Birthdays and Competitions - Check in and Catch Up

The beginning of February proves itself to be a whirlwind and goes by quicker than I know it.

For starters, my son, my baby boy officially turned 13! I have such mixed emotions about this. While I'm excited he is getting older, it is sad that he's no longer that round-headed chubby legged baby boy running around in his superman cape and spiderman rain boots. He's now as tall as his dad, has a deep voice, and is looking less like a boy and more like a man by the day.

We didn't get to have a "proper" celebration for him as our lives are just so hectic and we all can not seem to be at home all together at the same time. Since I knew that we wouldn't be home together for dinner (we normally do a birthday dinner and cake), I decided to stop at our local bakery and get some donuts and kolaches. We are always all home together for about 30 minutes in the morning because they leave for school and I leave for work. I decided that would be a nice little surprise for him that we wouldn't be expecting. I know some of you are probably thinking "kolaches for a 13-year-old?!" well yes. My son doesn't really like sweet things, especially in the morning. I got half a dozen of those and then half a dozen donuts. He LOVED the kolaches! We had a little candle and sang happy birthday to him first thing in the morning. He did go to the movies and walked around the mall the weekend after his birthday with some friends (Kamdyn and I were at a dance competition, so it was the perfect time for him to spend with some friends).

He also hit another milestone and was moved up a level in gymnastics. I'm so proud of him. I'm so happy he has finally found a sport that he loves, he wants to continue to grow in, puts in the effort, and is physically challenging for him. He is working on a new routine for his upcoming gym meet. He was telling me how he is excited and can't wait to bump up one more level because then he "gets to train even more at the gym". I think if he could have it his way, he'd be there every day.

While in the month of February, who can forget Valentine's day... well ill tell you who, my husband and I! Well, we didn't actually "forget" it, but we knew there would be not many options for us to celebrate the day and have some time to ourselves. We did manage to get away at the beginning of the month for a quick dinner and movie... but it was also cut short and a bit rushed because we had to go get our son a new phone, as his broke the day after his birthday. Happy late birthday gift to him, right hahahahah! So we are only 15 days into the month and we have had a milestone birthday, moved up on the gym team, TONS of practices, Valentine's day, AND a dance competition and we are gearing up for another this weekend. Whew! I'm tired of just typing it out!

This past weekend we took a few solos and a duet to a competition about 2 hours away. It was defiantly one for the books and made for some stressful moments that we were able to go back and laugh about while we were driving home. Let me explain...

For starters, the duet was set to hit the stage first, and boy did it hahaha. They went out on stage and within the first 10 seconds of the music playing I thought to myself "Oh NO! it's not the cut music". I turned around to a fellow dance mom and said "uh oh, this isn't the cut song, they are going to run out of choreography". Luckily I had a flash drive with the music on it, but I tell you what1 Those two girls, watching them work together on stage to try to make it work out anyway... Man, impressive is an understatement. It's just proof that their training is top-notch. They did quit, they didn't run off stage, they didn't freeze, they communicated, watched each other, stayed SUPER professional, and gave it their all. When the choreography was over, they held their ending post for an 8 count, stood up, bowed, and walked off stage. Was it their best performance, absolutely not, was it still amazing to watch, absolutely! That also wasn't the end of it. The competition let them go back out and perform it to the correct song off the flash drive and they rocked it! Their duet is so physically challenging. To watch them do the dance, twice back to back and under a stressful situation and still place in overall and put out one heck of a performance, wow. I was so proud. I told their coach and studio owner how proud she would have been of them and how professional they were. How they put their training into play and gave it their all both times.

We had a few more sna-foos over the weekend but it was nothing that wasn't easily fixed and they all still brought home overall placements and double platinum. And man, were we making jokes and laughing about it all by the end of the trip. One of my daughters' friends texted her to see how the duet went.. her response "it went so good we did it twice" lol!!!!

We made it home super late and were super exhausted. Getting up Monday morning for work and school was not the easiest and we ran on about 4-5 hours of sleep that day. As we gear up for this weekend's competition (about 4 hours away from home) and are still recovering from this past weekend, I've had to have some chats about how to make sure your body takes care of you with my daughter. We have both been fighting some sinus crud since Monday, and I truly think it's just because we burned our candle out this past weekend. I told her the next 5-6 weeks will be very intense and we need to make sure that we are making sure our immune system is in tip-top shape. This means eating healthy, lots of water, taking our vitamins, and hydrate hydrate hydrate.

In my next post, I think I will talk about some things that we do when traveling to help make sure we don't get sick. I have some little tricks up my sleeve and some things I never leave without. In fact, I have a grocery pick-up order to restock my arsenal today in preparation for the next few weeks. As I've mentioned, the next 5-6 weeks are going to be super crazy and we are traveling every weekend. I am going to try to stick to my posting schedule but don't hold it against me if I am a day to so late. Grace is my friend.

-Rothrock Mom