A Small Hurdle

There haven't been too many things in the past few weeks that have brought me to tears.  There are days that I miss my best friends and shed silent tears on the way home from playdates.  I miss my church.  We miss our soccer friends.  But the one thing that I have put off, dreaded really, has been picking a new pediatrician. 

We LOVE our pediatrician.  Present tense.  Not just because he is an excellent doctor, but because he is a dear friend!  We love him and his family.  His wife is my dearest friend.  Our sons have been best friends since they were infants.  So picking a doctor for me is something I don't take lightly.  But, today I had to bite the bullet.  Tegan is sick.  Again.  I sense something is wrong with him.  Not seriously wrong, but something needing some attention.  I have nothing other than my motherly intuition to tell me that something is wrong.  So, today, with tears in my eyes I called to make an appointment with a doctor other than Alan Cooper.  I hope our new doctor doesn't think I'm crazy when I cry through our whole first appointment!

The week in review

It has been an interesting week in our house!  We discovered a new BMX bike track about 30 minutes from our house that we just had to try out!!!  Surprisingly, Davian never hesitated getting on the track and was "gettin' air" before we knew it!  Tegan?  Well...its not really suited for training wheels.  So he found other ways to get air.

This week also was the beginning of a new school year.  Davian was really ready to get back into school, even if he wouldn't admit it!  Picking on your little brother is only fun for so long.  He was also thrilled that he wouldn't have to wear those blasted collared shirts anymore.  He could actually pick out whatever he wanted to wear to school.  Austin and I, on the other hand, were not so excited about having to school shop.  SMOD is just so much easier!

Here is my big guy on the first day of school! 

I think his teacher is going to be a perfect fit this year!  After all, if she can do this to my exuberant, energetic guy, she gets an A+ in our book!



Tegan also started school this week.  Pre-K at home with mommy.  We have started studying all the letters of the alphabet, learning how to write them.  We go on word hunts for words that start with the sound.  This week we started with the letter "L".  We are also learning our sights words.  We are starting out slowly, only 1-2 per week.  He is really enjoying and I am too!  All of our resources are coming from 1+1+1=1.  It is an amazing site with FREE home school resources!  LOVE IT!

Here Tegan is underlining his sight words for the week: I, see

(This sight word book comes from Hubbard's Cupboard)

Here he is sorting animals that live on land or in the sea.  We were reading lots of books about the ocean.  

Next week (or rather, this week since I am finishing this post SO late), starts soccer.  We can't wait!!!!

LegoLand (aka Heaven to my little guys)

Here is a picture walk of our day at LegoLand! 

Planning the day with their maps.

Tegan loved driving the cars.

Watch out!  They gave Davian a driver's license.

The highlight for the boys was seeing the Lego Star Wars display!  It was fascinating!

Another quick check of the map to make sure we were on course.

Somehow Cecy and I ended up in Las Vegas!

Shark attack!!!  It is amazing that all of these things were built from Legos!  We could even touch them to prove that they were in fact Legos!  Crazy!

Again, he LOVES driving the cars!  This was his second trip to the race track.

Cecy and I playing white water rafting on Kinect.  I left off some of the more embarassing pictures.

Map check!

They had a station to build and race cars.  We spent a lot of time in here. 

Our race cars.  Don't be too impressed with our creations.  The one on the right was donated to Davian by a expert builder who was done for the day.  The one in the middle was mine and the car on the left was Tegan's

 

What a fun day!  We can't wait to go back!

Reunited after 17 years!

The summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school was one to remember.  I spent that summer living with a family in a small town in Mexico.  I learned how to speak Spanish, eat tortillas and homemade salsa, and drink Yolis out of a plastic bag.  I also learned about friendship, family, and love.

I was blessed to stay with an amazing family of four girls led by a strong man and his hard working wife.  Cecy was also in high school that summer.  She seized an opportunity presented by her teacher to bring in an American student.  Little did this family know that their American student would be a crazy chic from Michigan!

Cecy and I became fast friends.  She was patient and kind with my very poor (very, very poor) Spanish.  We had lots of fun that summer.  I probably had more fun than was allowed for a 15 year old!

We stayed in touch over several years with visits interspersed during vacations.  However, with the passage of time, I lost contact with this sweet family.  Through the years, I would come across the photo albums of my time in Mexico and wonder where they were and how they were doing.

About 10 years ago, Cecy got in contact with me through my mom.  I learned that they were in the US now.  Again we fell out of contact. Then about a year ago, Cecy found me on Facebook!  The family was in the throws of tragedy with their patriarch in the hospital dying from cancer.  This wasn't their first battle with cancer as it turns out.  One of the four girls also has courageously faced the demon and still suffers from the repercussions.  Shortly after our Facebook reunion, Abel lost his battle with cancer.  My heart aches that I wasn't able to see him again this side of heaven.

As it turns out, when our family moved from one coast the other, we were able to reunite with Cecy and her family for a fantastic weekend!  More of those details to come.  It was wonderful to see them and hug them again.  It was that weird feeling that no time had passed and yet so much has happened in both of our lives. 

Now our families will enjoy many years of friendship! 

Stay-cation Day 1

This year we decide to have a family "Stay"cation. My brother, sister-in-law and their girls drove across the country from Oklahoma with the boat in tow to stay at our house for the week. The boys were very excited about seeing their cousins. Davian especially was excited to learn how to fish from his Uncle Andy.
The lessons began this afternoon in the backyard. Uncle Andy hooked up the new fishing poles with nuts at the ends of the lines so the kids could practice their casting technique. The kids are quite the experts at catching the playhouse, grass, and sometimes each other!

Soon each of the kids had scored his or her own chair and were catching "big ones" in the yard. They had a blast pretending to fish, but they can't wait for the real thing!!!

And what would a day of fishing be without ice cream to finish it off?

We can't wait to see what Day 2 will bring!