The Puddles

I am trying to put up a bunch of pictures of the summer.  I haven’t been able to get to all of them because we were so busy this summer.  I’ve got a bunch more to put up.  The kids love seeing themselves up on the blog.  I didn’t totally realize why I wanted to put so many posts up until around 5pm when I realized that we hadn’t heard from the doctor yet and I was actually disappointed.  I realize I was trying to distract myself with good thoughts and memories instead of watching the clock.  I’m glad my subconscious has a built-in coping mechanism to deal with stress!  Gordon is spending the day with us tomorrow so I have an awesome way to get through the day tomorrow without thinking of anything but fun.

“Go ahead and eat your lunch, Ainsley.”

“Freaky, freaky, what?” retorts Ainsley as she throws me a peace sign and puts a smirk on her face. And did I mention that she insists on being called Lena all day today.  Yeah . . . it is that kind of day.

We spent the day at Papa and Grandma Lake’s house in Brenham.  They found the perfect water slide for my little troop.  No one has to wait.  Of course, they have the best sledding hill for this.  Unfortunately, Ben was building up speeds that I thought would send him into the fence.  We followed up with fireworks at the country club where I tried my camera with the fireworks setting.  It was cool to try it out.  I think they turned out cool.  We had a great time.  From the last water slide picture you can tell that Ainsley was not ready to quit. That’s the mark of a good day.

Ben

Ainsley

Madie

Waiting for swim lessons to be over

Thank goodness swim lessons are over.  They learned a ton.  Ben swims like a fish now.  Ainsley at least as some success as saving her life. And Madie learned to dive.  A good summer for lessons.  But two hours a day for two weeks was enough for me.

A month ago, Ben decided to dump half a container of baby powder on his head to look like an old person.  Hilarious, Ben!  Just don’t do it again.  Besides you looking cute it took me forever to get all of the powder out of the carpet and the bathroom.

This happened on Sunday night at dinner . . .

” . . . and they had a camouflage chair.  They had everything camo,” declares Ben.

“Ben, why don’t you finish eating?  You will have Mom and Dad all morning long and you can tell us everything about Bass Pro Shop then,” begs Mom.

“It’s ok, Mom.  I’ll just finish tonight and then you can ask me questions about it all morning.”

and then Ben kept right on talking. Papa Grace took Ben to the Bass Pro Shop last week for the first time and you would have thought Ben had gone to Disney World.  He talked non-stop about it during dinner.  I called Chris back to the dinner table to listen to Ben go on and on about how awesome it was.  It was good to see Ben light up like that.

They are all finally in bed.  It has been a rather long day for everyone.  We had so many adventures and the day started so early in the morning that it almost feels like we tried to cram a week’s worth of adventures into one day.

Ben, Chris and I left for the hospital this morning at 6:15am.  We had to turn around once because we forgot Ben’s shoes (when you carry the boy out to the car because he is still sleeping it is easy to forget the shoes) but we still managed to get there by 7:30am.  The doppler took over an hour to complete.  Ben asked at one point why it was taking so long.  I told him that he only had one heart but two kidneys so it takes twice as long to look at your kidneys.  He did really awesome and kept really still until the bitter end.  Every time we have ever had a doppler/ultrasound done, the tech always has to go to the back to check with the doctor to see if he/she got all of the pictures that the doctor wants.  Then they either come back and take some more or they tell us that Ben’s done.  This time she came back to get more pictures, went and checked with the doc again and this time she brought back the doc with her and took even more images. We actually got to see the “man behind the curtain.”  Like on the Wizard of Oz, we actually got to the see the wizard today.  But just like Dorothy we didn’t learn anything from him today.  We will have to wait to talk to our cardiologist.  I don’t like waiting.  Chris says that he already knows that something is wrong (six year old boys should not have high blood pressure and require betablockers and ace-inhibitors), so now he is just waiting to hear what it is.  True.  But hearing only bad news does get old sometimes.  I could go for some good.

The girls had the time of their lives this morning.  Let’s just say it had something to do with meeting the sheriff and learning about taking fingerprints.  Call and ask Madie or Ainsley (for the really dramatic version) for the rest of the story.  They have been telling it all day to everyone they meet.

So we all had adventures.  And to top the day off Chris and the puddles headed to Brenham to spend time with the grandparents while I cleaned the house and then received a tutoring session on a new software program for work.  We are all exhausted from the day.  Everyone has gone to sleep already and with good reasons.  I am going to go lock the car (Madie reminded to do that tonight.  All part of her story for the day.) and go to bed.  Tomorrow will come soon enough.

We are at Texas Children’s Hospital today for a doppler of the kidneys and blood and urine work. It is hard to be Ben today.