It’s been a while, so I thought I’d share a little bit of our life lately over here.
We drove 20 hours and started our New Year off in Ft. Myers Beach for a family Christmas get away. I ended up getting the flu on Christmas day, so I spent the whole car ride down fevering in the back of our suburban while Ryan and Lex took turns driving. I have little pictures to prove I was there, because I spent most of our trip surviving. 🤣 We did get one day of beautiful beach weather and a bit of a tan, but the latter half of our trip gave us cooler temps.
Cold, wintery days means that games by the woodstove are in full force. Man am I terrible at Monopoly. All three Grossman boys exploited my weakness throughout each and every game I was forced to play.
Lex went on her first adult-free snowboarding trip with friends and clearly LOVED it.
Naiya passed her driver’s test and we now officially have FOUR Grossman drivers!
I’m still going strong with my 5am gym workouts. I get to spend every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings with an amazing group of (ten) ladies and get our butts kicked by our trainer at Beacon Fitness. This March will be my one-year mark.
January is indoor track season! I was able to go watch my niece compete in her last indoor meet doing pole vault. Ryan’s aunt and uncle that live in D.C. and I were there for Team Liv!
January also means it’s twin birthday season! My sister-in-law’s bookend girls have the exact same birthday!
For Christmas, Noah asked for a pasta attachment so he can make homemade pasta. As always, Mima (my aunt) delivered!
He then went on to make a homemade alfredo sauce, it was delish!
Winter sunsets are beautiful when the skies are clear here on the farm.
Josiah has also started to cook in the kitchen, inspired by his older brother.
The largest homemade blueberry pancake you’ve ever seen! 🤣
Naiya is in the thick of her junior year indoor track season. Spectating for this high school winter sport is no joke. Every Wednesday there is a meet at the same indoor facility in Snow Hill, a 2 hour drive. These kids depart from school at 10:45am and Naiya usually get back home close to 11pm. Such a long day, but our girl comes alive with track and field.
We split our time between watching high school indoor track and swim.
Lex had her Senior Night meet and swam in her very last home meet for the high school.
Her team has a tradition of senior speeches during Senior Night, where a teammate gives a speech to each senior. Lex’s friend, Vivi, gave the sweetest speech and kleenex was needed all around. Lex had such a special impact as a leader her senior year, her and the other Captains made it a priority to create an inclusive environment and intentionally planned dinners and hangouts outside of the pool deck. An unexpected bonus was growing even closer to a small group of swim friends, they even planned and executed their own day trip into NYC. Lex drove them to New Jersey and then they took a commuter ferry into the city. Adventure is this girl’s love language!
She had an incredible journey in her swim career: 11 years of summer swim team, 1 year of club, two-time Captain for high school, and broke two school relay records (only one still stands). She’s not sure if she wants to swim in college, we will see what she decides!
Naiya and I drove four hours to Virginia Beach for the second year in a row, so she can compete in the most recognized high school indoor track meet in the nation. Among her competitors were Olympic gold medalists and the top runners in the nation. We left on Friday morning at 5:30am and drove down. She checked in and warmed up and was on the track by noon.
She ran the 55m Dash just like last year.
She was frustrated to run the same time as her current PR, having an issue with the start block. Such is track life.
After spending a few hours in our hotel room, eating lunch and resting, we were back at the track that evening for Naiya to run in the 300m Dash. This is a new event she added to this year’s season.
This meet moves FAST. There is no playing around and the athletes need to be focused and paying attention in order to make it in time to their event. Naiya was able to PR in the 300m and was happy to walk away from this meet with that success. We celebrated with a 9pm dinner at the Cheesecake Factory!
The next morning we walked from our hotel to a coffee shop and ate breakfast. Naiya was excited to try the acai bowl and I ordered an egg, bacon and cheese on a gluten-free bagel.
We then went back to the track and stayed a bit watching Quincy Wilson’s (gold medalist) relay team (Bullis High School). We headed back home on Saturday afternooon.
Almost as soon as I walked in the door at home, the rest of our family pressured me into leaving super early the next morning to go snowboarding at Liberty Resort. So off we went on Sunday at 6am!
I chose not to rally and ski with my family, I was just wiped from our whirlwind track weekend.
So while the troops went out and snowboarded, I set up camp at the lodge fireplace with coffee in hand. The kids took turns of coming inside to warm up or take a break and hang with me. We all ate cafeteria lunch together and then headed home that afternoon.
Lex asked if we could host the high school swim girls for an evening of snacks and games. Such a fun group of girls!
Back at it for Naiya’s last conference meet. She finally broke her 55m Dash PR with a new time of 7.73! Every progress, even small ones, are a win! So proud of our girl.
Josiah came to watch and was such a trooper sitting through hours and hours of track.
Naturally, I rewarded him with an acai bowl on the way home!
We attended yet another Senior Celebration, this time for Lex’s club swim team.
So proud of our girl! This particular meet she swam the 200m Fly alongside teammates, and I can’t even begin to comprehend what it takes to swim this event. Her coach requires every athlete to swim this event once. For sure, it will be Lex’s first and last. There were many laughs in response to these swimmers just trying to survive this event. 🤣
This guy is almost always the first one up on a non-school day. So I had company on this morning during my quiet time. I cherish little moments like this!
The last week of this month brought snow one day, then ice the next. And with that, all four kids were home all week.
Which meant, lots of plowing, shoveling, stacking wood, cozying up by the woodstove, and endless hot cocoa and baked treats.
Noah was the first to go back to school. Josiah homeschools, so he never got a day off. Who knows when the girls will go back?!
Lex took this winter storm opportunity to get out to the slopes one more time! This time with her uncle and cousins.
Since Noah (and his cousins) go to a local private school, they opened their doors last week. Public schools are very slow to re-open as side roads are still pretty bad. So Noah’s school continued on with their planned Grandparent’s Day! Grammy was the lone representative, as Ryan’s dad is in the Philippines for his annual three month trip to visit with the local tribes where Ryan grew up.
We spent our last day in January at a friend’s house for chili and ice skating on their pond. Josiah LOVED skating around playing ice hockey! The girls weren’t with us as they were nannying for the week at their uncle’s house.
Phew! That’s a little life lately for the LONG month of January. Can’t wait to enter into February! Have a great weekend. xoxo
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