Regan's First Swim Meet

It was Regan's very first swim meet and she was excited! She has really enjoyed swim team, and I'm SO happy she's found her "thing"! But, neither one of us was very excited about the 6am start time! Yikes. Riley spent the night with a friend, so Regan and I were up BEFORE the crack of dawn, and headed to the pool. Since it was the first one, I had no idea what to expect, but I tell you, I had no idea there were that many people involved in swimming, and at 6am. We got checked in, and got her races written down on her arm, and she got to sit in the "pit" with her friends and her lunch and wait for her races. When it was her first race, freestyle, I couldn't tell which one was her! All the girls wear the same suit, with the same swim cap, and it seems ALL the girls have pink googles!! So I didn't start my camera until she was done swimming. Anyway, I did get her on the backstroke, which is not her favorite stroke, but she did pretty good. I was just so proud of her for getting out there and giving it her all! I am so happy that she is loving this! So, here's the video of her doing backstroke:

Last Day of School

For Regan's last day of school, she had a recital in each class. She was not real happy with this school, and was so anxious for it to be over. This was in music class, the kids played a few songs on the recorder that they learned this year.

Piano Recital

It's that time again! Piano recital. This one was L O N G, but there were some really good performances. Here's Regan playing Russian Sailor Dance:



And here's Riley playing The Theme Song from The Office (he loves this show, and has wanted to play the song for a while now, he got it about 2 weeks before the recital):



And my favorite song that he did, Riding the Wind:



After the recital, we went to East Side Cafe for the best dinner ever (seriously). After the kids at, they went out back to the gardens to play with the chickens and see the huge sunflowers.

Austin Symphony

Austin Symphony Day

Regan's music teacher always organizes these music field trips for her class and her piano students. It sounded like fun, so I made Riley come too, and it was fun. The Symphony had cameras set up so you could see each instrument as it was being played, and they had an announcer come out at the beginning and introduce each instrument and have them play a little bit so you could hear what it sounded like.

That was the fun part, the timpani played a bit from Star Wars, and the bassoon played Katy Perry's "Firework". Anyway, the kids liked seeing all the instruments and hearing the individual sounds.

Then we had some time to kill before we headed to tutoring, so I thought I would share my obsession with Torchy's Tacos. They have some of the best tacos in town, sold out of a trailer, of course. Our tacos were super yummy, and we even had birds come to share our lunch with us. And just as we finished up, Holy Cacao was opening their trailer, so we got some yummy cake balls for dessert!

Then we went to the Barton Creek run off area, (the free part) and the kids got to play in the water. Regan had a change of clothes in the car, but Riley didn't, so he rolled up his jeans, and I think he tried not to get wet at first, but then slipped and fell flat on his butt, so that didn't last long. There are a lot of dogs there playing fetch and swimming around, so the kids loved that, they found an extra tennis ball and played fetch with this one cute older dog that would come right by them to shake, it was cute.

But, short lived, as we had to get to the other side of town for tutoring, but it was a nice break from school, and a fun packed day. My favorite kind.

Chuck

I got to watch Eli for a bit, I'm calling him Chuck :) He's so cute. This is just a picture update.

Girl Scouts End of Year Party

Can't believe it's been another year. Most of these girls have been together since Kindergarten and now they're heading off to 4th grade! We had our annual end of year pool party at our co-leaders house and they gave me the coolest watch as a present for being a cookie mom this year! Our reward for selling so many cookies this year is a sleepover at NASA Space Center in Houston this summer, so we're looking forward to that!

Home School Small Group

One more thing I would miss if we don't home school again...our home school small group! We have the best group! We met at our neighborhood pool for this week's outing, and the kids had a great time, they played, we talked, it was a lot of fun. We've been having some unusually cool weather lately, so it was a nice day to sit and talk, and we weren't dying of heat stroke for a change. But that water is still pretty cold! The kids didn't seem to mind though.

Pure Energy

Sadly, this was Riley's last day of school. He really loves Pure Energy and will miss it a lot. We are looking at putting the kids back into a charter school for next year and we haven't decided yet, so this may have been his last day forever, and I'm sad about that. He really fits in well there, and learned a lot this year. The last day was at the Sprinkler Park, it was a picnic and they had a good time with water balloon wars and water gun wars. Regan even had a sibling to play with also, (I let her skip her school for the day) and we ended the day at McDonald's with a couple of the other mom's so the kids could spend even more time together. They have a really great group of boys there, and I know Riley will really miss them. The last picture is Riley with his 3 BFF's, Tristan, Parker and Peyton.

Swim Team

We are always on the hunt for something for Regan to do that she will like and enjoy doing. We've tried just about everything. It seems she is up for trying anything, but not up for finishing much. But, she loves to swim, BEGS us to go to the pool all the time, so we thought we would give swim team a try.

The first day of practice, she came over and said that was it, she was never coming back, her heart wouldn't stop BEATING!! But, by the next morning, she said she was willing to give it another try. I'm so glad she stuck with it because now she loves it and anxiously counts down the hours till it's 5:30 every day for practice!! She has a cute new shark swim cap, and some stylin' goggles, and she's doing a lot better in her strokes. Her first meet will be at the end of the month, and she's nervous, but I think she will do great.

Charles Elijah

Charles Elijah

What a roller coaster the last few days have been! On Sunday, after church, I took the kids to the outlet mall to get some new shoes, and it was sweltering hot. We hurried, rushed home and met Kenzie and Joe at the pool, and wouldn't you know it, a cold front came in just as we got to the pool, it dropped 20 degrees! The kids still jumped in, but after swimming about an hour, we were all freezing and turning blue, so we left.

When we got home, Kenzie told me she thought she had been leaking amniotic fluid for a few days. I was concerned about that and told her to call the doctor immediately and see what they say about it. Well, they told her to go ahead and pack her bags just in case, and come on in, but no rush. So, she went home and packed her bags and came back here and I drove her to the hospital. Well, they got her checked out and sure enough, it was amniotic fluid so they decided to hook her up to a pitocin drip right away to get contractions started.

I went home and changed clothes (it was freezing in there and I will still in my "hot" clothes) so took Regan back up there with me where we sat and waited. And waited. And waited! She was around 1cm for hours. They got the pitocin up as high as they would go and left it there most of the night, and while she was having regular contractions, they just weren't productive.

So, on Monday afternoon, I went home, cleaned up, took a nap, and then headed back up there Monday evening. The doctor finally said they could increase the pitocin by double the amount, and so that started climbing, the contractions got worse, and much more painful, and finally, about 27 hours in, Kenzie asked for an epidural. It was horrible, I know she was so hungry, and tired and worn out, and in so much pain at that point, that even I, a staunch epidural-opponent, was like, get that needle in here STAT!!

Well, that made contractions stop completely, so they upped the pitocin again, but that made Eli's heart rate drop off the charts, so they would stop pitocin, then the contractions would stop, so they would start pitocin again, and then his heart would drop again, it was a long back and forth, back and forth. Finally, they realized, she was still just barely at 5cm, and this was not going anywhere, so they decided to do an emergency c-section. They said she could bring one person with her, she pointed at me, they gave me some lovely paper scrubs, and away we went. I was nervous, I don't handle blood well AT ALL. Mine is fine, anyone else's and I get light headed.

So, within minutes, I find myself at her head, desperately trying not to see anything, and just freaking out over the whole c-section process. They were very aggressive at that point, and it was just all so surreal. But in a matter of minutes, we see little Eli, and come to find out, the cord was wrapped tightly around his little neck, and it took him a while to breathe and start making noises. But finally he started making some little sounds, and they wrapped him up, showed him to Kenzie, then me and Eli left for the nursery while they put her back together.

He was perfect, so cute and a head full of black hair!! He was born at 12:58am on May 3rd. He weighed in at 7lbs 12 oz, and that's a pretty good size for being 3 weeks early! He was 20.5 inches long, head was 14.5 inches. He was in the nursery for a couple of hours for observation, but then they brought us back to Kenzie's room where she finally got to hold him. We stayed there for a couple of hours, getting our stuff together to move to a different room, and finally got moved over around 6am. It was a long, hard night!

So, here are some pictures of Charles Elijah, and some of his visitors. He's been really good, sleeping for 3 hours at a time, waking up to nurse, he's taken to breastfeeding almost immediately, and he's just so darn cute! Kenzie is finally up and around, and should be able to leave the hospital tomorrow.