August 2017

I just got back from taking the little girls and Sam to Menchie's for frozen yogurt. Too bad, so sad for the others who happened to be out of the house at the time and missed out. Our house is like Grand Central. I never know who will be around at what time on what day. The other night it was John, Hazel, Olive, and me sitting down together for dinner. Last night it was everyone but John and William. That should change some after school starts and people stop working as much or gallivanting the neighborhood all hours of the summer days.

I'm all done with school for the summer. I have a week and a half to enjoy the break before the new semester starts. I'm taking three classes: US history, psychology, and english comp. Two of the classes are online, and the classroom one is just once a week, so I should be available for Olive and not miss many chances to be up at Hazel's school as needed.

We went to Port Aransas a week or so ago. Thomas arranged for all of us to be in a large house in a nice neighborhood with beach access. Everyone agreed that it was one of the best beach trips that the family has taken together. I spent hours and hours in the water and was kind of emotional about leaving. Not sure what came over me to make me like that.

A few weeks ago we met Brian's family at Schlitterbahn for the day and then spent the night at their place which isn't too far from the park. Hazel and Olive were real troopers and rode anything we put them on. We rarely saw the older kids the entire day.

Margaret has decided to focus on babysitting instead of a restaurant job. She posted her info on the neighborhood babysitting site and has been booked solid. Definitely better money than she was making at the restaurant and more enjoyable for her. She's so fun and imaginative and all the kids just love her. She is just an amazing girl! She may look like she's 14, but she takes control and tackles challenges like someone much older than her age of 18. She's always been an old soul with childlike enthusiasm. She's never been silly about boys like I was. She isn't out looking for someone to marry. She has places to go and things to do. Yeah, she wants to marry and have children eventually, but there are more important things to do in the meantime.

Samuel has his first cross country meet tomorrow morning. Without bragging or exaggerating, I can say that he is one of the fastest boys in all LISD and our entire UIL district. We're excited to see how the season plays out. This is the year he needs to start looking at colleges. He would very much like to run in college and his times already could get him into division 2 schools, possible even division 1. He needs to work on staying on top of his academics though. He wants to be a psychologist or something along the line of counseling. We'll see.

William has been hitting it hard with football this summer. He's determined to do well, not just in football, but also in academics. He signed up for all AP and preAP classes and keeps telling us how motivated he is. He's a smart kid and was an incredible student until half way through 6th grade when he bottom fell out. Puberty hit him hard. He started breaking things - phones, computers, using racial slurs towards kids at school, bullying, texting vulgar things on his newly acquired phone, charging nearly $2K worth of Madden football related things to our credit card, etc, etc. As abruptly as they started, the behaviors subsided. He's matured so much the past 9 months. One summer night he came in really late. We were frustrated with him once again not getting home by the time he said he would. To back up a bit, remember, he was the kid who didn't speak for four years of school. He was too shy to befriend anyone. Fast forward to this year. He is all over the neighborhood dropping his calling card from Bella Mar to Canyon Glen (two sub-divisions within our city-size neighborhood). So he comes in late and starts enthusiastically talking about a discourse that he and several other 8th grade boys had had been having for hours over theology. They were from different back grounds and denominations sitting at the park discussing what they believe about the Gospel.

"I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth." 3 John 1:4

I started this blog post nearly a month ago and am just now getting back to it to publish it. Oy!