Health team. March of 2017 I made a change to my life with eating clean and working out. I joined CF3 in August and absolutely love the challenge. I’ve lost 80 pounds and hope to never see them again.