I need therapy, but I'm gonna try blogging first!
I can't believe it has been years since my last post. I have been so busy. My children are so amazing that I really need somewhere that I can brag about them, and I just am not a fan of the FB or Instagram bragging.
Ty is now 20 and on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He is serving in the Yakima Washington mission. He comes home on July 12, 2022. He has enjoyed the people he has met, but hates the snow and cold. It has been amazing to watch him grow and learn. He played high school and competitive soccer, we called him RoJo on the field. He lost his senior year to Covid like so many others.
Tate is also doing amazing. He graduates this week and begins his mission on June 13, 2022. He will spend two weeks learning online from the Missionary Training Center at home. After two weeks he gets to go to Mexico and learn Spanish for a couple of weeks. Then he flies back to the US to start his mission in the Detroit Michigan Mission, Spanish speaking. Tate did an amazing job of stepping in and being the big brother since Ty has left. I really am just a little sick that both my boys are gonna be gone.
Tayla is 17 and amazing. She is currently busy mapping out her future. She's looking for something in the field of genetics. This is the last week of 11th grade for her. She has been taking online classes and also concurrent enrollment courses, so when she graduates next year she will have some college already finished. I was hesitant to enroll her in school in 10th grade. The school we attend has some pretty rough and tumble students that go there, and I was really worried about her. She is very tender hearted and such a worrier that I just wanted to protect her. She prayed about it and told me she wanted to go to school, and she did. She has done amazing. Last week she learned a valuable lesson about procrastination when she spent three days in front of the laptop finishing assignments she didn't want to do! Somehow she pulled it off and got A's.
Tori is a whole different kind of crazy! She is the one on the ground catching the ball. She is finishing 9th grade this week. She was the varsity goal keeper this year for her high school soccer team. She was amazing. She plays backup keeper on her competitive team, but not often, so it was a new level of intense for her. Learning to play the keeper and not being able to chase other people was really hard for her. She made the basketball team, and quit after the first week, she hated it. She decided to be on the track team. She took 2nd place in state for high jump and her 4x200 relay team took 3rd. She also runs the 300m hurdles, which is awesome to watch.
Last of all is our Tessa. This girl is a little spitfire.
She has everyone wrapped around her finger. Her and Ty share 'ginger power'. Even Ty's friends would come and hang out with Tessa. She has always acted way older then she is, been way more responsible then her siblings and remembers everything. When Ty left (and all her friends) Tate jumped in and became her bestie. Now that he is leaving, well, it's been tough for her. Tori and Tessa and best of friends and worst of enemies and Tayla is always a backup when Tessa needs a friend. Her imagination is her best friend. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up and spends most of her day teaching her imaginary students everything. She is finishing 3rd grade this year, and it has been tough, She is really smart, it's not the work that is tough, but she really struggles with anxiety.
I think her anxiety started when strangers entered our house while the kids were asleep and Jade was out of town. It was about 2 AM and I had been up reading. I had turned off my light and snuggled down when I heard walking in the hall and bumping into walls. I yelled thinking it was a child searching for a midnight snack. I knew right away that something wasn't right. I grabbed my phone ran down the hallway checked the kids and called the police. The police arrived in under two minutes, but they were long gone. We now have cameras up everywhere. Tessa slept through it, I woke up the boys to make sure it wasn't their friends being stupid, Tori heard them talking in the hall and Tayla heard the commotion.
Tessa found out the next morning when she saw that I had called the police, that was in 2019. Right after that she was jumping off her bunkbed one morning. I was working nights cleaning the St.George Temple and was so tired all the time. As she jumped down she kicked a thin metal butterfly off the wall and it landed just right so that it sliced her foot open across the middle of her foot. It took nearly 30 stitches, it was in a terrible spot. She was on crutches for weeks. Then Ty left on his mission, and that was when things got a little worse.
With Tate leaving there has been many tears, lots of missed school days and the need to know what is going on and where everyone is all the time. She had a melt down on Saturday and asked her dad for a blessing to help her. It had us all crying. She is so amazing and it is sad to see her so anxious.
