Tucker and Parker are most definitely the light of my life. I feel so blessed to have these happy, healthy, sweet boys.

Tucker is a fantastic big brother as he teaches, guides, and encourages Parker. I appreciate that they are old enough now to play together and give me a few minutes to cook a meal or fold laundry. Both boys attended a music class at school this year and Tucker started taking piano lessons in January. Tucker had his first piano recital in May, playing Yankee Doodle. Sometimes in the car, Tucker likes to play “Name that Tune.” I am always impressed with his ability to guess any song, and often within just the first few notes.

This month, Tucker celebrated his 2 year anniversary at ASI Gymnastics. In that time span, he has been promoted four times. In December, as he was turning 5, he was promoted to Boys Silver. And then after only 3 months, he moved again to Boys Gold. I figured they would recruit him someday to be on a competitive team but I certainly wasn’t expected the coach to start talking about Team while he was still in PreK. Tucker is the youngest boy in this class, but perhaps the most focused. Yesterday his coach said “Tucker was awesome today, as always. Never talks. All business.” Last week Tucker was introduced a jump rope at gymnastics. He spent the rest of that Saturday practicing at home repeatedly until he could jump it multiple times successfully. Tucker displays that same determination at playgrounds where he will go up and down the monkey bars, over and over.

Tucker is finishing his second year at the Montessori preschool. He is friends with everyone in the class and talks to his teacher a little bit (but not a lot) now. Tucker has learned his letter sounds and is reading 3 letter words. He had fun this spring with typing names of animals on my phone. He was so excited to learn that when you sound out/spell the animal correctly, an emoji picture of the animal pops up. (He thought I was very cool for having emojis on my phone!!). Tucker really enjoys math also. He is writing addition equations at schools and likes to mentally add numbers. After learning the names of the continents, and the countries of North America, Tucker is working on learning the US map of states.

In late July, Tucker will be starting Kindergarten at a charter school called Brighton Academy. The school has small classes with lots of hands-on learning. They take a shorter summer, only 6 weeks, in order to have 2 week breaks between every quarter during the year. I’m looking forward to this next adventure in his education career.

Parker is also thriving at the Montessori preschool. In March, he moved up early to a Primary (3-6 yr old) class. At 32 months, he was the “baby” on the class and extremely popular due to his cuteness and his personality. Parker’s teacher reports that he starts each morning by walking around to greet every child in the class and ask “How are you?” Parker is a social butterfly. He will approach a child at a park and say “Hi, What’s your name?” And then remember the name!!

Parker likes to talk about shapes and counts to 20 (I attribute this partly to his year long obsession with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse). He has several of his favorite board books memorized. I love it when he wants to “read” the story to me at bedtime. This year, Parker also started telling stories. For months he would start every story with “One Upon a Time…” He continues to excel with his language skills and I’m excited for him to start taking Spanish this summer. Parker learned about a new composer one day in music class, and the next day he went around asking adults, “Do you know Sebastian Bach?” Parker also likes nature, He is forever collecting “spiky balls” (dropped from trees) and small rocks to stuff into his pockets.

Parker loves going to gymnastics as well. After nearly a year, he just moved up to a class for 3 year olds. I’m embracing this change because now Parker can go to class without mom. I can relax on the sidelines to watch both boys. Every morning, Parker asks “where are we going?” Five days a week, I reply “school” and he starts crying, “I want to go to Gymnastics!”

For over a year, Parker has chosen to sleep in his Snoopy sleeping bag every night, instead of a bed. This spring, he decided that he wanted to sleep in Tucker’s room. Easily arranged – we just moved his sleeping bag to Tucker’s bedroom. And then Parker started to stuff extra things into his sleeping bag, like “friends” (stuffed toys), books, toys, and a water bottle. Some nights it seems like there is barely room left for him to squeeze in among the friends and treasures. I call this his Swiss Army Sleeping Bag!

Maybe our next update won’t take so long. But then again, I have 6 trips between June and July – so summer will be crazy. For our friends in Arkansas, we are passing through in early July so leave a light on for us!

I am celebrating the close of the 2018-2019 school year. This was my sixteenth school year working for Pearson. This school year was the most grueling, difficult, challenging, exhausting year of my career. If you follow us on Facebook, I’m sure you have seen happy pictures of me with Tucker and Parker and our fun adventures. But social media does not tell the whole story.

At the start of 2016, two long-time leaders of the Pearson Clinical sales group retired at the same time. In 2017, Pearson hired a new Senior VP of Sales who did not understand our organization. So, for the 2017-2018 school year, we had a completely new internal sales structure. One year later in June of 2018, yet another new Senior VP of Sales was hired. He conducted another completely different reorganization of the company. And this time it was radically different. On a Friday the 13th (last July), 80 colleagues were laid off, some of whom I had worked with for 10-15 years. During this school year, my job has required covering a much larger geographical territory, traveling away from home more, and working more hours. And those extra hours came from when I used to sleep. Many nights I was still up at 12 or 1 am to write and prepare presentations. I traveled to 4 different cities during the first 2 weeks of December alone. Consequently, I did not have the time or energy for sending Christmas cards, or even New Year’s cards.

I loved having my Flowers family in Texas for Christmas this year. We have a fun time seeing the boys enjoy their new toys from us and from Santa. Unfortunately, my dad was in a serious car accident while traveling back home from the holidays. But he seems to have recovered well and he is enjoying his replacement vehicle. We are looking forward to a visit with “Papa” again this summer at his house in Arkansas.

During the Christmas break, I resolved to take control of my calendar and have better balance. I never met that goal. In 2019, I spent another 4 months being chronically sleep deprived and stressed. Many nights, I would fall asleep at 8:30 pm in a rocking chair in Parker’s bedroom. And then wake up sometime later, put Tucker to bed, and go to my office to work.

On a positive note, this was the first year that Pearson did a reward trip for top performers. I was very pleased to earn the trip and spent 4 days in January at an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. I had four trips during the month of February so I took the boys with me on two of them. Of course, they have both been going on business trips with mommy since birth so this was great fun for them.

We took two wonderful family vacations this year, flying on frequent flyer miles and staying with special friends. In November we spent a week in Scottsdale, AZ. The boys had fun at local parks and visiting the world’s largest butterfly sanctuary. In early April we visited Long Beach, CA with 3 fun-filled days at Disneyland. In late March we also went on our first “camping” trip to a local park. The boys had fun going on a scavenger hunt, watching a movie outside, and sleeping in a tent. In April I was also very brave and took two lessons to learn how to ride a bicycle. While I’m sure it would have been easier to learn as a child, my instructor had me riding within an hour -- which shows that it is never too late to learn something new! Tucker and Parker and taking a class this month to learn how to ride their balance bikes too. Soon we will be a family on 6 wheels.

I am deeply grateful that I did not have to travel during the month of May. I have thoroughly enjoyed some time at home and a break of working at my desk seven nights a week after the boys go to bed. While this has been an incredibly challenging year, I still love the people I work with and I believe in the tests that I teach. I am fortunate to have fantastic customers in Texas schools as well, some of whom I have known for many, many years. I am excited about the opportunities for leadership and growth that seem to be available for me at Pearson. I am continuing to strive for better work/life balance in the future. I have made a concerted effort to stay connected with my precious friends and my family. And on rare occasions, I even sneak away for an evening of painting or dancing – something to refresh my soul.

This year the boys were attending preschool full time (5 days) instead of 3 days a week. This change led to me not having a consistent overnight babysitter. The children have been incredibly resilient, adapting to the 5 different sitters who stayed with them overnight this year. But I am hoping for their sake and mine to have 1 consistent sitter this year. I spent much of May interviewing new candidates.

Also this month, we spent two weeks on a major home renovation project. After 15 years in my house, I replaced all the carpet on the first floor with tile that looks like wood. We are very much enjoying our new, beautiful floors.

In the midst of this difficult year, I managed to publish my second children’s book, Mindfulness on My Street: A Guide for Children. The book teaches children about several different ways to practice mindfulness. I am very proud of this creation and hope that parents and children find it to be useful. I am excited to have received an invitation to speak about mindfulness at a summer conference for educators in July. The book is available from Author House (https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/790435-Mindfulness-on-My-Street) and I’m also happy to ship an autographed copy.

Stay tuned for Part II: Boys