Summery update

Benjamin is doing great after his hernia repair. It took him a good week to bounce back and not need pain medication. A little longer than I expected, but he's getting around fine now. You can't keep a three year old down for long. He also saw his nephrologist last week for a routine check-up. All is status quo and his labs looked "perfect" according to the doctor. He says you can't mess with perfection. Benjamin's medicines are doing their job.

We are all done with swim team for the summer which is happy and sad. Very happy because there are no more 5 a.m. wake-ups on Saturday mornings, but a little sad because we all enjoy getting going during the week. At the last swim meet of the year, Emma improved her time in all 3 individual races which is a great accomplishment. Alex qualified to swim at the special UT meet in the individual medley. I figure that's a nice race to qualify for since it takes about 1 1/2 minutes - he gets his time in the pool versus doing a 15 second free style race and you're done. We all enjoyed attending the meet at UT. They swim in the pool where numerous Olympians have swam including Michael Phelps, Aaron Peirsol, Dara Torres and Janet Evans. Pretty cool to see his name up in lights on the board.

He's in lane one at the top of this picture.

Over the last 2 weeks, we've been finding new activities to keep us busy...The kids have had several play dates, gone to a cool (literally) spring fed pool, seen a couple free movies, etc. It's a challenge to find things to beat the heat, but we're managing. Sometimes you just have to deal with the heat which has been a little more manageable recently as it has been much more overcast. We finally found a really cool playground this week that I've been trying to find for a couple years. I knew the general vicinity of it, but never could find it. It was worth it once we got there. The kids had fun playing hide and seek, swinging on the tire swing, and ate a nice picnic lunch. We also went to a science and nature center. The kids had a ball creek stomping, viewing rescued animals, digging for dinosaur bones and using fun scales to weigh shells, antlers, etc. Benjamin commented when we went into the building housing small animals, "This place smells awful!"

Alex is leaving next Tuesday to head up to Grandma and Grandpa Hested's. My dad has sent out a very full itinerary including 2 trips downtown - one for a Cubs game and one to see a Harry Potter exhibit and the new glass enclosed observatory at the Sears Tower, several days at the cabin, mini-golfing with Aunt Dude, and a day with Grandma and Grandpa Buckley. He better watch out or else he might have some stowaways in his suitcase!

Since Alex will be gone for awhile, we decided to do our school shopping early. Benjamin reminded me that he needed a backpack and a lunch box since he will be going to preschool in the fall. We showed him several lunch box options, but he knew immediately and very definitively that he had to have the Scooby Doo lunch box. He could not be convinced otherwise. I guess there are worse things out there...