Thursday, June 30, 2016

A double big day

Spencer had his first swim meet on Saturday, June 18th

I had agreed with Michael that I would get up early with Spencer and take him to the pool for the first half.  Then Michael was going to bring Elliott to the pool and we'd switch.  Michael would stay with Spencer and Elliott and I would go home.

We got there at 6:30 am.  It was brutal.  Also brutal was the heat, because it killed my phone.  Well, killed it temporarily.  I was unable to turn it on the entire time we were there.  Which means that I couldn't call Michael and let him know that the half way point was going to occur way sooner than we expected.  He got there with about 20 minutes left of the whole meet.  At that point my phone was still busted (and we didn't know it was heat related yet) so we decided to go out for breakfast and then go to Verizon to get a phone repair or a new phone.  The phone started working right before we left the restaurant.

But none of that is really important.  Let's look at some totally exciting swimming pictures!

Waiting to warm up


Stretching


Walking to the first race.

The first race was freestyle.



Waiting for his time sheet.

Second race- backstroke.



Getting his ribbon

Waiting to dive for the third race- breast stroke.


This is one of Spencer's problems. He looks around too much during the races.  It slows him down.

Getting ready to dive in for butterfly.



It was a great first meet.

That evening we went to Monica's mom's house for a house warming party/gender reveal party/birthday party.  Let me explain.  1) Monica's mom and step-dad, Kathy and Bobby, bought a new house in North Phoenix.  2) Monica and Rick are having a baby! 3) One of Kathy's friends was celebrating a birthday.

Kathy had a friend make a gender reveal cake.

We're still not sure why it was covered in nipples.

Housewarming cake

Birthday cupcakes

After dinner it was time for the big reveal.


They're having a girl!  Sometime around Christmas.  She's due December 26th.






I wanted to take this picture because Monica's having a baby in December, Sara's getting married in May and I'm just hanging out over here with no important life changes. 

And thank goodness for that.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Back to normal life

I'm getting so close!  I'll be less than two weeks behind once this posts.  And it would have posted even sooner except I loaded ALL the pictures and then they just disappeared.  So I had to load all of them again.  Good lord.

Let us journey back to Monday, June 13.  Spencer had his six-month check up with the dermatologist.  She is convinced that his bruising was actually caused by his steroid cream since the hematologist found nothing of concern.  Well, that's nice since last time, in December, she said the bruising had nothing to do with the steroid cream.


Elliott made goofy faces while we waited.

I started my new Tuesday/Thursday work schedule the next day.  I worked Tuesday/Thursday for years and years and then two years ago moved to Thursday/Friday for an entire variety of reasons involving my speech aid's schedule, my sitter's schedule and Michael's work schedule.  But now, due to my aid's schedule changing, I'm going back to Tuesday/Thursday (except for one week in July).

Anyway, at work that day I did a photo shoot with the red bird of paradise right outside of my office.  They don't look this nice after two straight weeks of 110+ plus highs.




Spencer had team and individual pictures taken for swim team that evening.



And Elliott did day #2 of swim lessons.

That night I did a little surgery on this dress.  I bought it for a great price at Ross and love the actual dress, but was not thrilled about the cheap plastic chain sewn on the neckline. 

The dress surgery was necessary because the next day I wore that dress to a funeral.  I had thought about covering the scars with a strand of black beads, but actually went with some flower corsages as camouflage. 

The funeral was very close to Michael's work, so I dropped the kids off with him and they went to brunch while I was there.  It was one of my more creative child care arrangements. 

The funeral was for the wife of the Director of Arizona Boy's State, so my dad, having known them for 40+ years came up from Tucson. 

The kids came to the little reception after and Spencer took these pictures.

He was bothered by the man standing in the background, so, 

I did some creative editing, much to his amusement.


This fake wall isn't half bad, actually.
On Wednesday night I accidentally banged my already sore legs (from lifting weights after no workouts for two weeks) on the couch and I sat down on the couch to rub them.  And then the crew came to help mom by repeatedly bouncing on my lap. 

Thursday was Elliott's half birthday.  I remembered about his monthly pictures when there was about 15 minutes of daylight left.  I have never missed his picture on the 16th in four and a half years so we went screeching outside for a quick photo shoot. 






Official
And finally, there was a heat advisory on Friday the 17th, but we got fed up with being at home so we went and got the car washed and I think went to the grocery store.  Spencer took some very fun pictures in the car wash.





Oh, and on our way back home we saw the license plate.  Nate's Lady.  I was going to text it to Kendra because she is Nate's Lady, but I'm pretty sure I never did.