This weekend my mum and dad took apart the basement, not going to lie my future bedroom looks worse than better right now.
He said
Monday brought us… well Emelia back to school. It also brought Danielle back to work after a couple of weeks off as Western closes down for a Christmas break. Me… it was more of the same. Emelia is in the last month of her semester so there has been a lot of project work to complete for the semester and then getting ready for exams at the end of the month. This week and this weekend for that matter saw Emelia spending a lot of her focus on staying on top of her school work which was great to see. In fact two nights this week she was over to spend time with her besties so that they could work together on their projects.
Part of the reason she is proactively focusing on the school work now is it is a big month for her. We have her next comp in the Cheer season this upcoming weekend. And for this one both of her teams, Sov and Valour will be competing. Up until now, for the first two comps, it was just Sov competing. She’s excited and nervous about it all the same. Sov is definitely more ready as they’ve been seasoned with two comps already where this is the first for Valour. And, Valour is definitely not feeling as far along as Sov, but we’ll see. They just need the comp in order to really access where they’re at. It will be a one-day down & back for us on Saturday in Oshawa again. We’re hoping the weather works out in our favour and the ladies continue to see the success they’ve had so far this season.
And then after that weekend is out of the way, the next focus for Emelia I am sure will be her 18th birthday which is on the 26th but she will undoubtedly have a few celebrations both with us an then of course her bestie group. She wants to go out for dinner with her close group of friends like last year, but this year she wants to have them, plus a few others back at the house after. The New Year’s Eve gathering was test run for it, and with a few adjustments she’ll have a bit of gathering her to celebrate her official crossover to *gulp* adulthood. And then some time after the weekend, we will celebrate with Emelia—with just Danielle & I.
And then, after that weekend, Emelia promptly drops right into her semester-ending exams. It will be a busy and probably stressful week for her for sure. But, the good news is when that week is all done she wraps up what would be her heavier load semester and she transitions into the semester with the lighter class load and one less class. Hard to imagine the little girl we started this blog about, is rounding the corner to adulthood and wrapping up her last semester of high school. It feels like it has flown by, but as I always say it has also been the most meaningful and event-filled journey!
She said
This week I felt more like I was living more at the gym vs home! As John mentioned we are back in the grind of cheer as well as school and work. This week Emelia said all her teachers threw all the big semester ending projects on them, add in being doubled up at cheer training it has been a very busy week. As we were wrapping up the end of 2024 the girls on Valour it was becoming obvious that the team was no where near ready, the athletes were getting really nervous and were pushing hard that they needed more practice time. The coaches and owners listened and the girls got a ton of extra training time. This past week Emelia was at training for Sov on Sunday, Tuesday and Valour on Monday, Thursday and Friday. All the hard work is paying off, add in the additional athlete added to Emelia’s stunt group and this group looks unrecognizable from where they were a month ago.
To add to the heavy training schedule was Emelia’s school workload. She has had presentations, papers and projects all needing to be done this current week and next week. All preparing for the end of the semester and leading into studying for her final exams. I am beyond proud of h0w Emelia with all she takes on is really focusing on her school work. Both nights this weekend her friends worked together and all came together to study and get their papers done vs going out socializing. She has an amazing group of friends, they are all driven and supportive. All of the kids are keeping the eye on the prize of post secondary offers and keeping their grades high to ensure that they keep their offers. For Emelia and her ADHD these long sessions are a struggle but she has figured it out and has been pushing herself with no push from us. This is all her.
The other big event for our weekend was starting to take the next step to work on the transition of our lower level to become Emelia’s eventual space. When Emelia first started asking for an end date she had a much faster timeline in her mind. What she didn’t realize is how much work it would take to do what seemed to be a simple flip of the rooms. Over the Christmas break John and I started by clearing out the big items in the room that will become Emelia’s bedroom. But that was only honestly stage one. The second stage came yesterday which was clearing out the storage room. We had to pull everything out, not only the materials but we also had to take out some drywall to look at the insulation behind the wall. So with all that out, a run to the dump to get rid of the construction material we could go to Home Depot to start building things back. John started the build of a better storage system and once that is built we can add things back, continue to purge more out of there and then move to the next project.
We have been promising Emelia this space before she starts University but our hope is we can have it all done spring. Emelia is finally realizing that it is going to take a lot of time, John and I do not have matching schedules with work, add in Emelia’s competition schedule, her upcoming birthday and the parties she wants to have there it is going to take us quite a while to pull this all off. It will just take longer than any of us want to.