I had a busy week, I worked a lot but still got lots of time with my friends including two St. Patrick’s Day parties.

He said

Where last weekend was a rare weekend off, this was a week of work. As often happens with weekends off, I run into a stretch of straight days that take me right into the next weekend which was the case. Monday for me, started a run of seven days of work that ended today… just fifteen minutes ago. Now, there a lot of closes, which while not to Danielle’s liking, does give me a lot of mornings to wake up a bit later, but to enjoy the nicer weather and get in bike rides outside which I did every day this week. But, trust me as much as those are the happy tradeoffs, I do get the end of the seven day stretch absolutely ready to have a day off! And I am today for  sure!

On the biking front, as we move into the Ides of March this week, we approach being a month out from my first bike race of the season on April 28th in the Paris To Ancaster bike race. I’ve chosen to do the short, 45km Brève course and while I know that 45km may not sound short, when you consider I have done all 132km of the G2G Rail Trail and did 6 laps and 128km in the Dusty Nostril race, 45km is a shorter distance. But, what I have found is that any event that between 40km and 80km (like the MS Ride) is the perfect sweet spot for me. Enough distance to be a substantial day in the saddle, but not so much that the rest of the day is a write-off. ie. I can actually enjoy the day and have energy and time to enjoy the post event festivities (and beer)! And, who doesn’t love a post ride laugh and beer or two?

This week in the ever changing world of sports Emelia is wanting to do, while the conversation last week was of wrestling or rugby this summer, we got a curve ball thrown our way. It seems that some of her friends from softball started messaging her, asking if she is coming back this summer. The added bonus is one of her Cheer friends Payton is aging up to her group and she might likely play with her too. Cue to Emelia asking Danielle if she could do softball again this summer… It seems where we thought she might be done with softball, we are clearly not. We did have to remind her that she wanted to play last year, and after signing up she complained about practices every week for the first month. But, that did turn around and she did manage to have her best season yet.

And lastly this week was Emelia’s March Break so she was off school. Originally she didn’t have a lot of shifts at work, but she picked some up and even did a double which gave her an eleven hour day at work. In the end she ended up with 29 hours of work which was huge for her, but she was definitely wiped by the end of this weekend. But, it also didn’t help that there was hanging out with friends, parties and sleepover added to the mix. So while she was apprehensive about not having a lot to do this week which quickly changed—as it usually does. But, it also has led to discussions of what we might do next year’s March Break which will be Emelia’s last as a teenager and before she is off to university. I guess will see where that goes, but the word cruise came up…

She said

This week was a busy one for sure. Lots of appointments for Emelia and lots of work and social events for her as well. Before she broke for the March Break she was deep into rugby tryouts. She loved Rugby so much last year that she begged to do summer rugby with one of her best friends through cheer. The problem was she begged to do softball again with her friends. So we told her we could not commit to both plus with the age group she would have been in for rugby the game schedule meant we would be at a game every single weekend and tons of weekend tournaments, not ideal at all for the summer. As parents of an athlete we have sacrificed a lot of our weekends and time-off to balance her mandatory schedules, training, games, competitions, tournaments. So we said a firm no. Last summer I told her if she still loved rugby we could consider it for this summer. This is fully what I expected she was going to ask for. We waited to sign her up to see how the rugby season started but fully expected she was going to balance cheer and rugby this summer. That was until earlier this week when a bunch of her teammates from softball started begging her to come back. So off we went to sign her up for softball vs rugby. The sport has grown this past summer and we are on a wait list for her age division but it seems that we will be back this summer with all her friends and coach she loved last year.

So that was one big change from what we expected for this summer. The other was cheer, we were not sure that Emelia would go back for her last year in high school, this past season has been a bit of a struggle for her team with a lot of frustrations. But a few weeks ago she said firmly she wanted to go back because she is hoping to put all her focus next season to grow her skills with the hope of trying out for the Western girls cheer team when she goes to Western. She knows it is a long shot making the team but I am proud as always she is putting herself out there to try and never give up on her dream.

Most of this week for me was work and appointments. And Emelia was mostly about work, friends and appointments. She was burning it at both ends. She had an amazing week with her friends bookending the week off with two different St. Patrick’s Day parties with her friends. The first party was the night of the last day of school with her typical friends, a ton of the girls and boys she goes to school with. The group of her friends keeps growing and we are loving her coming home so happy. The other end of the week was last night when she an a few of her close friends went to a party out in Lucan with one of her friends (and softball teammates) this allowed her to meet some new people. She said the night was a ton of fun and came home again so happy.

Today was a bit of a shift for me, normally Sundays are about cheer but today Emelia drove herself and I got to spend the day with my sister-in-law Testza and my nieces. Today we finally got to celebrate a much delayed friends birthday for Zoe. Zoe’s birthday is in September but her birthday was sidetracked because of a sudden medical crisis for Greg which led him being hospitalized for what would be months. So Zoe never got a chance to have her friends birthday. Today was the day. I was able to go over with the kids, a couple of Zoe’s friends plus Testza’s father and step-mother. It was a blast, the girls had the best time and it was exactly what we all needed. Thank you Testza for including me on for this special day.