Well, if you can believe it, our busy January schedule got busier with bonus tournaments and extra practices for Volleyball. Mary is fully exhausted already, dual-sporting her way through the month, and Lizzie and I are feeling like long-haul drivers with our thrice-weekly trips into Cranbrook and beyond for her practices. Jeff has bitten the bullet and allowed social media apps to be added to his phone so he can take point on Mary’s volleyball team, and while I am Lizzie’s handler for volleyball, we are sharing the load on Mary, and enlisting Margaret for help when schedules are just too complicated to get it all done. Whew! Oh yeah, Margaret got her “N” on January 6th. Thank goodness! Just in time to assume her role as sub-chauffeur. Getting Mary to and from some of her in-town practices is getting her some extra driving time in, a little bit of independence with the car, and helping us at the same time. Jeff spent a week in Calgary and without Margaret and her N it would have been impossible. Well, not impossible, it just would have taken a lot of coordination and rides with friends.
We’re at the semester end for Margaret and Lizzie which meant some extra study time, a rush to finish assignments and some scrambling to make volunteer hours. Margaret has been working on her capstone project, putting in a good amount of work over the Christmas break, and some fine tuning in the first weeks of January. Her presentation went very well, and the Capstone Fair this week had her displaying her sketchbooks, watercolours and her main project for the oodles of students and parents that came to see what the grade 12s had achieved. There are some pretty talented individuals in her peer group. Some are musicians, artists, scientists and inventors in the making!
Mary is finding her basketball legs and in the process has also found her way to being taller than me and closing on her Dad. She’s mastering 3-point shots, having earned a little bit of celebrity in her last league game by shooting 18 of their 21 points in the form of 3-pointers. Lizzie tells me there is a Mary fan club brewing. Oh dear.
In other news, Margaret is weighing her options with university picks having been accepted to Lethbridge Arts and Science programs and also to the U of Calgary English program. We’re crossing our fingers for the Calgary science program as well and hope to hear next week when her 1st semester grades make it into their hands. She needs some pretty high marks there and we’re not sure they’re high enough. She is keen on Lethbridge though and has been offered a couple of internships there. Some tough decisions ahead for her! Now I just need to light the fire to get some scholarships going.
Lizzie is doing well and despite a disappointment in not making the top team in Cranbrook, her volleyball team seems to be finding its legs and practices have finally become engaging. Her coach wants to have her be a “swiss army knife” player which means she is working on her skills as a setter and right side so she can sub in anywhere. Not a bad spot really if it gets her more court time – this is the first year that fair play goes out the window…its all about what you can do now. We are looking forward to seeing this team on the court…we’re shut out of practices so I don’t get to see very much of what happens in training.
Not much else to report. We’re not seeing much snow at the moment, so skiing hasn’t been a thing – Jeff’s been traveling with Mary (our 2 primary skiers). Lizzie took one trip up to the hill with her friends but the day was cut short when one of them (not Lizzie – shocker) got hit by the chair lift and suffered a concussion. Not a great start to the season!