Baby Cronk: Winter and Spring 2026

The Cronk kids continue to be busy pursuing their passions, and Mom and Dad are along for the ride!

Austin has loved Michigan Technological University (MTU) and has had many fun times this year with the pep band. He also joined the saxophone section's broomball team. Fun and hilarity ensued. He lead the team in assists, banged his knee up a bit, and had a lot of fun!

Trevor had some local and regional fencing tournaments.

A local tournament at TCFC had a photographer that caught some pics of Trevor for us.

We enjoyed having Austin home for Christmas break and the kids all played Villainous with Dad.

We had fun discovering our family tree on FamilySearch.org. I heard that the Mormon Church believes they can convert everyone up the family tree to be Mormons, even when they are already dead, thus they are really into genealogy research. I don't know if that is true, but they truly have created a vast library of ancestry research that is free to access. We found some of our family tree stops at dead ends, but some run into royal families, which are very well documented, and thus extend WAY back in time. We kept clicking back further generations until we made it all the way to 400 BCE and stopped clicking.

We found we are descended from several emperors, kings, queens, and other nobility, including Charlemagne being my 33rd great grandfather, Emperor Constantine I being my 41st great grandfather, and St. Margaret Queen of Scotland and Malcolm III King of Scotland being my 25th great grandparents. We found kings of England, Scotland, Franks, Germany, and several other countries and kingdoms, and several emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. Yes, I realize that going that many generations back, there are probably millions of people related to these monarchs, but it was still really fun to click back through our family tree and find familiar names and many royalty. I always knew my Sarah was a princess! Sarah, in particular, really had fun going through the family trees with me.

As we started sharing the fun things we found in this family research, my mom also brought over some of our family photo albums and documents for my grandparents, great grandparents, and even great great grandparents on her side. So fun! Within that side of the family, we also found Canadian relatives, so with their new law that took effect in December 2025, that makes me and my kids Canadian citizens.

Check out the photos of my grandfather and his mom, my great grandmother Nina.

Sarah was nominated and chosen to play in the Minnesota Band Directors Association 9th and 10th grade Honor Band.

Sarah turned 16 in January and got her license. We did a license plate cake for her like we did for Austin, but she wanted chocolate cake and chocolate frosting, so we did the dark MN license plate version for hers instead of the blue and green lakes version.

Sarah passed her driving test on the morning of her birthday and got her license.

Trevor was honored at the All Star Breakfast, nominated by one of his band directors.

He also performed with his jazz band at the breakfast.

Steve was able to make a quick weekend trip down to Texas to surprise his brother Brian for his 40th birthday!

We did a lot of traveling for Trevor's fencing tournaments. Some of them Steve and I were both able to go, but, of course, the regional tournament in Chicago that Steve was not able to attend, we ran into Brandon, one of Steve's best friends from high school.

It was a tough tournament. He came out of pools in Y14 at #14 and ended up #34 out of 92 fencers.

Trevor had a great jazz band performance, in which he had a solo.

Austin continued to have fun with his pep band.

I tried one of the AI prompts to make a personalized cartoon.

(Pretty good. Looks like me, got the hair spot on, skeleton diagram in the back is odd, and I only have 3 fingers on my left hand....but kinda fun!)

MTU had Winter Carnival and Austin participated in a little bit of the overnight snow sculpting.

Trevor is finally old enough to compete in the Minnesota State High School League (7-12th grade), so he competed in 1 qualifier tournament, the Cupid's Arrow in Rochester.

My screen shot of results doesn't go all the way to the bottom, but he finished 13th out of at least 42 fencers.

My colleague Wendy invited us over for a celebration of Chinese New Year and we had a blast making (and eating) dumplings and singing karaoke.

Then we get into dance competition season for Sarah, and I will need to make a separate post for all the dance pics because each competition has professional photographers taking pictures of every dance and there are just too many pics to put all in this post!

Trevor was cast as the Duke of Weselton in Frozen Jr, the middle school musical this year. Over 200 kids auditioned and he was not only chosen to be in the show, but got a speaking part.

He did a fantastic job!

Trevor had fun playing chess against his fencing coach Jacob when he arrived for practice one day.

Trevor had his 7th grade band concert and then a Jazz Band Festival at University of Minnesota, where he once again had a great trombone solo.

More fun times for Austin at MTU

Trevor competed in the Minnesota State High School League fencing championships, which includes grades 7-12. (He is in 7th grade, so the youngest you can be an participate.) He beat several older kids and ended up placing 13th out of 67 fencers in the state for men's foil.

Trevor also performed with his Honor Band for the all district band concert.

In the beginning of March, we headed up to Sarah's dance competition in Duluth.

It was extremely foggy when we drove in.

Again, I'll do a separate post for all the dance photos, but it was a crazy weekend. Several of the studio's dancers came down with gastroenteritis and I ended up making a run to the pharmacy to pick up Zofran in bulk! So many vomiting dancers and dances that had to be re-blocked and substituted at short notice. It was a hot mess, but the dancers and staff powered through and it was a successful weekend overall.

Trevor and his classmates did a project on aviation history for MN History Day and were chosen to go on to the regional event.

We headed to Grand Rapids, MI for a fencing tournament in which Trevor competed in 6 divisions! He is in Y14 (his youth age group as a 13 year old), Cadet (age 13-16), Junior (age 13-19), Division 1A (age 13 and up, including adults), Division II (age 13 and up, but C rated and under), and Division III (age 13 and up, but D rated and under). Trevor is a D rated fencer currently, which is great! He jumped from Unrated, over E rated, straight to D rated.

At GRAFA, Trevor was very hot and cold, but he placed 9th out of 41 in Y14 and around the middle of the pack for Cadet and Div III.

Part of what was difficult about this tournament was Trevor's struggle with his mental game. He gets very frustrated and down on himself and it affects his performance and his interaction with those around him negatively. After this tournament, we sought recommendations for his coaches for a mental fitness coach/sports psychologist, and he has been meeting with Laurie at Skadi Sports Psychology ever since. He has enjoyed it so far.

While we were in Grand Rapids, a massive winter storm rolled through the midwest, dumping feet of snow on our route home right as we were supposed to drive home. I-94 in Wisconsin was actually closed in both directions for hours.

We made it to the Chicago area and stayed the night with Uncle Jim. He is such a lifesaver with hosting us several times over the year with Trevor's Chicago tournaments and then having us drop in on the way home from this one too! We did manage to put Trevor to work clearing some boxes out of the basement crawl space for Uncle Jim.

We enjoyed watching March Madness while Trevor had fun with some of Kyle's old LEGOs he discovered.

It was fantastic to be able to enjoy the evening with Uncle Jim and then drive home more safely the next day. We saw SO many semi trucks flipped over in the ditches on the way home!

We celebrated Nanny's birthday with dinner out and had to rush Sarah directly from a dance competition to attend.

Trevor placed 2nd in the Minnesota Division National Qualifier for Division II Men's Foil.

Trevor had 1 more regional tournament in Chicago as well, and he rocked it!

He placed 3rd in Division III and placed 16th in Division 1A, which qualified him for Summer Nationals in Division 1A! That is huge!

He came out of pools placed 37th out of 41 and then won his first 2 direct elimination bouts, including beating the #5 seed, who is a really good fencer! People were coming up to him the rest of the day asking how Trevor beat him.

In Division III the next day, he got to fence his favorite referee!

He finished out day with a 3rd place medal in Division III after losing a close bout in the semifinals to a college fencer from Purdue University.

Celebratory shamrock shake!

Found an airplane on display at a VFW on the drive home and had to stop for a photo op.

We also saw an air base off the highway in Wisconsin on the way and decided we'd stop by on the drive home. There were a bunch of planes out on display and a museum. However, when we pulled off the highway to go see them, we were met with a gate guarded by several armed military members who told us that the base was closed due to the war in Iran.

More band fun at MTU for Austin.

Easter without our Austin.

Trevor ended up qualifying for Fencing Summer Nationals in 5 divisions!

He qualified in Y14, Cadet, Division IA, Division II, and Division III!

He was very excited and we got him signed up for all 5 divisions and started planning travel and housing to Portland, Oregon.

Trevor had a little bit of back pain previously with one of his regional tournaments, but it resolved quickly, so we thought nothing of it. At fencing practice on April 16th, Trevor was retreating in a practice bout with his club mate Caden and he felt a sudden pain in his right lower back. He left practice because of the pain, and it was still bothering him the next day, so I took him in to orthopedic urgent care and he was diagnosed with a spine fracture (an L5 pars fracture/spondylolysis). He had an MRI the next morning and received the prognosis of an extended recovery and restriction from fencing for at least 3 months, which forced a withdrawal from Summer Nationals. He had a brace for about 2 months that he wore mostly just to school. He has been doing physical therapy and having follow up appointments with his spine specialist.

He was supposed to participate in a team tournament that weekend, but was unable to fence due to his injury. He still attended to cheer on his teammates and they gave him a medal when his team got 2nd place.

Austin auditioned to be one of the "arm wavers" in the pep band, which is like a drum major in a marching band, the band member that directs the band. He got the 2nd highest score in the audition and was chosen to be an "arm waver". He had his first chance to direct near the end of the year and is excited to fully take on this role next year.

MTU ended up with a LOT of snow! (And he still loved it!)

More dance for Sarah...

Sarah was an assistant teacher for the Teenies, Minis, and Petite teams this year, helping with 5 classes every week. The littles absolutely adore her! (and so do their moms!)

She goes to the competitions even on days she doesn't dance to help her littles. She is constantly carrying little dancers or sitting with several of them on her lap.