June 27 - Championship Meet Series

Julia competed in her first championship meet series over the weekend. The reserve meet (B cut times) was on Saturday. There were approx. 400 swimmers there from the league competing. The meet was held in a natatorium (indoor) about 25min away, in an 8-lane pool. Teams were assigned one of two gyms to hang out in in-between events. Because there are so many swimmers and parents, spectators are supposed to cheer on your own child and then move out to make room for the next wave of parents. Our team had a lot of swimmers and we had a big area set up. Hannah and Julia hung out together all day, playing cards, video games, etc. They also had several friends there from other teams and had fun walking around saying hello to people. 

Julia's first event was free, she did well but was slightly slower than her best time. Next up was fly-hot potato she was on absolute FIRE! She dropped almost FOUR SECONDS off her best time. It was simply incredible. She won her heat and was incredibly proud of herself. According to the touch pad, she missed the A cut by 0.07 seconds. So close! Hannah also had an amazing race and dropped almost 4 seconds. 

Sunday was the championship meet. These are for swimmers that made the A cut times. There were approx. 600+ swimmers at this event, the gym was way more crowded with parents and kids than Saturday. Julia qualified in backstroke at a dual meet during the regular season and once again-ABSOLUTELY ROCKED it!! She dropped TWO SECONDS, won her heat and placed 7th overall, scoring points for the Orcas!! We also discovered (after the meet) that she had actually qualified for the champ meet in fly. The touch pad time was not official...oops. Well, now JD and I know to wait for the official times to be posted and check the heat sheets more carefully. Either way, we are super proud of her. And Luke is such a trooper-he is dragged to all of these swim meets with minimal complaints. I do let him play as many video games as he wants while he's there as well as eat whatever snacks he wants. He's excited to try out for the Orcas next year and he told me last night 'Mom, I'm going to be a backstroker too.' Adorable!

Lane 1: at the bottom

Butterfly (Julia, lane 4 - Hannah, lane 7: both in red caps)

Backstroke (Julia, lane 2: red cap)

June 22 - Comicpalooza

JD and the kids spent father's day downtown at Comicpalooza (I was home...cleaning). Comicpalooza is a comic book convention with all sorts of fun activities for kids. They had a BMX expo, famous cartoonists giving drawing lessons and lots of other activities. They all had a great time!

Pixel Update
Well, Pixel's time with our family is coming to an end. JD's friend Paul is going to adopt her and we are handing her over to him this Friday. The kids and JD will be very sad, especially Luke. Every time I see him, he is carrying the kitten around (he even slept with her last night) and is constantly kissing her and telling me how much he loves her. We have told the kids she is going with Paul and they seem ok with the change...we'll see how it goes. 

In other news, Amelia has a ruptured right anal gland and infected left anal gland. The vet isn't sure how it happened since it's more common with small dogs/cats and overweight large dogs (she's not overweight). So she's on antibiotics and pain meds and not feeling well. Poor baby. 

Comicpalooza

Karma waits for Pixel to finish eating..so she can try to steal her food (I'm onto you Karma!)

June 20 - Golden Girl

 Saturday was the last dual swim meet of the season. We have been really lucky with weather this year and only had 2 hot weekends, last weekend and this past weekend. This time I was prepared with a huge cooler full of ice, cold drinks and lots of fruit (I had a small cooler the previous weekend but we were still melting). Julia had a great meet and had a lot of fun with her friends playing cards in between events. JD had a blast swimming in the parent relay. Go JD! I will load the video on youtube and will post it soon. Next weekend is the reserve and championship meet series and then she is done with swimming until next winter. It will be time to switch into soccer mode. I love this age and all the activities. We are busy, but life is good. 

Julia & Big D

Crazy 8's

Our golden girl

While Julia was a practice this week, Anakin/Luke insisted in playing on the playground in the extreme heat...fun times

June 18 - Anakin

Week 2 of summer is complete and the kids have developed a good rhythm. After breakfast, they get dressed, brush their teeth, clean their rooms and complete about 30min of math in their workbooks (Luke has already completed his kinder workbook!). We also decided to work on cleaning up the play room this week as it has become apparent in recent months that they don't play in there. I set up a series of baskets: baby sister, Julia, Anakin (more on that later) and Donate. I literally dumped all the toys in the middle of the room and told them they had until Friday to go through them. After that, I would be donating anything left in the middle of the room. That definitely motivated them to go through everything! They worked on the pile for about 15-20min a day and then afterward it was camp time. Julia did a kitchen chemistry camp at the local university this past week and loved it. They made slime, lava lamps, ice cream and several other experiments. Next week they will be doing 'mom camp' at my neighbors house and the following week is Space Center Houston. This will be their first time attending SCH and hopefully they love it!

So...Luke is obsessed with Star Wars. Everything about Star Wars, he loves. This past week he has requested we call him 'Anakin.' Too funny!

Anakin discovered how to fart on demand the other night and thought it was the funniest thing in the world

Blurry picture, but play room clean up! (his basket is labeled 'Anakin')

June 13 - Pixel

JD picked Luke up from camp on Thursday afternoon. When the car pulled into the driveway, Luke opened the backdoor, quickly tossed his backpack inside and announced 'we saw a kitten in the front bushes and we're trying to catch it.' Julia and Hannah were here at the time and immediately ran outside to help. I took a few deep breaths and silently thought.....oh, please let this be someone's pet that got loose. Fast forward 30min-JD caught the kitten and she was in the house. He proceeded to go to the pet store to purchase wet cat food, a litter box and cat toys. I posted a picture of the kitten on our neighborhood website (which is kind of like a facebook for neighborhoods) hoping someone would claim her.

Julia and Hannah went door to door to ask if anyone lost a kitten. Well, no dice. No one lost this kitten. Luke and I took her to the vet on Friday and $195 later, the vet confirmed it's a female kitten, approx 6 weeks old and less than a pound (based on the dirt on her, she had been clearly living outside). She tested negative for feline leukemia and they gave her the first round of vaccinations. 

JD grew up with both cats and dogs and loves both. I grew up with dogs and to be totally honest-cats completely gross me out. Animals should not be walking/laying on kitchen counters and the kitchen table where food is served and eaten (JD assures me they can be trained not to do this). The smell of wet cat food would make me gag prior to pregnancy and now...there are just no words. And the litter box....ugh. I am very sensitive to the smell of my house, I do not want it to smell like animals. I clean all the time (vacuum, counters, etc).

Most people that I know have litter boxes tucked away in their laundry room. We don't have a laundry room so it's currently in the downstairs bathroom. Dogs think that cat poop is Godiva chocolate so we have to keep them away from the box. To keep the litter box smell away, it needs to cleaned out several times a day. One of the joys of pregnancy? Pregnant women cannot handle litter, it's toxic. JD has been great cleaning it out, but honestly it needs to be done at least 3x a day to keep the house smelling normally and that isn't happening (there is a cotton Febreze plug-in in the room which normally overpowers any smell...but not this). And the dogs..Amelia was socialized around Grammie's cats from when she was a puppy so she could literally care less. Karma is extremely interested in the kitten and follows her around everywhere.

JD would consider her behavior 'stalking' and thinks she wants to kill her. So almost all day it's him or the kids yelling at Karma to back away from the kitten. It's exhausting. 

I have been very clear with JD and the kids that this is a foster kitten only-there is one person who ends up being responsible for the animals in this house, and her name is Mom. And Mom has zero desire to take on a cat. Do they think I have a cold, black heart where this kitten is concerned? Yes. Are they right? Probably, I haven't even touched the kitten. I know if we found a puppy in the bushes my reaction would be 100% different. Now...are they taking me seriously? I don't think so. JD snuggles with the kitten every night on the couch, he praises her for using the litter box, plays with her and has been to the pet store several times buying her stuff. The kids are absolutely in love-especially Luke. JD and the kids even named her Pixel the other day. ARG!!!

JD and Pixel

Karma sees her for the first time

June 10 - Bee Bots

We survived the first week of summer-yahoo! The girls had early morning swim practice followed by Camp Happy, so Tammy and I carpooled again this year. The girls had a great time at camp and especially loved crazy hair day-they had blue hair (and Hannah had hers also styled like cupcakes, adorable!). Every year the girls hand out swaps to their friends on the last day of camp. Swaps are little crafts attached to safety pins. Usually, Tammy and I put them together. This year, since the girls are older, we let them pick what they wanted to do and they did the project mostly themselves. They wrote 'You Make MISO Happy' with their names and troop numbers and then attached it little miso soup cutouts (that they cut out and glued themselves...it was a lot of gluing!). They came out really cute. The big 'cookout' and skits were today and the girls can't wait for camp again next year. 

Luke did a half day camp this week at the local university. He has a new Star Wars backpack that he picked out for kindergarten and insisted on bringing it to camp everyday packed with his snack. Since this was a half day camp, he spent the mornings with JD at work. He has a Star Wars kindergarten math workbook and he's been very studious in completing 5 pages every day. In fact-some mornings he has finished his pages immediately after breakfast before 7.30am. It's only the first week of summer and he's over halfway through the workbook. I think he'll be on the first grade one in less than a week. It really is amazing how kids can be so different. Trying to get Julia to do any sort of workbook is like pulling teeth and Luke loves it. 

In Bee Bots, Luke learned how to program these little robots. He had to create programs to spell simple words, get through a track he set up and do various other tasks. He LOVED the camp!

Hanging out with dad at the office

Mr. Studious

Crazy Hair Day

June 8 - Summer Vacation

It's officially summer vacation! The last day of school was last Thursday and the kids had fun their last week of school. Julia's class had a pizza and water party (we filled a bunch of coolers with water and the kids brought in water sprayers and ran around..spraying each other). Luke had a bittersweet day-he was excited to be done with naps at Montessori but he LOVES his teacher and didn't want to leave her (he has asked to go back to school every day to visit her). 

We went to our first Astros game last week (night before the last day of school). JD's old boss was in town and invited us. Julia is all about sports and loved the game. 

Luke was more interested in the hot dog, nachos and cotton candy. We stayed until the top of the 7th inning and saw the Astros hit a home run-yahoo! It was a fun night.

This week is the first full week of summer camps for the kids. Julia is at Camp Happy (girl scout camp) and having fun. It is an outdoor camp and we luckily have nice weather for a change-it's also extremely hot. So, after swim practice in the morning followed by 7H outside, she's been pretty tired the last few nights. Luke is doing a robotics camp called Bee Bots at the local college and he LOVES it. He doesn't want to leave when I come to pick him up!

Astros Mickey

Last day of school tradition-mom and daughter pedicures

Luke & Ms. Cheryl