Strength and Beauty

This is my daughter Kaylyn. She is all the way to the right in the picture in my header. She is a Junior and GVSU this year and is on the track throws team. I can't even believe she is able to lift all of this weight.

(This post loads really slow for me so if you aren't seeing a video image yet it might not have completely loaded.)

Kaylyn Hill 84Kg Power Clean Fall 2015
Posted by Grand Valley Throws on Friday, September 11, 2015

Busy weekend

The weekend started with our MS youth group participating in a 30 hr Famine. If you are not familiar with that the kids get pledges to go 30 hours without eating and the monies raised get sent to World Vision to help feed hungry kids. We plan a lot of fun activities to keep the kids busy while they aren't eating. The picture below is of broom ball at a local ice rink that we went to Friday night.


On Saturday we split the kids up and went through the local neighborhoods on a can/food drive for a local organization named Love INC. That cares for people right here in our community.

Mark called Saturday afternoon to let me know he had shot a deer. He had been up north hunting from Friday until Sunday morning. Yeah for success!

Sunday after church we celebrated Kaylyn's birthday with my family.


My parents requested a picture of Emily to go with the other school pictures of their grand kids so my sister had asked me if I could take one for them. So after a lot of pictures like the one below from an unwilling Emily...


We did finally get one that I believe is frame worthy.

After the birthday party we had hurry off to a soccer game for Anna. She played great! The game ended in a 1-1 tie. She is #39.


Funny story... Mark was sleep deprived from hunting and I was from the 30 hour famine so we were both really tired Sunday. Anna has to be to the soccer field 30 minutes early. When we got there we got a parking spot right in front of the field. We decided to just wait in the car. Well we both FELL ASLEEP in the car and woke up with the game 10 minutes into it. Opps!

Milestones

Kaylyn's 16th birthday is coming up at the end of the month. She has been bugging me to have a birthday party that weekend. We have always celebrated birthdays with family and so have never really done the birthday party with friends for any of our kids. Since it was her 16th I did desire to make it extra special for her but it is impossible to keep anything from Kaylyn. She is known for asking a million questions and badgering you like crazy for the answers.
So a couple of weeks ago I asked the mothers of her closest friends if their daughter's would be free Friday night to come to a SURPRISE birthday party/sleepover for Kaylyn. They were all available so I started my planning. I made plans for the rest of the family to be out of the house. Mark took Anna up north hunting and Libby went home with my sister when she picked up Emily from me. The nice thing is since we have never done birthday parties I knew there would be no grand expectations to live up to. That made it much easier. We kept it a secret from her girlfriends until after youth group this past Wednesday so that only gave them 2 days to keep the secret.

It was a TOTAL surprise to Kaylyn and she loved every minute of it.



Here is the house decorated waiting for her friend to bring her home after school. I had picked up the other friends so they were waiting inside and ran out the minute they pulled into the driveway.


Here they are opening gifts. The one she is opening in the picture was really neat. It was 16 things that stand for Kaylyn. Kendra also filled out a little book explaining the meaning of each item.

Her is Kaylyn wearing part of the gift. This gift was "because Kaylyn is always silly". She was told she had to wear the crown the entire time. She even wore it out to the restaurant. The waitress thought we might be having a bachelorette party! Yikes! No they are 16!

Here are the girls ready to head out to dinner.

Here are the girls getting in a little shopping after dinner.

Here they are back home making caramel apples and decorating cupcakes. Kaylyn had asked me a couple of weeks ago, when Mark brought home a bushel of apples, if we could make some. I stored that in my "good idea for the party" list.

And here is the birthday girl with her cupcake.

Saturday morning I made them a big breakfast including Kaylyn's favorite... bacon. Then I dropped them off at the mall (with some cash of course) for a couple hours while Mark, Libby, and I grabbed some lunch and watched the MSU vs. Michigan game. Then I picked up the girls and took them to Cold Stone Creamery before coming home and letting them hang out for a little while longer.

I think it was as much fun for me seeing how excited Kaylyn got as it was for her living it.
Great memories!

Youth Hunt

The other weekend our youngest 2 girls got to participate in the youth hunt. This was the first time that Libby got to hunt and she was successful!

Here is Libby and Kaylyn with Libby's 6-point.

Here is Libby with Mark.
And here is Libby back at home showing Mom her kill. She was one happy girl!

Wordless Wednesday - Fall love

On a side note... does anyone have any tips for making the trampoline stop letting off black?

See other Wordless Wednesday participants at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Guatemala or bust

I leave tomorrow for Guatemala with my oldest 2 daughters. We are going to be building 4 houses while we are down there. Here is a link to the mission we are going to be staying at for anyone who wants to follow along.

Team Allendale

Wordless Wednesday - Another thrower in the house.

Kaylyn was a freshman this year and qualified to go the state track meet for discus. She set a new personal record at the meet breaking her old one by 4'. She had a great day. We were so happy to see her excitement.

See other Wordless Wednesday participants at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Wordless Wednesday - Hiking in Arizona

My dad and my daughter, Kaylyn, while hiking in Bear Canyon up to 7 falls during Spring Break last week.
I love this picture!

See other Wordless Wednesday participants at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Happy Birthday Kaylyn!

A little late again. My poor blog is full of cobwebs.

Kaylyn turned 14 a couple weeks ago. We usually celebrate on Sunday's with cake and ice cream but because life has been so hectic we squeezed it in on a Tuesday night and I made tacos for everyone and then we had cake and ice cream.

Kaylyn has been asking me for a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for the past couple years. Her Grandma Hill made it for her every year but Grandma passed away in 2005 and Kaylyn has been missing her cake. The problem is my mother, uncle, and myself get headaches from chocolate so a double chocolate cake is way too much for us. I came up with a simple solution that I should have thought of long ago. Provide 2 desserts. I had one happy girl this year. Wink!



It was also nice to have Grandpa join us. He loves all his Great-grandkids. Emily thinks he is pretty cool too because he gives her rides on his walker and she thinks she is pretty big stuff on it.

Been busy?

Who hasn't right? But my blog is shriveling up. So I thought I better post something and since I don't have time to write creatively I thought I would just share some pictures instead. After all they do speak 1000 words right?

Youth hunt '09





Art Prize '09

The doll Anna is holding is a class project. It's a computerized doll that is designed to give the students an idea of caring for a real baby. Both Kaylyn and Anna have the class and they were both ready to be done with caring for the baby after only one weekend. Success!



Libby likes having her picture taken. Can you tell?

Check out the bronze "statue" in the next picture...

See a diference?

It is a real live man! Isn't that crazy?

Life is busy

I have so much to blog about and so little time to do it.

Zack's track is keeping us busy you can also keep up to date with that at his blog Zack's Journey.

Anna had an excellent soccer game last night and scored 3 goals which she tells me is called a "hat trick". We weren't able to be at her game because we were at an awards dinner at school for her and Zack were she got an award for being a scholar athlete. She also got pulled up to varsity for a game on Monday night. She has been a very busy girl also.

Kaylyn will have her last track meet tonight if the weather allows. She is throwing 29' 9" and pole vaulting 5'9". Her goal for the year is 30' and 6' so hopefully tonight won't be canceled and she will have a great night.

Libby has not had hives since Saturday so we are hopeful that we have seen the last of them for this bout of them. Once she has been hive free for 2 weeks we will start weening her off her medicine again. Hopefully we can get her off them for a month and tested before another episode of hives. Maybe I should enforce a rule of no eating new food for awhile. Not a bad thought...

I got a new camera out of necessity for a Mother's Day/Birthday/Anniversary gift. Mine died right after Zack's regional meet. It was already having some issues so it was only a matter of time before we would have to replace it but with Prom and State track meets coming up there was no waiting.

So here are some random pictures from me playing with my new toy and then I had to include one Prom picture. When exactly did he grow up?

Zack and Tricia

Zack

Anna

Kaylyn

Libby
(Little explanation... my new camera has a feature that it can detect when someone smiles and then snaps the picture on it's own so I told Libby to smile and I guess she thought it had to be a really exaggerated smile. LOL!)

Last but not least here is a picture that is getting a lot of feedback of Zack and his friend Stephen taken before Prom. They are in track and choir together. Funny picture! Mark took it with his camera. Thank goodness because I missed it wile trying to figure out the new camera. There is a bit of a learning curve with it. Wink!

Monday Sports Recap

Since my life revolves around sports right now I figured I might as well save all the sports related posts for one day of the week and I pick Monday. So here is some of what happened since last week Monday.

Monday-
Anna had a home soccer game. It was horrible weather. In fact every other school sport was cancelled due to the weather but not soccer. Libby and I watched the first half and then at half time I could tell Anna was freezing so I gave her my headband and gloves but that meant I had to watch the rest of the game from the parking lot. It wasn't a terrible view but it was hard to see who was who from that distance. They tied 1-1.

Wednesday-
Anna had a home soccer game and Kaylyn had an away track meet. Kaylyn's track meet was close to Mark's work so he went to watch her and Libby and I watched Anna's game. What a difference in weather from Monday! It felt wonderful to be outside Wednesday. Anna's team won their game and Anna made a goal. I got a picture of it too but it is kinda hard to tell what is going on in the picture.


Kaylyn placed first in pole vault at 5'0". She wasn't sure where she placed in shot put but had a toss of 27' (I think-since she doesn't want to do shot she isn't good about remembering her distance. Coach makes her do shot because she can usually take first in it.)

Thursday-
Zack had a home track meet. It was an amazing day for him! He broke our area record that had been set in 1968. Go here to read more about it. There is also a neat write up about it here.

That is one happy coach!

Friday-

Anna had an away soccer game. The weather was GORGEOUS. The other team didn't have enough JV players to field a team so they had to forfiet (we get the win) but instead of going home without playing they put together a scrimmage using some of their varsity players. Anna scored 2 goals. They won 3-0.

Saturday-
Zack had an away track meet. Again he had an amazing day. It was a relay which means you combine the marks of 2 throwers and use that combined distance. Him and his teammate CJ broke 2 of the meet's records (one set in 1966) for both shot and discus. You can read about it here. There was a 30 minute lightening delay part way through the meet and then the entire meet ended early because of severe weather so not all of the races got to be completed. Bummer.

Here is Zack and CJ after breaking the shot put record. Along with their teammate Anna trying to get in on the picture. LOL!

Now I have to go catch up on laundry. It seems to get put to the back burner around here when life gets busy. I here a lot of "Mom, did my uniform get washed?" and the reply is usually, "Yes dear, it is in one of the laundry baskets of unfolded clean clothes you will just have to look." But at least it is clean right?

Sports are officially in full gear here.

We are in our busiest season as far as kids go and Mark at work too because it is spring and he works in a greenhouse which means he is back to working Saturdays. Zack and Kaylyn are both in track and Anna is in soccer. Here are some highlights from last week.

Kaylyn took 2nd in shot put at her track meet on Wednesday. Here she is with Zack looking on. The HS track team works the MS track meets.

Then she went over to pole vault and took first. Way to go Kaylyn! An excellent day.

Anna had a home game against Hamilton Friday. She is #10. They lost this game 0-1 but they won their game earlier in the week 3-0 and Anna scored 2 of the goals. Great job Anna! In the picture it might appear that her socks don't match but actually she is a captain and is wearing a captain's band on her leg.

Zack had a huge week this week in shot put. He re-broke his personal record (which is also the school record) 4 times this week. His biggest throw was Saturday with a toss of 64' 7.5". We are waiting for the listings to be updated but it looks like this will put him 6th in the nation and 1st in the Midwest (OH, IN, MI, IL, WI). To see video of Zack's throw you can check out his blog.

He also took first in the discus with a throw of 174'.

Kaylyn also had a track meet on Saturday but I couldn't be there because I was at Zack's. She took 5th in shot put with a toss of 26'. That was great because the track meet was with a lot of school in bigger districts than what we are in.

We will be back at the soccer fields tonight and hopefully the rain will have stopped by then.

Smiles!