June 2017

June 9th

I walked into the toy room to find Cal standing up for the first time!  He looked proud of himself.

On a Saturday morning, we woke up early to make the two hour drive to the Columbus, Ohio temple.  Eric and I took turns going to the temple.  He went first while I took the kids to a McDonald's play place.  After we were both done, we hurried home because we had free tickets to a minor league baseball game.

We didn't stay the whole game because the younger 3 kids were not very interested in watching.  It became more work than what it was worth.  Cal could not keep his eyes off of those suckers.

We found out that Eric's brother Scott has testicular cancer.  He was to go through four rounds of chemotherapy throughout the summer.  After round one, he started to lose his hair so he shaved his head.  He sent a picture via text to everyone in the family.  Eric showed his support by shaving his head.  Eric surprised me when I walked upstairs to find him bald!

This is my new kitchen gadget to help me quickly chop, shred, or spiralize vegetables.  I love having new devices to help keep me happy in the kitchen.

While Janie was at a friends house, I took the boys with me to get an oil change and to fix our air conditioning in our van.  We were leaving to drive to Michigan later that day so I wanted our car to be ready.  We sat in the car forever waiting our turn.  It was not fun, although Blake tried to make it fun by pulling his swim cap over his head so his eyes could not open.

Here is the only picture I took while we stayed at the Brown's house over Father's Day weekend.  We went swimming at the Schmidt's, went to Fire and Ice, and stayed up late playing games.

After our weekend in Michigan, Eric had the Monday off, so he came to check out Blake and Janie's swim team practice.  

Picture overload of my baby.  7.5 months

Janie did her hair.

Janie and Blake had their first swim meet in Bay Village.  I guess I didn't take a picture of Blake.  Janie had a rough start with swim team and I was afraid that she wasn't going to be able to participate because she wasn't able to swim the length of the pool independently, which was the requirement.  I had put Blake, Janie, and Ty in swim lessons for 12 weeks at the rec center in the spring to prepare for swim team.  Blake made quick progress.  Janie made some progress but was still unable to swim alone.

When swim team practices started, she was in tears for the first couple of weeks because she was scared of the deep end.  She relied heavily on her boogie board and the wall for support.  After two weeks or practices, I spoke with the head coach.  She said that Janie could stay on the team and practice but that she wouldn't participate in any meets.  I was so glad because I just wanted her to become confident in the water.

Before this conversation, I had signed up Blake and Janie for each of the swim meets that summer.  I assumed that the coach was not going to put Janie in any races so I did not pull her from the main list.  We found out the day of the race that she had put Janie in the meet because she had been improving (although still stopping 5 or so times per lap to grab the wall).  Janie was nervous to swim in a race but I tried to encourage her and stay positive.  Her coach told me that she highly doubted she would grab the wall because there would be so many people cheering her on.

When it was her turn to swim the breast stroke, Janie was in tears.  We got her to try, but when she was about half way down the lane, she swam over and grabbed the wall.  She kept going until the end, grabbing the wall maybe four times.  By this point she had quite the crowd cheering her on.  Blake, Janie, and I went to Malley's ice cream after to celebrate her trying.

Eric and I went on a date to B.J's for dinner.  We brought Cal along who attracted a lot of attention for his cuteness.

I think Eric had something to do with this ball stuffing in the clothes bit.

I became good friends with Cami Miller who lived in the next ward over.  Our kids got along great and we loved getting together with them.  One day we all went to the Science Center in downtown Cleveland.  

Her husband got an unexpected job offer with Amazon and they quickly moved to Washington.  I was so sad to see our new friends leave.

This picture was taken while we were watching one of Ty's tball games.  Eric came for a few minutes to watch but had to leave for a young men's activity.  Right after he left, Ty walked off the field in the middle of the game announcing that he had to go to the bathroom.  The bathroom was not close to his game.  I hauled all the kids across multiple fields to help Ty go potty and then hurried him back to his team.