Farley Family Highlights for 2014
As Buster Posey exhaustedly
collapsed into the embrace of MVP Madison Bumgarner, we cried out in the
immortal words of Hunter Pence, “Yes, yes, yes!” This thrice repeated phrase had become the
rallying cry of the San Francisco Giants improbable run at a third World Series
crown in the lifespan of our dear Griffin’s five years. Looking back at 2014, we realized that we too
have had many threes occur in the last year in our family.
All three
of our boys (ages 4-6-8 to start the season) played on the same 7-8 year
olds’ coach pitch baseball team. How did
that happen? Well Brett and Joy coached
the team so we had a little pull, and they all proved they belonged. Garrett received the Will Clark award as a
power hitting first baseman who finished in the top 2 in most offensive categories
for the team that went on a 7 game winning streak until losing in the
semifinals against the eventual league champion. Bryce received the Josh Donaldson award as a
clutch hitting third baseman who earned the opportunity to move all the way to
fifth in the order (from fourteenth to start the year, yes we had 19 players to
start the year). Griffin received the
Ninja Award because he was our sneak attack guy who reached base over 40% of
the time and surprised a number of runners with accurate throws to the infield
from RF. Aside from the obvious benefit
of having all of their practices at the same time and place, Brett felt blessed
to have the time to coach his sons with the best assistant coach he could have
imagined and hopes to be able to do it again in the future.
Three musical
instruments are currently being played in our household. Garrett and Brett continued in guitar lessons
for a second year. Bryce reached the age
of 7, when Garrett began to play guitar, so he asked if he could start to learn. Not wanting to be left behind, Griffin signed
up for lessons from Dad, too. Who knew
that Brett would be teaching guitar to his boys? All three of the boys are in their second
year of playing piano with a Suzuki teacher and have enjoyed playing in their
recitals, especially the ones that ended with a cookie reception. Joy keeps pace playing piano with the boys
and motivates them to practice every day, they made it to 400 consecutive days
of practice this year. So what is the
third instrument you ask? Joy and the
boys play the tin whistle for Classical Conversations and learned America the
Beautiful for Veterans Day.
Our family went on three vacations together. Our relaxing spring training trip whetted our
baseball appetite as we saw new parks on the west side of Phoenix and enhanced
our educational experience with a day at the musical instrument museum. A week in Idaho with Joy’s family resulted in
our setting off a myriad of fireworks over the fourth of July. At Family Camp, we enjoyed the outdoors with
laser tag, bungee trampoline jumping (even some triple
flips by our kids), swimming, archery, and great Bible teaching
highlighted the week.
Soccer was a stark contrast to our
baseball season, as the age divisions are more stringent and so we had three different teams with opposite practice and game
schedules. The fall months were busy
with soccer, but there were blessings for all three
of our boys. Garrett played
shutdown defense on a championship team with a number of good friends. Bryce was one of the four most game-aware
players as a forward and collected a couple of goals and a number of assists on
his team.Griffin played with some friends from church and really took
on a leadership role on the team, where he played stellar defense and attacked
when he saw weak spots, and finished the season with over a goal a game and a
handful of assists to go along with a bicycle kick while lying on the ground to
advance the ball forward.
There was a new third sport this year:
diving. Bryce and Garrett enjoyed
every day learning back dives, inverted dives, flips, and standard front
dives. Griffin was motivated to work
hard in his swim lessons so he can join them in the near future.
We now have three
cats. When we arrived home from
vacation this summer, two cute kittens had taken up residence in our
backyard. Bryce and Griffin quickly
adopted, socialized, and named them Luke and Leia. After buying flea treatment, food, and taking
them for surgery, they were here to stay.
Theo, our first cat, is still recovering from his error in letting these
two upstarts establish residence.
Brett continued to go through
changes at work. Due to restructuring at
the research center in June, Brett went from full-time research to part-time at
three jobs:
research, hospitalist, and medical consultant at the psychiatric
hospital. Fortunately, all three
part-time jobs are under the same overarching group, so they count together
toward benefits. It is still a process
figuring out how best to balance his time at the three jobs, while he has primary
oversight at the research center. He has
no reason to complain about a lack of variety at work.
Joy has three
jobs too (actually she has more than that, but for the theme sake, we
will highlight three). She continues to
work at Public Health and sees refugees coming into our county from the Middle
East one day a week. On practically
every other day, she is home schooling our children and is one of the tutors
for the Classical Conversations program that our boys attend one day a
week. Her third job was to be a student
this year: she traveled to Las Vegas for
a cram session prep course for her Family Medicine Board Exam which she was
thrilled to find out that she passed later in the year.
Three races
showed up on the family map this year.
Brett and Joy completed a half marathon early in the year. Then it was on to a new challenge with the
Urbanathlon in San Francisco (11 miles up and down hills with 15
obstacles). The bookend race was a
family 5K that we all five finished in under 40 minutes.
There are three
important words to remember as well:
Jesus loves you. This is why
Jesus humbled himself and came to earth to be born as a little baby and then ultimately
was the sacrificial lamb who can cover over all of our sins if we simply say,
“thank you, I need your help, Jesus.” He
will graciously meet all of our needs so that we can be right with God. Isn’t that better than any other gift you
might find under a Christmas tree?
We hope you are having a wonderful
December as you prepare for Christmas and the New Year of 2015. Drop us a line and let us know how you are
doing too. We love to read others
letters along with the wonderful pictures that we receive to put on our fridge.
Love, The
Farleys: Brett and Joy, Garrett (9),
Bryce (7), Griffin (5)
