Kayda turns 15!!!

We have a LEGAL driver!  She actually started to learn to drive stick a while ago, simply so she would be road ready when she had her permit.  You can get your permit when you turn 15, so long as you are signed up for driver's ed and it is within 10 days of it starting.  Her birthday actually lined up to be within those parameters.  The plan was originally to take her to the dol the Monday after her birthday (Saturday this year).  Then I found out you have to make an appointment.  The earliest available was December 6th.  I started looking through all the nearby dol's to see if there was anything earlier.  One had an appointment ON her birthday!  I booked it and Daddy and I played it off that she wasn't going to be able to get it until the 10th.  Resourceful girl that she is, she found out you could get a "non picture" permit online.  I pretended to go online on her birthday and told her the site was down for maintenance.  

We celebrated her birthday in the morning.  

She got some magnetic stickers to put on the car that say "Caution: Student Driver and screaming parent".  She thought that was just excellent. 

Then went up to meet Grandma and Papa H for lunch.  I almost cancelled lunch because of the ridiculous new rules in King County.  (King County has decided you must have proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test to eat in restaurants, among other activities.  We obviously think this is ridiculous).  We decided to give it a shot anyway and we were able to eat at Azteca. 

I decided to recreate a picture we have from when she was little.  The server had decided to stick Kayda's nose in whipped cream (also at Azteca).  The issue here was that it wasn't piled up high enough...So I ended up getting fudge up onto her forehead!  She was a good sport, but none too happy. 

 We told her that they needed to borrow Daddy's truck.  The boys were going to help load a new piece of furniture while we went and picked up a special cake.  I'm sure we were suspicious as all get out.  Especially as the cover became more elaborate and convoluted.  Fortunately, we were able to pull it off!  (I really hope she wasn't excited about a cake though).

As we pulled into the parking lot, this is when we told her what we were doing

We had her drive back to Grandma and Papa's house.  She did really well, except for when she stopped at an intersection when she should've gone so she ended up at the very edge of the cross walk.  She definitely needs to learn about her stopping distance.  She was a little stressed but did great!

Later she had a couple of friends come over to spend the night.  

The very next day she went out for her first drive with our neighbor Eric.  He used to teach driver's ed so he is a great resource.  Lucky for us he loves to teach and enjoys our kids.  When he takes her out it tends to be hours at a time.  She is learning quickly though and likes to do the drives with him.  

Kayda's first high school volleyball season

Kayda started the season playing JV.  They had her playing as an outside hitter.  She played all the way around the court.  With a small school comes a relatively small program.  We had just enough girls for Varsity, JV and C team.  

This year ended up being a hot mess of injuries, particularly for Varsity.  Two girls had to take a time out for injuries shortly into the season.  They pulled Kayda up to Varsity as a defensive specialist.  She was assigned to Sam as her back court player.  She did well.  She loves the speed of the varsity games vs the JV games.  She was probably their second best defensive player.  She was playing back court full time for a few games.  Then we played the hardest team in our league (who ended up taking third in state) and the team was not doing well.  Part way through the match, Kayda's front court player landed on someone's foot after jumping for a block.  We found out later that she fractured her ankle.  Coach had Kayda play all the way around the court.  I thought it was hilarious.  Our little 5'4" girl playing varsity front court.  When she jumps she can get her fingers about an inch (2 on a good day) above the net.  After that, for whatever reason, Kayda got pulled.  From there on out she didn't get much play time on varsity.  The coach started doing some things that really confused me (and were unsuccessful).  Things like keeping some front court players on the court for the full rotation, despite the fact that they were slow and unsuccessful in the back court.  It became a very frustrating season.  I want my kid to play because I KNOW she's good.  If she wasn't going to get to play on varsity, then put her back on JV!  I don't care what team.  Just let her play!  The problem was a player is limited to how much they can play per week.  So she would get one game with JV to preserve the rest of time for Varsity, in case she was needed.

"Tiny" in the front court. 

The team went to Spokane to play.  Kayda didn't get much court time but she had a blast anyway. 

At the end of the season we ended up being a "wild card" at districts.  We won the first match.  The second was a disaster.  Kayda got in for a very brief time window.  The girls that were playing had been played almost the entire match before and played the entire match despite being visibly exhausted and quickly getting worse.  You could literally see all the energy go out of them.  Despite this, no changes were made.  Like I said, a very frustrating season to watch. Even if it's not my kid, be responsive to what is happening on the court!  Be flexible and ready to make changes as needed. 

Overall, Kayda was great and grew a lot.  She was getting better and better in the back court and has decided that's what she enjoys most.  She is really interested in the libero position.  This position is an entirely defensive position.  They play back court for two different people, though they can only serve one rotation.  This means, if used to their maximum capacity, they are actively playing all but one serving rotation the entire set.  

The booster club paid for the team to go watch a Huskies game.  The girls had a great time and it was really cool to watch that level of play in person. 

First day of school!

 We finally get to be back in the classroom full time!  Kayda's in grade 9, Dillon's grade 8 and Carson is in 5th grade. 

Kayda's first day:

There was nothing exciting about starting at the high school... Except volleyball.  She has friends in a couple of classes and is with her best friend for lunch.  She's going to get a lot of steps walking clear across campus a couple of times a day.

Dillon's first day:

His first day was okay. He wasn't impressed with a couple of his teachers. He's excited about having two PE classes, one with his best friend.  They've split lunch in half so you have 15 minutes to eat and then trade to "recess" since they have to limit the number of kids in the cafeteria.  

Carson's first day:

He likes his teacher and has one good friend in his class.  Unfortunately at recess they aren't allowed to play with other classes.  

We're actually all excited about his placement.  He has the teacher Dillon had for 4th grade and she is co-teaching with Kayda and Dillon's 5th grade teacher.

Girls backpacking trip

We finally got to go backpacking again!  We weren't able to go the last couple of years but we were able to do a 2 night trip with Auntie Kina on her birthday weekend! We tried to go to Shellrock Lake to try something new. Unfortunately, there was a wildfire too close so the trail was closed.  We headed to Packwood lake since it was close and we'd been there before.  Turned out to be a good thing.  We're not in hiking shape to do much more than we did.  The length was the same but the elevation change would've been triple what we did. Packwood Lake is the first place we went backpacking and it was... uninspiring.  Part of that was weather, the other was our campsite.  We were excited to be backpacking no matter which trail though.

We got to camp around lunchtime.  Since it was Friday we had a ton of choices of campsites. We followed the trail around the lake and found an amazing site!  It was down from the trail, you could barely see the only campsite next to us and we had our own private water entry.

The first thing we did after getting to camp was to put up the hammocks!  It was awesome that we had enough trees to put THREE up next to each other! A lot of time was spent in the hammocks.  Mostly reading, or in Kayda and Kina's case, napping.  Best last minute purchase of the trip for sure.

The smoke was fairly heavy.  We couldn't smell it but you could definitely feel it.

It was nice and toasty Friday so we spent almost the whole time in our swimsuits after setting up camp.

Our campsite...  It was empty a ways to the right.  Then there was a big divide before the next useable site.

I got an expandable 2 gallon jug.  We filled it twice.  The first day Kayda insisted on doing it all herself. Saturday we worked together.

On the hike in I had mentioned that people recommended bringing a floaty but I didn't want to carry the weight.  Kina simply said that we did, in the form of our sleeping mats.  We kind of forgot about it that day.  However, Saturday we decided to give it a go.  

It turned out to be AWESOME and it was warm enough that they dried out quickly for bedtime.  Just in case you were wondering...mine won.

The smoke cleared up just in time for us to be leaving.

We took this picture so we could remember exactly where to find the campsite. We've decided this will be our annual trip. Forget having to find a new one.  We love this spot!

On the hike back we found huckleberries and wild blueberries.  I take after Papa G and thoroughly enjoyed "grazing" on the berries on the way back.

Side note: We found it really entertaining that the boys went camping with Daddy's family.  Daddy would only camp if they could be in the trailer.  Then the girls went backpacking!  Talk about role reversals.

Prepping for a driver

It occurred to us that Kayda is only a few months from getting her driver's permit.  It was kind of a surprise actually.  We'll get her signed up for driver's ed ASAP so she can start driving right away.  Daddy and I were fortunate enough to be given a car when we turned 16.  We got one a little early since it was a stick shift.  That was the intent for Kayda. 

We want ALL the kids to start with a manual transmission vehicle.  You get to know your vehicle better, you have better control over the car, it's a valuable thing to know and it will help discourage texting and driving.  It won't make it impossible but it will be much more difficult to do.  

That being said, we also recognize that we both drive BIG vehicles.  Kayda decided on a Jeep years ago. Since we know finding the right used car, at the price and age we were looking could take a long time, so we started looking. 

We have Eric, a super awesome neighbor and priceless resource.  He and Bruce were willing to help us vet the cars.  Eric is familiar with engines and knows what to look for generally but Bruce is the golden ticket.  He was the lead mechanic for the southwest region of WSDOT so he knows his crap.  Add that to the fact he has owned something like 8 wranglers... it's perfect.  They went to see one being sold by a pro-volleyball player.  It was her first car and she'd outgrown it and moved to Europe.  Eric was ready to leverage that big time.  Young girl, first car, plays volleyball.... Unfortunately, the condition led us to a price too low for the owners so it was a no.  We watched and watched and another came up, but it had some giant red flags.  We found another but Daddy went and saw that there was some concerning stuff.  It kept getting harder to find one meeting the criteria as Kayda decided what she did and didn't like.  A few months after we started looking she found one she was interested in.  Of course she found it on 4th of July.  We took off to South Dakota on the 5th after arranging for Daddy, Eric, and Bruce to go see it.  

They all went to look at it and were super impressed.  The original price was more than we wanted to pay but Daddy was able to negotiate it down into our budgeted amount.  

Kayda was on the road with me, watching the time for when they would be going to see the Jeep.  She was very frustrated because she knew that Daddy probably would mess with her if he bought it.  Trying to convince her he didn't get it.  Sure enough...that's exactly what he did. 

Of course she had to wait 11 days until she saw it for the first time in person! She's in love.  Bonus for having it early....I get to drive it sometimes!  It has already been really helpful to have.  I do need to get different tires.  These are brand new but they're the fatter tires and make it handle funny.   We got it early, we live in an area where there are little to no cars...so we let her start learning to shift early. 

We spent about 30 minutes going up and down our cul-de-sac so she could learn 1st and 2nd.  Stop, go, stop, go, turn around, repeat...  She was doing fairly well by the end.  Though her arm and leg were tired.  

She was going to show daddy real quick and the boys HAD to climb in (only because the top was off).  Ozzi also REALLY likes the jeep.  Even when the top was still on.  He'd climb in and you'd have to drag him out. 

On her third time out I was really having a hard time getting a specific idea through.  Eric saw us driving and did his typical "slow down!" that he texts every time we drive by.  I tell him to get his butt outside and help my kid since I was confusing her.  He used to teach driver's ed so it's handy.  In the next 30 minutes he had her shifting smoothly and going all the way up into 4th gear driving down our roads back there.  None of them are roads that get more than a few cars during the day.  I just hung out in the back seat and watched and listened.  Since then she's driven us to the end of the road before we switch and I take us onto the main roads and into town.  She's learning shifting, maintaining speed, reverse and turn signals.  By the time it's actually time for her on the road she'll be a pro!