Stories in May

I was strolling through the park one day

In the merry, merry month of May...

What happened in May?  A lot: 

Clare's high school dance show.  She was amazing.  Adell and I went to watch and cheer. 

Wyatt and Emma broke up and we went out to help...twice...three times by June.  

I went out once by myself for about 24 hours and got to drive my brother's Porsche.  Worth it.  When I got back home a couple of days later a police officer knocked on our door.  His first words were: "Is your son Wyatt?"  I died.  

Dead. Dead. Dead.  Like those are for sure the worst words you want to hear out of a policeman's mouth on your front steps.  My mind made up the worst before he could keep talking.  Merciful heavens, I really died thinking Wyatt was harmed in some awful way.  

BUT Wyatt's wallet had been found up in Los Trampas.  Wyatt had been hiking up there when he was home in April.  He had misplaced his wallet while he was here.  Turns out he dropped it on a hike and someone turned it in.  All of his vital documents were in there, it really was a miracle.  BUT THAT POLICE OFFICER COULD HAVE COME WITH A DIFFERENT LEAD!!!

Clare had the fancy church dance called Mormal:

Mother's Day happened and I wore my favorite jewelry.

Clare did a second round of chaperoning for outdoor ed (5th grade sleep away camp).  But she went with her boyfriend, Logan, and some of her other best friends.  She had a blast. 

After a preseason that was not...the kids had time trials for the summer swim season.  Our swim team pool had a broken heater so they couldn't have swim for March, April, or most of May.  It will be an interesting season.  Colter took it easy and went a slow as he could so he could pop his time during the seasonal meets.  Clever strategy.  

Colter turned 11 and got a go kart.

Will and I flew to Dickinson, North Dakota to celebrate my best friend's wedding.  Heidi and I have been besties since high school.  She has had a few rocky relationships but this one seems to be the absolute best.  I got to be her Maid of Honor and was beyond touched.  It was a wonderful weekend.  

Hair was made crazy for crazy hair day.

One day I was going into my closet to put somethings away.  I noticed my pants were askew on the hangers.  I pushed my hand into my closet and down my hanging pant legs to smooth them out...and touched another HUMAN HAND!  I freaked right the heck out!  Just as Colter jumped out to scare me.  It was bonkers and funny.  He had wanted to scare Will but got me.  Terrible.  

Colter's friend from school, Adam, also has a go kart and lives on a quieter street.  Colter goes up to Adam's a few times a week to ride go karts.

I launched a coaching beta program for overwhelm.  I got four practice clients and started it up!  I am so excited and in love with it.  I cannot wait to see how my test clients like it.

Adell had her last (and super fun) choir concert for middle school.  It was Hawaiian themed.  We all had fun singing and hearing her sing.  

Colter was awarded the part of Daniel Boon in his school play.  He nailed it!

I went out to San Diego to help Lorien clean up and pack up for her move next month.  

And school ended (actually the first day of June).  Peace out May!  

First day of the 2022-2023 school year and the last day:

  

One heavy heart note about the last day of school.  Poor Clare.  She got news the weekend before that one of her dear friends from EFY last summer had died.  He had been killed.  It was the most heart wrenching thing.  We wanted her to go to the funeral in Utah.  Miracles of miracles, her history teacher excused her from the final and she was able to go to the funeral on the last day of school.  She got to reunite with many of her EFY besties and have a healing time.  Will was out in Utah for work and to help Wyatt, again.  Wyatt is struggling post break up.  He knows he and Emma shouldn't be together but his mental health is low.  It is hard.  

3...2...1 Wrestle!

 Will wrestled in Nationals for the first time in a few years...I think since 2019.  There was the whole COVID situation.  Then the torn biceps muscle...I think that was it for interruptions.  

He did great.  Won, lost, won, won, won.  Ending with Bronze.  One of the guys he wrestled was a German guy he did not end up wrestling in Worlds last October.  We had a lot of support from friends and family at home and Will's siblings who showed up at the tournament.  

He works so hard to be in wrestling shape.  We are all so proud of him!

WEO visit

Wyatt, Emma, and Oliver came out to California for the first week of April (Spring Break!).  Clare was in New York City with her choir tour for the first half of the week.  And Lorien came home from San Diego to have family time.  She has been working for Complete Solaria getting their NET metering 2.0 applications in.  They have an April 14th deadline and she has been working hard.

Again we all snuggled the baby as much as we could.  Oliver is older and more alert.  He loves Moana and white noise.  He is a good baby.

We got a few family photos taken with an iPhone, timer, and tripod Easter Sunday.

Can you believe Will and I are grandparents?  I can't believe it either.  We just celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary last month.  Happy 23 years babe.  I love you forever.

We couldn't get enough of Oliver.  We did birthday dinners for Clare and Emma since we were in Vegas for Clare and it was Emma's birthday that week.  Emma picked Cheesecake Factory and Clare picked Crepes Oh La La.  Clare's boyfriend, Logan, joined us.  We sang Happy Birthday badly and had lots of laughs.

We drove into the city one afternoon.  Went to the beach, drove by the Full House house, got gheridelli chocolates, and had a good time showing Emma city traffic.

We took advantage of the green hills from all of the rain and got a hike in too.  It was beautiful!

Mostly we just loved seeing Oliver and visiting with Wyatt and Emma while we could.  It was a great visit.

The Saga Of Taylor Swift

First and foremost, no one is more boggled at me pulling this off than I am.  No one.  I got four tickets to the Taylor Swift Eras tour.  Straight up miracle.  Let me tell you the tale.

Back in November I heard about the process someone had to go through to get tickets.  It seemed ridiculous and beyond unlikely.  But I thought, I can try.  If it doesn't work out it will just not have worked out like I suspected it wouldn't.  No harm, no foul.  

You had to register as a Super Fan.  You had to select your preferred dates.  You had to wait and hope you would be selected for the lottery for one of your dates.  You had to get online at a specific time and wait for another lottery placement.  A butt-tonn of stuff had to go your way.

I registered as a Super-Fan.  I selected my dates and locations: Santa Clara in July (one and two) Vegas in March (three).  I waited.  Shocker of shocks, I got selected for the Vegas lottery!?  The Tuesday donned.  I had a coaching call with a group program I was in.  My coach told us she was going to have to jump off for a second because she was in ling for Taylor Swift tickets.  I said me too!  BUT when the time came for the west coast to go live...the Ticketmaster site crashed.  So we had to wait until 3:00 pm...when I would be taking Adell to therapy.

I got on and waited.  You couldn't let your computer fall asleep or time out or you'd get kicked out.  I had to take Adell so I brought my computer into Will (who was on a work call) and begged him to keep the screen live.

When I got back...my computer was asleep and I had been booted out of the lottery.  I swore out loud (while Will was still on a call) and scooped up my computer.

I got back in but by then all of the affordable seats had been sold.  I tried several times reducing the number of tickets and feeling sick as the price per ticket went up and up and up.  Each time I got rejected.  Finally, I was in the nearly one thousand dollar seat section and shakily selected two seats (it would be Clare's birthday weekend so she would be the lucky gal).  Again, I got rejected: another fan already bought those tickets.  BUT to my total shock, I got put back in the lottery and another batch of tickets was released.  THIS TIME there were total nosebleeds available.  I quickly scooped up four $40 seats with an obstructed view.  Said it was good enough and hit buy.  My purchase went through!  It worked!  Somehow, I got tickets to the hottest show of the year...and I got enough tickets to take all three of my super fans.  

Christmas morning was a delight watching the girls open the present at the same time.  They couldn't believe it either.  So exciting! 

The day off was a bit of a trick.  We flew in the day of the concert.  Lorien had to come up from San Diego and we had to go over from Oakland.  Lorien's flight got diverted around and around as high winds blew.  The longer Adell, Clare and I waited the more anxious Adell got.  She doesn't like crowds and moving places.  The airport is hard.  

Finally Lorien landed and we made our way to the Paris Hotel on the strip.

The anxiety had maxed out Adell and she had a melt down.  We had dinner reservations but I was able to swap them for a restaurant in our hotel.  Lorien and Clare were able to support Adell and we were all able to make it to dinner before the show.  We looked super cute.

Traffic was a nightmare and between that and the melt down our plans for an early arrival were out the window.  We missed the opening act and barely had time to get some merch t-shirts, climb the mountain of the arena, find our seats (at the tippy-tippy-top) and sit down before the show started.

I lost it first.  Bursting into tears as the lights went down.  I couldn't believe we did it.  That I got tickets, we made it to Vegas, we had a melt down, and still...still made it to the concert.  All four of us!

We all took turns bursting into tears throughout the concert.  It was an amazing show.  It was so fun to watch each of the girls who had their love of Taylor Swift throughout her Eras.  Amazing.

 

 

 

Taylor puts on a fabulous show.  We watched the lights dance around the stadium.  We sang out at the top of our lungs with every song we knew.  We cried at our favorite songs.  We hugged and danced and laughed and got tired.

At the end we had a hell of a time getting back to our hotel.  Taxis, Ubers, and the shuttle, were impossible to get.  We walked and walked.  Finally calling an Uber way off location and tipping him $20 for doing an illegal U-turn to pick us up.  Our feet hurt but our hearts were full of the magic of the night.

The next day was Clare's actual birthday, March 25th.  We celebrated with brunch at Chica.  Lorien had her own melt down after a night of no sleep and sleeping in through brunch.  She felt like she was missing out on too much fun and couldn't rally to come meet us.

Our brunch was lovely and eventually Lorien did get ready and meet us for shopping and photo shoots around town.

 

I got to live two little dreams I've always had.  First, at checkin I gave the clerk a $20 tip and she upgraded our room to a tower/strip view.  It was a trick I read about online and it worked perfectly.  We were all delighted to see the tower and the fountains right outside out window.  It just added to the magic.

Little dream number two was taking my girls on an expensive shopping spree.  We went to Aritzia and H&M and walked, and walked, and walked.  I've always wanted to try on loads of clothes with my girls and buy more than I should.  It was my favorite part.  We all got super cute stuff and had the best time.  We got snacks and watched SNL in the hotel room until we crashed asleep for the night.  

While we were in Vegas, Will brought Colter along with him on another work trip to New York.  Colter got to see all of the sights and do a ton of walking (in too small shoes).  Colter got to hang out with the wife and daughter of one of Will's work mates.  They are British and Colter had fun learning lingo like:

watch a movie = put on a film

French fries = chips

and other language differences.  He was full of pizza and stores by the time the trip was over.  I am so glad he got to go with Will