Summery holiday

Alex has been having a ball this weekend. Lots of special activities for him...meanwhile, Emma continues to recover from her dehydration episode.

Saturday was the first official meet of the swim season. Grandma Mindy attended the whole meet and reveled in the 90+ degree heat (it was way too hot for me!). Alex did awesome! His relay teams came in first and second. In his individual events, he got 2 seconds and 1 third. He also managed to qualify for the special meet at the end of the season. His butterfly was spectacular. Grandma Mindy said she was surprised to see how much power he had behind his stroke. He improved his time in all three individual races, including 2.4 seconds faster in the fly. Next week, we hope Emma will be swimming as well.

Sunday, Alex and I attended a Round Rock Express (minor league AAA Astros team). Wow, was it hot out there! It reached 98 degrees yesterday and was very humid. Fortunately there was a little breeze at the ballpark. Before the game, Alex got to do a parade around the edge of the field with other players from his baseball league. Then we waited by the locker room entrance and he got several players' autographs on a baseball. After that, Alex played in the kid zone for a while and tried his hand at pitching with a radar gun, climbing the rock wall and jumping on the bungee thing. His fastest pitch was 44 mph. After the shade moved over our seats, we watched the game. We saw a couple home runs and some double plays. Good stuff for our little ball player.

Today, Alex is at the lake with some friends. I intended to take the kids, but we decided the heat and humidity was probably not the best thing for Emma. I was looking forward to it, but we'll try for next year. While Alex is at the lake, I took Emma and Benjamin to a paint your own pottery studio. Emma painted a horse (of course), I painted a unicorn for Emma and Benjamin fingerpainted a tile. Our creations will be ready next weekend. I can't wait to see what they look like after firing.

Emma is mostly better although her appetite has yet to pick up. She should be ready for school tomorrow. I think she misses her friends and teacher. She's playing with one of her good friends right now. They haven't seen each other for 10 days.

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I'm also including a couple pictures from last week. Alex participated in the Advanced Academics (Gifted and Talented by any other name) project night. His project was about baseball history and included a report and game. Emma's picture shows her standing by the gold medal section for accelerated readers. Quite an accomplishment for her! (Notice the ever present cup of Gatorade.)