This past long (for me) weekend was a good one. I didn't really get to take time off with the kids for break week
because I have so much going on at work and need to conserve my vacation
for the spring basketball travels, but it had been quite a week and I
didn't have any pressing projects. Add in Carter's upcoming birthday
party, and I decided it was wise to take Friday off while I could. But before that...
Thursday we had a bit of an ice storm. It started later Thursday--from snow to sleet to freezing rain, and while we probably only had an inch or so of snow, we ended up with a coating of ice on top of it. It was just enough to make the snow hold for half a second before it collapsed under the weight of your foot, and it left a glaze on everything. At first when I woke up I didn't see the ice on anything, but then I noticed some on the evergreens by our kitchen window, and at lunch I wandered outside to check the yard. The thin glaze was hard to see, but everything in the yard was frozen stiff, yet you could barely tell until you touched it.
Those tiny icicles were about the biggest I saw hanging off of anything
Barely there, but frozen stiff!
My hydrangeas were really cool and make it clear just how imperceptible the ice could be.
I spent most of the day trying to clean the house and mentally working through party stuff. But it was a good day to get in a little mental break after a busy work week where working from home was lacking a bit of extra focus because the kids were always in the background. Friday morning Jacob had training, and since I had to pick him up, I figured I'd stop at a Kohl's on the way--not my usual one--because they had 30% off clearance. I had gone to our store last weekend and found one top for me and a couple shirts for Carter in the next size up that he can use for church next year, so I was curious to see what the other store had. I only had about 45 minutes to shop and only managed to find one thing--a $4 t-shirt in Jacob's school colors! It was a red shirt with black flecks, which was exactly what I needed to put under the school logo jacket the boys got me for Christmas, in case we end up in a hot gym. I ended up wearing it that night!
Jacob was training at a Catholic school here in town, and while I waited for him I noticed that the ice storm-ravaged trees on an island in the middle of the driveway looked beautiful in the sun. That part of Rochester got hit quite a bit worse than us. The ice was clearly visible on everything and someone I know who lives a couple minutes away had a ton of tree damage in her neighborhood. That is definitely the dark side of ice storms, but how pretty is this?
As I said, I spent most of the rest of the day trying to clean and organize before the party on Sunday. I dusted the main floor and parts of the basement, and tried to clean up parts of the kitchen, the dining room table, and any other piles around the house. It's an endless task, I think, but it's always nice when things are neat. I know I feel so much more relaxed when it's like that, but keeping up with it is SO hard sometimes.
Friday night was Jacob's next sectional game. They were playing a team ranked one spot higher, but they were confident they could beat them. I figured it was much like a lot of other games this year--work as a team and you're good, turn it into hero ball and it's over. Jacob's godmother (and my cousin) Lori, as well as my parents, had come to the previous first-round game at home, which was an easy win. Jacob had five points and everyone scored, which was a lot of fun. Lori was particularly amused how crazy the crowd went when the exchange student from Hong Kong, who's always a very good sport despite being a benchwarmer 99% of the time, came on the floor, and even more so when he scored! Lori and her husband came to the game on Friday as well. My parents wanted to come, but with the party on Sunday, they thought it would be a bit much. The game itself was one of the most frustrating, awful games I have seen them play. It was sloppy--lots of travels, lots of bobbled passes, lots of foul trouble--but luckily the other team was doing a lot of the same. The game was basically deadlocked the whole way through--one team would go up a few points, the other would come back and tie it. That team might take a small lead only to lose it a couple minutes later. Jacob only played a few minutes of the first half, and had apparently been slotted behind a 9th grader who just got called up to Varsity about 2/3 of the way through the season when we had an injury. He was a good player on JV and is really tall, and he can definitely make a couple threes, but his shooting percentage is nowhere near Jacob's, and he isn't super strong on defense either. Oddly, that's always been the reason Jacob's coach won't play him--that his D isn't strong enough--but now he was throwing this kid out there ahead of Jacob. O-kay.
One cool thing about the game was that the one senior, the best player on the team, finally hit 1,000 career points early in the third quarter. It had been a marathon to get him there, with the team feeding him the ball more than usual against lesser competition at the end of the season, just to pad his point totals. He was close, and he got what he needed! It was pretty cool to see, and we're happy that Jacob's current favorite NBA 2K Xbox buddy (haha) got that honor before graduating.
Anyway, by about halfway through the second half we were wondering what the plan was. We couldn't hold a lead and there was just no spark. We were so perplexed how he wasn't coming in, especially because most of our players had sat the bench over parts of the game due to foul trouble. Yet he still hadn't been in in the second half. I knew that if he went in, he could provide just the spark they needed to grab the momentum, but nope. Finally, about halfway through the fourth quarter, he got subbed in. We were down a handful of points and apparently the two assistant coaches were losing their crap a little with the head coach, telling him he needed to put Jacob in. One teammate got a three to get us within one. The next time down the floor, Jacob got a three to put us up by two. And shortly after, he hit another one! That put us up by four, and honestly, we never looked back after that. I was freaking out by that point, nearly in tears, thrilled that he had scored, annoyed that the coach didn't do it sooner, and just so darn proud of him. We won by seven! I can't even express how amazing it was to see him come in and do that. He says he's a clutch shooter, and after at least three of those this season (even if we ultimately didn't win a couple), I guess he's right.
After the game we went about 10 minutes further down the road to another game so Jacob could see a couple buddies of his play. Craig and Jacob went in first (it's expensive to get in to these games so we figured if they were still taking money Carter and I would just stay in the van), but in the end they only saw the last few minutes. Tough loss for Jacob's friends, unfortunately. We did a quick dinner out amidst a lake effect snowglobe-like snowstorm (luckily roads were OK since we were all the way across town), and then headed home to bask in the joy of the night. But the fun wasn't over!
Craig noticed a TV station at the game getting footage. I guess the same guy moved on to the other game after our game, too. We actually weren't sure which station it was, so we kept an eye on all of the 11pm broadcasts. I happened to see Jacob's game in a teaser for the one station, so we immediately turned over to that one. We watched all of the Class AA and A games, and then they switched to girls, so we weren't sure if they just used the footage for the teaser, or what. But sure enough, after the girls (who were, admittedly, in higher classes) they went back to lower class boys games. And this is what we saw:
Are you kidding me?! Holy cow. How awesome is that? Jacob, of course, was pretty unphased, but it was amazing to see him get some recognition. Of course, his coach is insisting we were already up when he got his first three (which the news report refutes), and we don't think anything will really change despite his heroics, but I hope with each little moment, his coach eventually starts putting the pieces together and realizes what he can bring to the team.
As a side note, I realized in the course of this whole thing that our rewarding parenting moments have felt a bit few and far between. Obviously it's amazing to see your kid learn and succeed, but I feel like so many of our moments were tinged with difficulty and battles and exceptions. The kids do well in school, but have behavior challenges. Jacob does well in basketball but the coach doesn't recognize it. Carter has amazing moments discovering roller coasters, but then we have a bad moment that ruins the fun. It just feels hard to have a pure, rewarding moment of seeing your kid at their best, with no strings attached or things to bring it down. Maybe everyone's moments are like that and we just don't talk about it, but for us parenting has often felt like an uphill battle, and instead of just enjoying the ride, when we finally hit a great moment, sometimes it's like, "Well, geez, thank goodness we got that moment--I think we all needed it after the struggle it was to get here!" And while basketball has hardly been easy this season, watching that pure moment of our child doing what he does best at a really important time was just above and beyond amazing, to the point that none of the other stuff really mattered. I just had no words to describe the pride and joy I had watching him succeed and then getting this extra recognition on top of it. It was so cool.
Saturday ended up being a bit of a slow day, the kind where meals were a couple hours late and no one was dressed until after noon. When I got up in the morning I made it my mission to clean the bathtub, as it was long overdue and I'd been putting it off. I was finally ready (and figured my sore tennis elbow arms were okay to withstand it), so I dove in. It took a half hour of scrubbing, and for whatever reason, that exhausted me for a few hours. I spent a lot of time for the rest of the day trying to work up the energy to do other things--I had cakes to bake, grocery shopping to do, and a house to vacuum. I baked two boxes of cake mix, figured out my Wegmans list and shopped, made the boys and me dinner while we listened to Craig's game--which they won late in overtime, in the second-longest regular season game ever--and then finished up cleaning just before getting Carter to bed. Craig got home around midnight but the three of us were up late watching a movie as he wound down from an exciting night of his own.
On Sunday I tried to get up relatively early to get started on party prep. We moved the party back a little bit due to Jacob's training and Craig's parents' schedule, so I had until 2pm to get everything ready. The timing meant that eating a late lunch right away wasn't going to work, so I sent Craig on a Wegmans run while Jacob was at training to get some additional snacks, including the fixings for taco dip. Yum! I was also doing my favorite broccoli casserole and salad, then we were ordering pizza and boneless wings. So, at least the food was easy. The cake--not so much.
I poked around on Pinterest and found some roller coaster cakes, so I decided that had to be our theme. I saw a few cool ones that used halves of round cakes to make hills, and I thought that would be neat and different. But I was confused on how to structure it. Did I need a base, or should I just slap them down on some foil-covered cardboard? I ended up baking the two 9-inch round yellow cakes and baking a cookie sheet and a 7-inch round of chocolate. I figured the cookie sheet could be my base and the rounds would give me a variety of hill options.
When I started building it Sunday morning, I realized my plan to do a full U-shaped track wasn't going to work. I wouldn't have enough frosting, and all of the lattice work on the coaster supports would be exhausting and very hard to do on the inside once all the sides were up. I got three hills up, and the more I looked at it, the more I liked the idea of just angling the cake and keeping only the corner track I had just done. Slowly it came into focus and I liked what I was seeing. Where I had to cut the edges of the circles to seamlessly butt them up against one another, I used the cuttings for perfectly shaped roller coaster cars. Decorating those took a little finessing because they were tiny and I didn't want to ruin the track under it. The cake as a whole took some skewers and toothpicks for support, but in the end I was happy with the outcome--right down to the gumball heads on the coaster riders.
In a perfect world I would have put the coaster on the first hill, but that one seemed to be tipping a bit and I didn't want to make it top heavy. I also would have decorated the cars better, but I was really afraid of messing up by that point so I left them simple and white. The brown around the edges got a little messy and soft by the time I was done piping it (necessitating some emergency fixes), and the white icing was a little stubborn. But in the end, I liked the result, and so did Carter. It was a feat of engineering, but it was different and fun. My cakes are very much homemade quality, which can feel inferior when you have friends who do amazing cakes or use amazing bakeries, but I love that the cakes are unique to my kids and are perfectly imperfect in their own way. They're made with love and that's what matters most, and if they inspire someone by providing an attainable example for them to do something similar for their kids, even better.
I had an entire cake left over that I didn't use for the hills, so I frosted it and used the sprinkles that came with the blue frosting to decorate it in case we needed more yellow cake.
I finished before anyone got here, which almost never happens, and then started working on the snack foods. Once the grandparents arrived, all at the same time, Carter entertained them for a bit with his viola. He is still definitely a work in progress, but he did a good job showing them his skills.
I grabbed a quick picture of him in the kitchen during the party because I was afraid the cake would tip when I moved it out to the dining room!
It was a pretty low-key party--good food and pleasant conversation. Carter just had cards to open, but he was thrilled nonetheless. After food, it was on to the cake! One more picture...but oh, that forced smile!
Pretty sure this was after Grandpa tried to make him laugh. A little better!
With the candles lit all along the track...looked cool but a lot of real estate to cover with one blow!
We wrapped up the party with a weird old movie that Craig found that featured a bunch of 70s actors, including Peter Falk of Columbo fame (which is a thing in Craig's family), and Carter was totally into it trying to solve the mystery! My parents took off shortly before the end to go check into a hotel. They decided they wanted to stay over for Jacob's game on Monday, but felt more comfortable with a good bed and their own space. Craig's parents left right around the same time as Craig and Jacob left for a later high school practice. I finished up cleanup and that was about it for the day--I was beat!
Jacob's game Monday was against the #1 seed in their class. This was the team they barely lost to early in the season when Jacob got five threes, then ended up beating a month ago in their own new gym--their first regular season loss since 2021! That was a crazy game--we were up big, lost the lead, and came back to win it late--and I was sure they would be looking to avenge that loss. The other team came out strong and definitely did not miss the shots they did in the last game that enabled us to get a big lead in the first half. We still managed to keep it close, though, and Jacob was the first sub for the first time in a while and got two threes in the first quarter to keep us in the game. It was a tough battle throughout, once again with lead changes back and forth. As the game drew to a close, we took a late three-point lead. But with only a few seconds left, the other team got a three to tie it. Ugh. Jacob only played a little bit in those last few seconds in case we had a three opportunity, but unfortunately it didn't pan out. But, overtime was clutch and we put up some really good defensive play and won by 10! It was really amazing to see them come back and win to knock off the top seed. So now we're on to play at the Blue Cross Arena! It was supposed to be on Friday, but weather was looking iffy so it got postponed to Sunday. But that was a goal of Jacob's to play there, and against all odds, it's happening! Now we just need to hope his coach plays him!
So, anyway, it was a pretty good few days around these parts. Always nice to see your kids happy--and this was a good weekend for that!
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