A forgotten story from last post: On the Friday before we left for Columbus Bryan went down to the basement for work at 8 am and nothing was amiss. At 9 am I also went down to the basement to get ready for Music Together. The little landing area at the bottom of the stairs was puddled with water. We had been having a lot of rain lately, so I grabbed some boards to put down as a bridge and moved on with my morning. As my class came in, they laughed at my solution to the aspiring moat. By the time everyone left at 10:30, my bridge was floating. The water had not yet crested the door lintel, but it was creeping ever closer. I went to check the sump pump and water was oozing out of the hole. Our worries about actual flooding were low since there's a high concrete wall around the sump pump hole, but the signs were not good. AI and I brainstormed quick checks and I was able to discover that the float was not stuck. I was not able to joggle the sump pump (or backup) back to life. I got out the shopvac to drain the landing area and called a plumber. On my fifth trip to empty the shopvac, I had an epiphany: we own a pump for draining the hot tub! I quickly abandoned the shopvac angle, fetched my hot tub pump, rolled the very long hose up the basement stairs and across the driveway, and dropped my pump into the sump pump hole. Victory. As an added bonus, the small taped up leak in the hose rested in the landing area and not in the basement, so that spray of water only landed in more water. I got all the levels down to a more comfortable baseline and waited for the plumber. He ended up replacing our sump pump and recommending that we check the battery backup because they go bad every 3-5 years. Everything has been dry since then.
Near the beginning of April, I saw a Lima News article that a popular restaurant, The Met, would be closing on April 25. This caused me to remember that I had a gift card sitting around somewhere waiting to be used. I found it and Bryan and I left the kids to their own devices for dinner on Pascha while we went to The Met. As it turns out, they are closed on Sundays. We ended up at dinner somewhere else and had to reschedule our Met date. We did manage to make it about a week before they closed.
We have two teenagers in the house. Gretchen had a low fanfare birthday on April 24 and our lives have continued as usual but with the knowledge that we have two teenagers. We got her an old lady bicycle with a basket (Olivia got a similar one last year) which she happily rides down to the nearby subdivision on nice days.
Every two or three months the Adrian (MI) Symphony Orchestra emails to see if I'm available to play with them and about once a year I am able to rearrange my schedule to make it work. The last week of April was one of the times that worked, so I drove to Adrian and back every evening. It's a long week because all the driving turns my 25 hour work week into a 60 hour work week, not to mention how many of those hours are after my preferred bedtime. I do very much enjoy playing with them, though, so it's worth it once a year. If only they were closer. I did learn on this trip that although the Culvers up there closes at 10, the drive thru is open until 11. I would swing by after rehearsal for a second dinner to eat on the drive home. I also finished three audiobooks over the week. :)
The first week of May at St Charles is Positive Addiction Week. They have a lot of activities and bring in speakers and workshop leaders and talk to the kids about being positively addicted to all sorts of things. At the end of the week there is a race. One mile for fifth graders and 5k for middle schoolers. The two other Catholic grade schools in Lima bring their students over to participate, and the high school sends over a contingent as well. Parents and community members come to run or cheer. Gretchen has been trying to get a sub-30 5k on the books for a while now, but last year she fell at the beginning of this race and missed the whole thing. Subsequent road races have either been very unfavorable weather or so twisty that her tenuous sense of direction failed her (she's run more than one 4 mile 5k). This was her chance and she crushed it. She finished in just over 25 minutes, the second 7th grade girl, and the 14th St Charles student over all! Olivia came in shortly behind her (what an upset!) in just under 26 minutes, the second 8th grade girl, and the 18th St Charles student over all.
I posted in discord that during Holy Week I made 18 loaves of bread. I started making rolls at some point just before that and the kids and Bryan very much appreciated having rolls available pretty much always. Then there were extra loaves of prosphora and Pascha bread to make. During all of this, my mixer developed a clunk. The head started bumping side to side with the bread dough. I can hold it mostly still, but then the motor is very unhappy. In an attempt to not ruin my mixer beyond repair, I backed off on the dough making a little bit and called KitchenAid. They gave me an email address to contact for a repair kit and told me I would be mixer-less for 2-5 weeks. After dragging my feet a little, I did finally email the repair kit place. They told me that they no longer service my mixer model. Fine. I bought a mother's day present for myself and it it sitting in its box in the living room until my faithful red mixer finally gives up the ghost. I hope the new one can handle forever rolls.
Track season is finished. Depending on the meet, Olivia and Gretchen ran the 4x800, the mile, and the 800. Maybe they can comment with their best times, because I am not sure I know them. I only made it to the first half of one meet. We would not make it during track season without our village of families who all take turns transporting athletes.
Baseball games have just begun. This is Matthias's first year in kid pitch, so games are pretty light on hits and many runs are walked in. Matthias played in a coach pitch league where they swung at everything last year. He is working on remembering that he should only swing if the pitch is good. In his most recent game he did get on base because after two swinging strikes he got hit by a pitch.
Gretchen and I went duck pin bowling on Friday as our Mom and Gretchen thing from Christmas 2024. I may have gotten a little behind (only on that one, though, now I'm all caught up). We are very evenly matched as duck pin bowlers and spent an enjoyable hour posting mediocre scores.
Garage sale season is upon us. The kids are quite excited to go peruse the sales. Olivia is a window shopper and doesn't even bring money. Gretchen and Kaitlyn bring cash just in case. Matthias and Theodore promise to pay Gretchen and Kaitlyn back if they buy something. On Friday and Saturday a bunch of people near us all had garage sales, so on Friday we all wandered down Stevick Rd to see what there was to see. The boys and Kaitlyn were ready to enter Seven Oaks, so I went with them while Olivia and Gretchen finished up at one more sale. As we were walking, I got a call from Olivia: "Gretchen bought a dresser. We didn't have a way to move it, so they let us borrow a wagon and we left our bikes with them. We're walking it home now in their wagon and then we're taking the wagon back and getting our bikes. So that's why we're so far behind." Gretchen's dresser is actually quite small, more of an end table. They managed just fine. On Saturday the three girls went out again despite the light drizzle and came back with a few more things.
There was some talk of joining the community garage sale at the last minute, but we didn't manage to get anything together and besides, it was raining. I do think that if we are going to have a sale we need to talk about realistic expectations a bit more. And have a plan for where we are taking the things that inevitably don't sell.
Kaitlyn built a maze for Lil Lilly in the garage using 2x2s and some discarded screens. The outside frame is set and lifts up so that she can move the inside walls around to change the maze. I didn't get to watch Lilly do the maze, but the stories were entertaining. She is very good at smelling out where her food is and is also a big cheater and crawls over the walls if she finds a weak spot.
Our last Healthy Kids race of the spring is this afternoon. There is also a parent mile (used to kill time while they tally final scores). I am not running due to a pulled hamstring. Bryan is running because he promised the kids he would. We are both sad.
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