The first weekend of May, Fiona and I headed to eastern Washington to attend my uncle's funeral. It was a sad and confusing couple of days, but we eventually ended up in Spokane at.... can you guess? A vaulting competition! Yes, we had three competitions in three weekends. We were pretty wrecked by Sunday.
This past year, Genna has been working very hard to get high scores to qualify for a spot on the Junior World's Team going to Sweden next summer. She is required to compete in the Silver category, which is what she grew out of two years ago. So for this competition, which wasn't a competition that her scores would count for world's selection, she went back up to Young Gold for fun. Too bad it didn't count because she scored really well.
And this is also when gas prices really painfully started to peak. Mark insisted he do all the errand running in his gas efficient car and who am I to argue? I really enjoy being home with my kids and pets when the sun is shining and the grass is green and the sky is blue and my crocs are yellow. And its when covid came through our house for the third time. For the record, covid was not hard on us. We seemed to have the light weight Omicron each of these three times and it was only kids who caught it. And it wasn't even all the kids each time. Just two or three at a time.
My photos show the rest of May was just hanging out at home. Now, to be fair, Mark took the kids hiking at every chance. I don't have those stories or pictures. One of the things he likes to do when I'm gone is take the kids on an adventure. Gas prices don't matter for hiking trips.
Gas prices don't matter for vaulting trips either! First weekend of June, Mark and I had a double header. Genevieve and I headed to Canada (trip #3) and Fiona and Daniel played in an orchestra quartet at the Maritime Festival in Gig Harbor.
The warmer weather in June after a long drizzly late spring found us back to the beach! We visited all our favorite beaches for the historic low tides, of course. The great thing about kids growing up is that I can pack a lounge chair and blanket and just watch everyone play. We spent so many days at the beach in 2022.
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| Taylor Bay |
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| Joemma State Park |
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| Penrose State Park |
Near the end of June, Mark realized a long-held dream. Taking Ami (and Genna, Fiona, and Daniel) up Mount Saint Helens. Ami loves hiking but doesn't get to go on all the wild adventures Mark takes the younger kids on. This time however, she got to bring her boys down to stay with their Grandma (ME) for the weekend! I had a great time. The hikers, however, forgot their sunscreen and ended up with very bad burns. Fiona and Ami ended up in urgent care for blisters and swelling. We used a lot of pain killers and aquaphor that week.
But the show must go on and Genevieve had her Regional competition, which was very important. And even with her sunburn, which had lightened immensely, she came in first in every round. We got home very late Sunday night from that trip and turned right around in the morning....
....to go to.... Canada (Surprise! Trip #4) This weekend was one of those special mention weekends....
One might ask, why is Genna doing handstands on the side of the freeway? Well, the story starts with me purchasing a lemony Volvo station wagon in August of 2021. It needed work, which is why it was only $1000. I did some work, but it wasn't enough. My poor Volvo broke down on the side of the freeway only 10 kilometers (hey, we were in Canada) from where we needed to be. Our hosts came and rescued us, lent us a truck, and recommended a place to send my car to be looked at. And this is just the beginning....
...this trip was significant in the vaulting sense because Genevieve was meeting with one of the world's top judges (from the Netherlands) and one of the world's top vaulter-turned-coaches (from France). We couldn't pass up this opportunity. The team coaches she has been meeting with in Canada believe fully that Genna can qualify for the Junior World's team, so they have been very generous in providing opportunities for her to become the best version of herself. The picture shows a moment where the Canadian coach says to French coach that Genna likes what he is saying, that's just her thinking face. Because she really does have a serious face! It made everyone laugh and now we all say, "It's just her face!"
So back to the car... we ended up having to stay an extra day and change our airbnb reservations and ferry tickets because my car got towed to a repo station instead of a car fixing place, so we had to find the car and have it looked at. Many months later we are assuming that when my fuel pump was replaced, they toggled the fuel level indicator and now I'm paranoid I'll run out of gas on the side of the road before I'm in the red.
I was never so happy to see my driveway. I had been gone for a week by then and I desperately missed my kids. Which is a foreshadow to another story, but that will be in Part 3.
July! We love the 4th of July. Ian brought his girlfriend over and all the teenagers jumped on my unsafe, now closed until further notice, trampoline. We did all our regular things with food and fire.
And then it was Lula's 10th birthday and we went to the zoo!
And then it was...
...beaches...
...bear hunts....
...beaches....
...bonfires (ah, the illusive Fiona!)
...bugs...
...beesnests (we had three large ones this summer)....
...and Jason's 7th birthday! And then a ton more beach days as we went through the heat of summer....
