Greg’s shoulders were bothering him so I started to rub some generic version of Icy/Hot on them. Allison asked if she could have some and I told her it was just for old people. Nathan and Zoey chimed in with questions like, “How do they determine old?”, “Who says it’s just for old people?”
I told them that it mysteriously showed up in a package on the doorstep last year when I turned 32. Kids are kind of gullible and they believed me.
Allison then proceeded to explain to us that we weren’t old, “Are you guys crazy? Old people are stooped over and walk with their legs spread apart all wobbly.” Like this:
I know the video quality isn’t fantastic, but this is her demonstration of an old man walking. I’ve been waiting for Vimeo to load up, but I don’t want to miss my daily deadline.
A brief conversation between a mother and a son while preparing dinner.
Nathan: “Mom, when will Zoey play foosball with me?
Mom: “Have you asked her?”
Nathan, as he rolls his eyes as if thinking, “Is this lady serious?”: “Yes”
Mom: “Did she say, Yes, No, or maybe later to put you off?”
Nathan: “Well, she did say later.”
I stir whatever was cooking while Nathan walks around the table.
Nathan, with a mischievous grin: “I like to think she meant later when she told me, ‘not today’.”
I apologize for the lack of posting. I’ve just been lazy the past week. I have pictures, but they are not uploaded to flickr yet. There may be a video or two in the works, but I had to free up some hard drive space on the kids’ computer (it is the one we use for video editing since they don’t need all of the space videos take up). There is also a point to be made that there just hasn’t been anything worth posting.
During the summer when my brother and I were little, I think we spent almost every day that we could at the city pool. There was a deck for bathing in the sun’s evil rays that was the prime spot to put your towel if you wanted it to stay dry. It never failed that someone had a portable radio that would be drowned out by the sound of everyone splashing and swimming. We would have contests to see who could dive off of the high dive and swim the farthest towards the shallow end without coming up for air, or who could do the best cannon ball and splash the life guards or try soak the people on the upper deck.
This picture is of the newly renovated pool (ok last year) but it looks like they took out the high dive and the slide. The kids who swim there now don’t even realize the fun they are missing.
Because there isn’t a community pool here in our little town, we were lucky to find a lady that offered swimming lessons from her own pool the first summer we moved here. Last week was the last week for swimming lessons and Greg took the video camera with him so that I could see that Allison really does swim like a fish.
Because they have been taking lessons for the past 5 years, Nathan and Zoey just work on perfecting the strokes and dives they have already learned.
Zoey still usually jumps in because on her dives, she goes in knees and belly first.
During “free-time”, the kids take turns surfing across the pool on a boogie board.
How did you spend your summers when you were growing up?
Nathan is too quickly growing up followed closely by his sisters. Sometimes I know that I am way, way to hard on all of them, but I feel like I am even more tough on Nathan. I’m not really sure why this is. I guess it comes down to the fact that he’s the oldest so has to suffer while we try to figure out just what we are doing as parents.
He’s such a good kid. I don’t want him to look back on his childhood and teenage years feeling like we were constantly picking at him. I want him to be able to smile and remember the good times we all have together. I do want him to become a responsible and considerate person. It’s a hard juggling act and sometimes I’m not sure what are the balls that can be dropped and which ones need to stay in the air.
In other news, when we were watching a show on the television the other day the word “sex” was said and Nathan responded with, “gross”. I asked him if he even knew what that meant.
“Yes. Disgusting”, was his comeback. I guess it’s time to have a talk and make sure he has his facts straight. Blah. We’re probably lucky we made it 10 years without having this discussion. Anyone have any helpful advice?
Yesterday was the last day of school and with it came the award ceremonies. We’ll start with Nathan and finish up with Zoey.
It sounds a little weird, but I feel kind of like Nathan floated through school this year. He made decent grades, but didn’t really go out of his way to do anything else. It’s like he was just along for the ride. He finished out the year with all A’s (for AWESOME!). Here he is getting his certificate for AB Honor Roll.
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned or not before, but Zoey loves school. Okay, it’s actually a pretty common theme around here when her name is mentioned between the months of August and May. Zoey cleaned up at the third grade ceremony. She came home with medals for commended performance on TAKS tests and A Honor Roll along with a certificate for doing well on the science pre-TAKS test.
A few days before the awards ceremony her school sent home a note with checkmarks next to the subject she would be getting an award. On the form there was a box marked “Other” and it had 2 written next to it. I kept wondering why the “Other” was written on the paper. If you list everything else out, why not list those also? It’s so the parents and teachers can be surprised when they announce who receives the Citizenship Award. Each teacher nominates a boy and a girl from their class who they think deserves the top honor of the school. Each of the nominees gets a certificate and they all get to stand in front of the assembly together.
Here’s where I was surprised. They read each of the nominees and didn’t even call out Zoey’s name. I know I am biased and all, but what total freakishness to not even be nominated. That’s when the principal started reading statements about the boy and girl that won from their teachers.
“If each class was full of Zoey’s, all of the teachers would have smiling faces every day”
That’s the only line I can remember from what Zoey’s teacher wrote. As Zoey walked up to get her award, I looked over at her teacher and she was wiping tears from her eyes. It’s well known what an impact your child has on your own life, but it’s pretty amazing to realize the affect they can have on others.
All in all a pretty good ending for a school year that had such a awkward beginning.
I know, these photos aren’t super old but they are appropriate. Yesterday, I asked Nathan how it felt to be a decade old. He said it was a great day, so being 10 is going to be so much fun. It was report card day and he earned all A’s. He got to play second base last night instead of catcher*. His team won their ball game by someone stealing home in the last inning (during his at bat). It was a very close game with the final score being 4-3. We had cupcakes and sodas for his team after the game. Then we went for pizza.
Too put an almost perfect end to a birthday, just as we were sitting down to our table a guy dressed like a 40′s gangster walked into the restaurant. He sat down his hat and then walked over to our table and started pulling foam balls out of Nathan’s ears. Then he did some card tricks, one where he had Zoey write her name on a card, then punched his pen through a corner, pulled the pen out and “TaDa!” the hole was gone.
As he was doing another set of tricks, Allison started heckling the guy, “Hey! I want a turn! Don’t forget me!”, but he was involved in his next setup. I hushed her and she watched entranced as he dropped some coins into an invisible change purse. Then his pizza arrived and he sat down to eat, end of show.
Or was it? As he was leaving, Allison called out to him, “Hey! Are you magic?”. Then he started to pull the foam balls from her ears and nose. She was tickled pink.
I am so glad Nathan had a good day. I can’t believe he’s ten.
As you can see, there’s a new banner up. Nathan’s tenth birthday is on Thursday and it’s just a small glimpse of him through the years (10 of them!!!). Maybe I’ll write a blathery sentimental post on Thursday. You know, the one that says, “Where did my baby go? He can’t be in double digits already. It seems like just yesterday that we were bringing him home from the hospital with us and now, we can see glimpses of what he will be like in 10 more years. He’s such a great kid.” You know, stuff like that.
Yesterday we got Nathan a sort of early birthday present.
It’s a big change, because we haven’t had a real pet in our family. We sort of thought that three children were a houseful enough. Greg and I talked about it and feel like ten is a responsible sounding age. It doesn’t hurt that LT is awfully cute. He’s an eight week old chocolate lab and Nathan hasn’t stopped smiling since yesterday afternoon.
To see more photos you can click on each of the pictures above.
Nathan got into making his model, picked out everything he wanted to build it out of and how he wanted to build it. He really wanted to put some men on it for realism. The trouble was that the only small action figures we could find were green army men.Things might have gone slightly different at the Alamo if the soldiers had used grenades and machine guns instead of rifles and knives.
Occasionally, when I drop Nathan off at school, I will call out, “Bye, Nathan! I LOVE YOU!”. Yelling out the last part before he has a chance to shut the door all of the way. It’s pretty fun. Is it cruel that I get a kick out of slightly embarrassing him?
I guess it’s not just me. Yesterday, I found out that when Greg picks Nathan up from school sometimes he has Allison yell out the open window that, “Nathan has a girlfriend!”. I can only imagine that for an almost 10 year old boy this must be horrifying. When combined with his mother professing her love in the mornings, therapy will no doubt be in his future.
When the family was replaying the story for me, Greg told me how Allison decided to change it up a bit and yelled out, “Allie has a boyfriend and his name is SPIDERMAN!”
She decided that she absolutely needed a belt with this outfit. When Greg went to take the picture she insisted that he wait for her to get her ring. A girl’s got to have the right accessories.
My conversation with Nathan about how great his day was at school yesterday.
“The teachers had so much stuff, it’s a good thing they shared with us. Eating all of that candy and cake and other things could have made them gain about 20 pounds each.”
Chuckling, I asked, “Oh really? The teachers told you that?”
