Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

We have some pretty great neighbors. We live in an association so of course there are a few that are sticklers for all the tiny little rules and want huge dues for silly reasons and things like that. But for the most part, we get along really well with the neighbors. Many of them have kids our kids' age, which makes it even better. This past Saturday night we had our block party. One of our neighbors even got in touch with her volunteer firefighter friend and they brought a firetruck for the kids to explore. My kids thought that was pretty cool. They got to try on a hat, climb the outside of the truck, and even hold an axe. We had a great time.

Thanks to the volunteers who took the time to let these kids play on the truck! What a great community we live in.

Other Stuff

We went to the beach a couple times! We went with the neighbors one time, and I'm not sure I got my money's worth out of buying the State Park Tag for my truck, as that was the only time we used it. Oops. I'm going to have to work on that next year. My girls get along with their neighborhood friends brilliantly, and I love the women we live near. We get along famously with almost everyone. We went a couple times too at The Conference Grounds, where my Grandparents have been camping since they worked summers there in the 70's. The girls are turning into quite the water bugs. They love diving into the waves and playing in the sand. 

We spent a couple nights this summer staying up late. The first time Hubby's sister and her husband came and helped the girls catch fireflies. We have a fire pit in the backyard so we had a cookout both nights, with s'mores of course. The second time we did sparklers and the girls got to have glow bracelets. Hubby showed them some constellations. Eventually I want to get to the point where we're using that fire pit almost every weekend. I love sitting out there with them. 

Hubby's other sister lives in MN. She was home for a while this summer and my mother-in-law wanted to go to the zoo with all the grandkids. We love the local zoo. They have a budgie cage, and I think the birds are getting more used to people because they will land on you with almost no fear. I even saw one dive into a guy's pocket! One landed on my shoulder and I didn't even have a stick to feed them with. 

Most of the grandkids, minus 2 babies and 2 on the way. 

Our oldest nephew with my mother-in-law

We went to a nearby fair. They had a cute little puppet show and the main character did a 'meet and greet' at the end. A and C went up to give him a hug. We wandered through the horse barns because I'm raising horse lovers after my own heart. There was one horse who was very friendly, didn't mind all kinds of people petting it, so we got a picture with it.

S and C are having fun, I promise. I don't know what's up with the scowls. 

Those were some of the activities we got to do this summer. I've said it to many people this week who've asked if I stay at home (seems that question comes up a lot as kids go back to school). I am so blessed to spend my days with these beauties. We had a great summer.

School

Last year, C had a really, really difficult year. She came home on the very first day with names of children who had been mean. On the FIRST DAY. This year, we're to the 4th day and she hasn't had any reports of anyone being mean. Weird, yes. But no one has been mean. And we've been there for 4 days and I've received lengthy emails from the teacher explaining things from class or praising the kids on how well they did twice already. I have warm and fuzzy feelings that this year is going to go much better than last.



A has some kids in her class who were trouble last year, but she has glowing reports about how much she likes her teacher so I hope that she will have a better year than last year as well. Last year I found it amazing that A learned anything considering how disruptive some of the children in her class were. That makes me proud that she can work in a difficult environment, actually. She and C both made me very proud that they learned so much in such difficult classes last year. I'm hoping for a break for them both this year. Hopefully some of the trouble children have reigned it in a little over the summer.


A and C are in a brand-new school in our district. This building is just beautiful. The classrooms all have high ceilings, the playground is really cool (though I won't be playing on it as nearly everything spins), and you can just tell the teachers are excited to be there. The grounds are beautiful too. You know you're a parent when you call the school beautiful. But the kids agreed with me, so that's something.

S is in an advanced class at her school. The program didn't move anywhere so she is still at her old school. She doesn't much care for shuttling over there but she didn't have to last year so now she's got a taste of what over half her class had to do both years. She loves her teacher too, but she gets frustrated easily if she can't figure a bit of homework out. My hope for this year is that she learns new ways to tackle things if the first way doesn't work out. I already know she'll like her classmates and love her teacher, since she knew them well already last year.

So I know I said these would be about summer for a while, but I'm feeling proud of my kids and how they like school and get along with everyone they meet so this one is sneaking in there.

Something Sad

I had a melancholy day today so to match that I'll share our melancholy news from this summer. Our dog is a Lhasa Apso, a dwarf breed with a long back and short, stocky legs.

As such, Benji belongs to a group of dog breeds that are susceptible to something called Intervertebral Disc Disease, a disorder where the discs around the spine swell and put pressure on the spine, which causes pain and, if left untreated, paralysis. 

I had heard of this in daschunds and corgis, dogs notoriously long-backed, but I had never thought of it for Benji. Turns out Lhasas are prone to it as well. 

When it first presents itself, IDD can look like abdominal pain. When Benji couldn't jump on the couch and yipped when we tried to pick him up, we thought he had colic or something like it. When it got bad enough that he couldn't walk on his back legs, we knew that even if it was colic it was bad enough that he needed to see a vet. Of course it was a Sunday, and our normal vet was not open. So we had to drive all the way to, and pay for, an emergency vet. 

Benji got bad enough that he lost all feeling to his back half. Outside of neural surgery, he didn't and still doesn't have very good odds that he'll ever get complete control back. Now, though, he has control over his tail, some muscle control over his legs but not enough to stand, and some control over his bladder to the point where he won't have an accident but we do have to help him go to the bathroom. #2 he doesn't seem to be able to hold, so we have to get him out on a schedule, but he does seem to know if he's going to do #2, so we've been able to make it outside just in time a couple times. 

So far we feel we've been able to still provide him with a pretty good quality of life despite his troubles.  If we ever get to the point where we feel we can't take care of him well enough or keep his quality of life high we have researched a couple rescue hospitals we can go to. 

Just now he's getting off of bed rest so he's starting to drag his buns around. He's getting pretty quick considering he has to waddle (we say he looks like a penguin with a big rear end). We're also planning to build him a wheelchair so he can get around the yard and go on walks. 

So that was the bad thing that happened this summer. Mostly the summer was good but this was definitely a bummer. 

Bookends

I realized as I came on here to write that I've book-ended our summer with these blog posts. The last one was just after Memorial Day and now it's just after Labor Day. I don't know if it was a particularly busy summer but I didn't get anything written. So for the sake of the fact that I'd like to keep this as a kind of diary of my kids' childhoods, there will be a few posts in a row all about summer.

We. Went. To. Disney. It was the best week of the year, hands down. We LOVED it. The girls were better behaved than I ever dared to hope for. We stayed in a time share condo with my entire family. My parents, my brother and his girlfriend, and my sister all went too.

I have so much to say and I have access to something like 600 pictures, between the 3 of us who took a lot of pictures. But I won't bore you with that many. In fact, here's a link to an album of them.

Believe it or not, we took one vehicle down. We stuffed 10 of us and all our luggage in a 15-passenger van and drove for 24 hours straight. This even went better than I thought it could possibly go. We did learn the truth behind the joke-term 'hangry', or anger and irritation from hunger. We would be growly and impatient and then we'd stop at a restaurant and all be much better.

We spent Monday in the Magic Kingdom. To give you a taste of how well the day went, we were in the front of the line to get into the park. We didn't see a single line until we had been on 4 rides. We walked right onto every ride for the first hour. It was amazing. We opened the park up in the morning and then left as it closed to the general public at night.

We took a couple days off from parks to get some actual vacationing in. We swam (our complex had a water park), played volleyball and tennis, and chilled in our room. We also went to Downtown Disney, where they have all kinds of shops, one of which was LegoLand. That was pretty cool. We ate out and in and enjoyed each others' company.

Thursday we went to Universal. We had a good time there too, but it was hampered a bit by the fact that a few of us got sick on the very first ride. The Harry Potter theme park was awesome, and so was that ride, but those of us prone to motion sickness (myself included) got REALLY sick on that first ride. That combined with the fact that the two little girls couldn't go on very many rides meant many of us had less fun at Universal than at Disney. But it was still a fun day. I can't wait for the day I can go back and explore Harry Potter World even more. I am quite a nerd for that stuff.

Friday was the Animal Kingdom. My wonderful mother treated us all to breakfast with the characters. This meant we were there before the park even opened that day. The breakfast was delicious and we got a few signatures and the girls got pictures with the characters. They even got to dance with Goofy.  Then we got to get in line inside the park to get to the safari first (the thing we wanted to see the most). We were on the first truck out and got some really awesome pictures of the animals.

We piled in the van and came home. It was a surprisingly great ride in spite of everyone being really, really tired! We have such great memories from that week and I hope the girls are old enough to remember it well.