Picture of the Week - 8/29/2019

Whoa - if anyone ever needed a 3 day weekend it's this girl!  I can't wait for some downtime this weekend!!  Hoping to hit the pool for a while.  Maybe catch a movie.  And I definitely need some good, old fashioned American pizza.  Ha!

Along with all that goodness, we are ALSO gearing up to kick off college football season with a Buckeye game on Saturday that is UNINTERRUPTED on the calendar because both Zane and Beck have the holiday weekend off.  That's some kind of wonderful right there!  Here's the most recent in our O H I O picture series.  

Tonight Spencer has a JV football game.  Tomorrow he's playing in Alabama with the Varsity team.  Bob and I are making the trek over there (about 3.5 hours away) and I'm oddly looking forward to the drive.  It's basically a Friday date night!  :)  (I'm in denial about the fact that it'll probably be 2 am before we get back home...)

Have a fun - and safe - Labor Day weekend everyone!

Go Bucks!

Picture of the Week - 7/18/2009

Spending the week away from my boys (all 5 of them) never gets easier.

I'm in Scotland for the week.  I'm running a 3 day event.  It's exhausting - mentally and physically.  I'm not whining...  just facts.  

And I miss my kids.  Here're are a couple pictures of Zane and Beck from the beach.  It feels like MONTHS ago.  Hard to believe this was just a couple of weeks ago.  

(I will be SO SAD when Beckett finally has both front teeth.  He has been missing one - or the other - front tooth for YEARS now.  I fear this uniquely Beckett look is about to come to an end because I think that missing tooth is about to make an appearance.  It will make me sad...  gotta be honest...)

Back home on Sunday.  I have one more day of work to get through - and then I'm planning on spending an enthralling Saturday in Edinburgh studying for an Accounting exam I have next week.  I'd love to be heading home instead, but plane ticket prices are stupid and Saturday stays save (literally) thousands of dollars...  so I shall study in Scotland.  Then Sunday, I have a date to collect a bunch of hugs from a bunch of pretty cool kids!

Picture of the Week - 7/11/2019

Well - this was a pretty weird week - even by our weird standards!

Bob and Spencer have been gone all week.  Spencer's in the Ohio State Intensive wrestling camp.  I have gotten a few short texts (proof of life) from him every day, but don't have many details.  From the sounds of it, the camp has had some really stellar coaches and the participants have put in a ton of work.  While he's been at camp, Bob stayed up in Ohio to visit his mom and sisters/family.  They come home on Saturday.  Just in time for me to take off to Scotland on Monday.  (Actually the only reason I'm not leaving tomorrow like I normally do is that it would be awkward to leave the other boys home alone all weekend - hahaha!)

I had a bunch of work events and stuff I needed to do down in Buckhead.  That meant that it would have been REALLY hard to handle Zane and Beck camp drop-offs/pick-ups.  Thank goodness for my parents - who stepped up big this week to help!

Quinn was home with me (well for the wee bit of time I was actually in the house this week) and managed to keep himself pretty busy - and knocked out a number of (but NOT all) of the chores I gave him for the week.  Speaking of Quinn...  his MRI came back normal, which is great news.  He's got an EEG scheduled for next Monday and then he can resume normal activities - with more fluids and more salt in his diet.  Here's a fun selfie of us from the other night.  He let me take him out to dinner, no cell phones, and then we went shopping and grabbed milkshakes on the way home.  It's pretty rare that I get 1:1 time with any of them, so that was a special night for me!

The dogs aren't home either - I don't think the house knows what to do between being empty last week while we were at the beach and the UTTER lack of chaos this week.  It's just been so...  unsettling!  Brutus and Ozzie have spent the last 2 weeks at "Board and Train" camp at Rucker training.  I get them back on Saturday.  I'm really anxious to see how they are and what they've learned.  Here's a cute picture of them that the trainer sent.  I really cuddling with those guys at night.  

Mostly, I need my house filled back up with loud and crazy and cuddly.  This quiet and empty is NOT for me!!!

Picture of the Week - 6/27/2019

Some weeks it feels like nothing much happens.  Other weeks it feels like A MILLION things are going on.  This week was the latter.

Newsy updates...

Last Friday was the Wolverine Round-up wrestling tournament.  It was really fun!  We hosted 15 teams in a fast-moving wrestling scramble.  The club made some money and the team had a great showing.  Spencer wrestled very well - at 220 lbs - and is very pumped up for the season.  Couple of pictures of him doing his thing...

Quinn didn't wrestle because he's sidelined waiting on some tests.  I've not said much about what's going on with him because Quinn didn't want to talk about it and it wasn't really my story to tell.  Short story is that he's had 3 episodes of seizure-like activity - all while wrestling.  The last happened on their trip to New Orleans.  Since then he's seen his pediatrician and a neurologist.  They both agree this this is mostly likely vasovagal syncope.  It's a stress/pain/anxiety reaction that essentially causes his body to shut down to protect itself - basically he passes out and then the body realizes the threat is over and he's fine.  In some cases, the limbs spasm, like a seizure.  It's scary as heck to watch!  But the neurologist told us that it's not a true seizure and leaves no evidence in the brain waves.  He had an MRI today to rule out other bad things, but given his physical exam this is likely just a precaution.  And what the heck, our deductible is already gone anyway, so why not.  Quinn's handling the downtime well, but is disappointed that he didn't get to wrestle in the Wolverine round-up and also sad that he's got to skip the team trip up to the OSU intensive camp.  (More on the camp in a couple of weeks.  It's the week after vacation.)

Luckily for Quinn, he was distracted by The Walk this past week.  This is a camp our church hosts.  They took over 900 high school kids and around 250 small group leaders to Panama City for 4 nights.  I have enjoyed hearing his stories since he got back SO much.  It was a week full of fun and fellowship and worship.  I think it was a life-changing kind of week for him.  I know that sounds cliche, but to hear him talk.  Goodness, I'm glad he got to have that experience!  That kids deserves some fun and frivolous!  Check out the adorable picture of Quinn and his girlfriend Lily.  I died of cuteness.  

While Quinn was gone, Spencer sold the project truck.  I think it's REALLY fascinating that he "lost" so much money on this project and NO ONE is upset about it.  I'm not.  Bob's not.  And most importantly, Spencer's not.  When you are 16 and only have a couple thousand dollars to your name, losing the vast majority of it on a project that didn't quite work out could be seen as a failure.  It could squash dreams or make you shy to try another wild idea.  I'm really proud that none of those things are true for Spencer.  He considers the lost money "tuition" because he learned so much about how to work on cars while this was going on over the last nearly 2 years.  I consider it tuition because of the life lessons he learned.  Yes, he now knows how to do a LOT of things to a car that I don't know (Bob doesn't know, my dad doesn't know, etc.), but he also learned how hard it is to budget time, how irritating it is to try to deal with unreliable businesses/people, how expensive shipping is, how to sell things on the internet, that even a grandparent's tolerance of a weird situation runs out after a while, and it's OK to mess up and not quite make it to the end of your goals.  There are actually probably a hundred more little things he's learned along the way.  I'm proud of him for trying.  I'm relieved it's over.  And I can't wait to see what he attempts next.  So long rusty red truck.

Oh - and I almost forgot - we got TP'd for the first time ever.  I don't imagine it'll be the last time with a house full of boys...  

We have 1 more day of work left before we head on vacation for a MUCH needed week away.  I can't wait to sit on that porch listening to the waves and watching for dolphins, adult beverage in hand and all my favorite people with me.  SO close!