Happy 40th!!!

We had a milestone birthday in the family this year....Tyler turned 40! For his 30th birthday, I planned a surprise party, so I knew I needed to come up with something fun for this new decade. This time, I didn't plan one big surprise, but planned a bunch of smaller ones. He knew we were going to head to Carmi for the weekend to celebrate, but that was about all I clued him into. We headed down on his actual birthday, June 1. When we got there, Aunt D was there to surprise him. Everyone was so happy to see her (the only other person who knew was Joel....I had to tell him because he was super upset about going to Carmi and missing his soccer tournament, but knowing that Aunt D would be there made it all worth it). That night, we celebrated with pizza and an ice cream cake....and lots of fun decorations!

We spent the next morning hanging out and catching up. The kids enjoyed the time with Grandpa, Grandma, and Aunt D. Leah helped a lot in the kitchen, Joel played tons of pool, and Caleb loved getting in lots of driving practice with Grandpa Ron. The next surprise came that afternoon when Tyler's best friend (who lives in Houston and drove through the night to Carmi) showed up at his parents' house. He was so shocked to see Matt and the two had a blast catching up all afternoon and evening. We ended the evening with a huge meal and more cake.

Saturday morning was more of the same....time to catch up and hang out at home. That afternoon, the kids took off to Evansville for a fun afternoon while we got ready for the next surprise adventure. We met up with Matt, Meredith, and Grant and headed to Evansville to see a hilarious comedian (Nate Bargatze). We had an awesome time and laughed SO much!

We woke up on our last morning and headed over to Uncle Randy and Aunt Sharon's for a yummy breakfast. We loved getting to catch up with them and definitely wished we had more time to hang, but they were heading out of town and we had to get back home before the busy week of camps began. Thankfully, we got the joy of bringing Aunt D home with us for the week! We loved having her here and treasured the memories made with her. Overall it was definitely a fun-filled week of surprises for a really special guy! We loved getting to spoil him like he deserves :)

 

Spring Recap

Spring Break usually serves as a great getaway before the busy Spring season hits in the Sturm home. We enjoy the time away where we can relax and rest up for the exhaustion that lies ahead! We got back from Florida just in time to celebrate Easter. We had a great day and enjoyed our Easter dinner with two of Nyla's friends before they headed back down to school to finish out the semester.

The school year began winding down and that meant all sorts of projects, tests, and other time consuming tasks. The kids all worked hard and pushed through to the end. I also felt like the end of the year couldn't come quickly enough. I've forgotten just how squirrely and distracted kids get at school when Spring hits!

Spring also seems to be the time when our to-do list piles up around the house. We checked A LOT off of the list, but one of the biggest (and most bittersweet projects) was getting rid of our playset. Thankfully, it is gone completely...just relocated to the Rojas house a few doors down. It was a tedious process, but Tyler and Iggy got the whole thing down in one day. Then, Tyler got the bare spots tilled up and seeded just in time for the rainy few weeks we had in April/May. It was great to get that project done and motivated us to keep up with all of the other tasks we've been putting off!

Leah had a special moment in her spring lineup...she got inducted into NJHS! We were quite proud of her and recognize that she's come such a long way in school. It isn't always easy for her, but she works incredibly hard and we are blown away by how well she does. Leah has taken on junior high like a champ. She is organized, rarely needs reminders to get things done, and is an amazing advocate for herself both socially and academically. She isn't afraid to ask for help and isn't afraid to stand up for what is right. We are so proud of her!

The kids kept us quite busy with all of their activities this spring. All three had several band performances. Caleb had a final performance and we are excited that he is continuing on with band next year. Leah's band made it to the state competition. They also marched in the New Lenox Loyalty Day parade. Joel finished out his first year of band with a great concert and even got awarded a scholarship for private lessons in the summer! Joel also used what he learned in band by entering the school talent show with his friend Ethan. They played a duet of the Harry Potter theme song and did great! Leah finished up another season of dance with a great recital and we are excited that she is continuing on with it next year. The sports schedule was also jam packed. Caleb finished up volleyball and the team did great overall. They were so fun to watch and we felt like Caleb really enjoyed being part of that team. Joel did another season of soccer and Leah played softball again. We spent a lot of time dividing and conquering, but managed to take it all in! It'll be so great to have the summer slowdown before the craziness of fall hits!

 

 

We are definitely ready to head into summer mode and put this past school year behind us! It's been busy and hectic and full of fun, but we are ready to start making some summertime memories!

Florida 2023

This year's Florida trip started out as quite the adventure. Tyler was gone in Orlando for the week for work, so the packing and prepping was left up to me. Thankfully, my school was on Spring Break that week, so I had plenty of extra time to get ready. The big debate centered around whether Tyler should fly all the way home on Friday just to turn back around and drive to Florida. He could have just flown from Orlando straight to Pensacola. There was also talk of him flying to Nashville and meeting up with us there (where we stay overnight to break up the drive). Thankfully, he took the least ideal option and flew all the way home on Friday. The reason it worked out so well is because there was a massive storm heading our way on Friday and it would have been terrifying to do that drive alone. Tyler's plane landed and he had just enough time to rush home, drop his bag from the week in Orlando, and grab a few items to throw into his next suitcase. We hit the road immediately in the hopes that we'd outrun the storm. We made it through most of Illinois with the storms following right behind us, but we hit REALLY bad weather in southern Illinois that night. It was awful and I'm so glad that Tyler was driving and got us through it!

Our Saturday drive was fairly smooth and we ran into just a little bit of our usual Alabama traffic. We made it to the house mid-day and immediately fell into vacation mode. The house we stayed in was amazing and we had a wonderful week. We were just a block from the beach, had a pool of our own, and were right around the corner from a public park with basketball and tennis. We had beautiful weather all week and enjoyed all of the fresh air and time outside. One of the highlights from the week was having the Evans family there for a few days. Vacationing is always more fun with friends! We also had a blast seeing the Blue Angels practice. It took three days of driving out to the viewing spot...practices kept getting cancelled due to cloud cover. It was okay, though, because the viewing spot was right next to Fort Pickens, which was really neat to tour. The drive to the viewing spot along the national seashore is also super scenic, so we enjoyed that the three times we did it! Other than that, we simply enjoyed the chance to relax, have family time, and be away from the hustle and bustle at home. We definitely treasure this yearly tradition and hope we can keep it up for several more years!

 

Dear Caleb,

Today you are 15! It's hard to remember life before you made us parents. Somehow 15 years seems like an entire lifetime, but it also feels like we blinked and reached this point. Watching you grow had been nothingness short of amazing. MAnd this year has brought about a lot more growth than many of the previous years.

Physically, you've gone from a boy to a man-child in less than six months. It seriously seemed to happen overnight. One day we were looking down at you, the next day we were eye-to-eye, and then suddenly, we had to tilt our heads ever so slightly in an upwards direction to talk to you! Your voice changed. You ditched the 14 year buzz cut and began to care about hairstyles. You have peach fuzz on your face and pimples that leave us constantly reminding you to wash your face! You lost your chubbiness and traded it in for a more athletic build (not easily earned, but well deserved after enduring of two seasons of tough sports). You went from thinking girls were weird and saying you just wanted to grow up and live the single life to being way more interested in girls and even dabbled in the relationship world at the beginning of the school year. Indeed a lot has changed in just one short year!

As has always been the case for our sentimental child who loves predictability and tradition, all of the change has not been easy. High school has definitely had its share of ups and downs so far. You're trying to navigate academics that are challenging (a first for you...who always found school to be ridiculously easy). You've taken on two new sports and rose to the challenge, but it wasn't always easy (especially with a broken finger just a few weeks into the football season). You've been looking forward to tackle football for years and it was a blast, but definitely not easy. You tried out for basketball, a sport you love, but were heartbroken to not make the team. It didn't keep you down for long though and you bravely jumped headfirst into a completely new sport...wrestling. You learned so much and came such a long way in one season. You didn't let the sting of not making basketball keep you from taking another risk by trying out for volleyball, which (thankfully) you made. You're juggling a lot and the added challenge of figuring out where you belong socially is probably the hardest of all the issues you're facing. We keep hoping and praying that you'll wake up one day and just be comfortable in your own skin and confident in who you are. We pray that you'll see yourself through somewhat of the same lens as those who love you the most. High school is hard though. You try so hard to look through all of the wrong lenses and try to fit a mold that you're not meant to be in.

No matter what this next year brings, we are looking forward to walking right beside you through it all. This past year is proof that SO much can change in a year. Even though we've had a lot of tough, tough moments, we keep clinging to the hope that this won't be your story for long. We pray that this birthday is a fresh start for our favorite Freshman. We hope that one day we will look back on the growing pains of this year and maybe be able to share a mutual laugh about it all. For now, though, our wish for you as you make your birthday wish is that this year is filled with an abundance of peace and joy. We pray that you will learn to lean heavily on the faith foundation that you've built and that God will help you see yourself as the amazing person He created you to be. We love you so much and know that you're here on this earth to do great things. You've already left such an impact here over the past 15 years and we cannot wait to see what your future holds.

Love,

Dad and Mom  

Health Hazards

The past few months have had their share of health problems in the Sturm home. On the bright side, at least we are going to reach our deductible nice and early this year!

We passed around some sickness right before Christmas. Caleb had it the worst and was down for several days during his first-ever round of high school finals. He handled it like a champ and managed to do a great job on his finals! It turns out he had the flu. We found that out when he went in to the doctor for an odd skin rash that was forming. That ended up being a Staph infection and he immediately started some killer antibiotics.

We made it through the holidays without much else, but mid-January brought about a drastic increase in the random stomach issues Caleb had all Fall. He started having episodes of extreme pain and cramping that began to happen more and more frequently. After leaving school early one day and seeing him in excruciating pain, we took him to urgent care where they drew blood and even did a CT scan. Not much showed up there, so we were referred to a pediatric GI doc. After and ultrasound and endoscopy (and several more flare ups), he was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome due to stress and anxiety. This opened up a whole new can of worms that we're still in the process of working through, but at least we have some answers!

Joel felt like Caleb didn't need to get all of the attention, so he went ahead and got a concussion at wrestling practice! When we picked him up from practice, he let us know that he had a bad run in with the mat after being dropped on his head, but he didn't seem to make a big deal of it. We carried on with life and he was fine for 24 hours. Then the symptoms began. He spent an entire night throwing up every hour on the hour. He had terrible headaches and was extremely sensitive to light. The doctor at urgent care diagnosed him with a concussion and the poor kid had to spend the next three weeks adhering to some pretty strict restrictions....no sports, no recess, and NO screens! We were all quite thankful when he was finally symptom free and could get the all clear from his doctor! Needless to say, we're going to think long and hard about what the future of his sports career will look like. We know that concussions can happen anywhere, but we sure don't want to have him go through this again if we can help avoid it.

On top of all of these major health scares, we managed to pass around some yuck early in February. Tyler tested positive for Covid and was down for the count for several days. We're assuming that the other two people to fall ill around that same time (Mom and Caleb) probably also had Covid. We aren't sure how the younger two avoided it, but we're glad they did!

Weekend Getaway

For years, we had the family tradition of getting away over Martin Luther King weekend. This year that had to change due to sports schedules, but we still made sure to squeeze in a getaway in February. Winter is long and making sure we spend a little bit of time away makes us all just a bit happier about the dreariness of January and February. This year's trip was to Lake Geneva/Milwaukee. We rented a cute little AirBnB and enjoyed the quality time together....AFTER we spent the entire day trying to deal with the lack of heat in the house!!! The trip was just for two nights, but we packed in plenty of fun including lots of games, shopping in downtown Lake Geneva, and a trip to Milwaukee to visit the Sprecher Brewery. We had a blast and are so glad we had the chance to get away.