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Ok…time for a car update. Yep. A car update. I came home from work the other day and the hubs was researching Explorers. He was thinking I could get a used one with the new body style and we could give mine, which is a 2013 model, to my son. I think he’d like the newer body style and better wheels. I don’t really care. I’d rather be worried about the bag I am carrying. 😜

When we got mine I ended up going for a new base model after we shopped for used models with bells and whistles. The only upgrade I got was the up charge for my red paint. The red paint I still like. Anyway, we have a while before we need another vehicle, and I still really like mine. It works really well for my life style.

I bought another set of Christmas light magnets to decorate it this year, and Hank was going to wash my car for me this past weekend. But no car wash for me now!

I drove the hubs to the Woodlands to meet his buddy who was going to take him up to get his truck from the property. While I was driving back on the Hardy Toll Road, I got nailed by road debris! It looked almost like a 90 degree angle of a 1.5″ diameter pipe from what I could see. I had no clue where it came from but I saw it bounce from near a box truck in the lane to the right of me and then behind a car in front of me and then it bounced up and hit my windshield. It hit hard enough that there was glass shattered in my passenger seat. I had Pepper with me but luckily she was in my lap and not the passenger seat. She was scared and didn’t want to leave my lap after it happened either.

When I got home, I was able to better assess the damage. Not only did it nail my windshield, but it also hit my roof and the interface between the roof and the windshield. Doh!! So more than just a windshield replacement. We started the insurance claim and we will see what happens with it.

I got an oil change yesterday and thought it was nice that they didn’t put the new sticker on my windshield but put it in my cup holder so I can put in new windshield when I get it.

Hubs said my car is only worth $8k. That’s so crazy considering it has less than 80k miles on it. It has given me zero problems in the last 11.5 years. I had been looking to replace my arm rest cover and once the current one got glass in it, I threw it away. Now I have a new cover to put on and I also got an organizer for the console under the arm rest. Little things like that keep it fun! Hopefully we can get it repaired by Christmas. I am worried that repairs will have it out of commission for a while. I can’t believe I have a damaged roof! Always something!!

Hanging out at swim

At my daughter’s swim practice. I have gotten a bunch of work done so things are going well. She’s in the pool, and I worked on my laptop for a while. I buttoned up some loose ends I didn’t get to at work. It’s fun watching her when she’s having fun. At water polo she smiles a lot which is great. We are still going to have her swim though because we like it for her. I am thinking about signing all 3 kids up for water polo in the winter but just doing practice for the boys and signing her up for games, too.

My mommy stress peaked today when my son needed a ride home from middle school because he didn’t have any good carpool options. The kid is not willing to take the bus, but I can’t just leave work every day to drive him home. I really don’t like that I left work early because he doesn’t know how to ride the bus. It is for sure frustrating. It makes me feel so bad to leave work like that. Plus it was raining and driving in the rain is not at the top of my list of things I enjoy. OK, let’s be real – we might get more stress tonight when we review homework status. 😛

Two more days until I take my hubs to the doctor to follow up with his orthopedic surgeon. We still do not have his truck, but that’s OK. I don’t know if he will even be cleared to drive although that would be nice. It is my understanding that they will just be giving him a limited range of motion on his knee. He is still in a lot of pain so we will see. I need to cancel my dentist appointment for that day. I am too busy trying to juggle it all for the dentist. I love clean teeth, but it will have to wait!

I am mentally planning to not travel for Thanksgiving, but hubs still has not cancelled the hotel room. Luckily we were planning to drive (we were considering renting a car but had not) so that we could take the dogs. It’s actually a nice break before water polo starts again. I guess we will see what happens.

I do have a girls trip coming up in December so hopefully he’s in better shape by then. He could survive without me around, but i make things easier. Kids would also have to behave while I am out to make it all work. Wish me luck!!

Holidays and Swimming

Had a good chat with my sisters last night which inspired me to update my blog! 😄

We are trying to decide what our family is going to do over the holidays. The big unknown is how mobile my hubs will be for any of it. I really like our Thanksgiving plans of the whole family going, staying in a hotel, and even bringing the dogs! Pepper and I both have Thanksgiving shirts to wear. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday!! The other sisters are planning to go over Christmas. Who knows what will happen at this point! The hubs is the big unknown on what we can actually end up doing. He has not left the house other than going out on the driveway to enjoy the outdoors a little since he got home from the hospital.

His truck is still up at our property. It’s perfectly fine up there. It’s next to the shipping container on the gravel. I dropped his keys off with his buddy on Wednesday because they are trying to devise a plan to go get it. The road to get to our gate was pretty muddy when he was up there so 4-wheel drive will definitely be needed to recover the truck.

When I dropped his keys off, his coworkers had just been finishing up their Thanksgiving party and sent me home with TONS of leftovers. We have been eating them though! It’s nice to have so much food already prepared that we just have to heat up.

Last night my younger two had a swim meet. My son did OK although he lost his goggles when he started his 200 IM so he DQed to fix them but he was still happy with the event. Love his attitude! Although now both of my kids still need a 200 IM on the books. My daughter did only 50s in Fly, Free, and Breast. She got PRs in all of them but I am hoping to see a little faster times in Free and Breast. She would have had reserve times on those in our summer swim league so I let her know. She was excited. I need to teach her USA swim time standards, but I’m just keeping it in the language she knows as we move into swimming 50s as her shortest possible event (and what she will swim in summer league). On Fly she got a Champ time for summer league and a B time per USA swim standards so that’s goood. Its her best stroke but she doesn’t like it as much as the other two she did. We will just keep working on it all. Hank didn’t get any B times and his summer league is 50s and he swam all longer lengths last night.

My daughter had a swim meet last weekend, too. I had her do some long races. Each day she did one 200 race and two 100s. The only ones she needs to repeat for her season goals are the 200 IM and the 100 Fly. I think she DQed on the Fly because she got tired and lazy. She DQ’ed on IM because she didn’t know how to legally do the transition from back to breast. If we stick around for Thanksgiving, then she will get private lessons to work on her turns. She is not excited about that. 😂

The plan for tonight is that the boys are supposed to go camping with the scouts, and I am taking my daughter to see Galaxy Lights at Space Center Houston for opening night.

Oura Ring

My hubs asked me what I want for my birthday. I really want to go to Monument Valley, but that’s not really an easy option. I would also like a trip to our property camping with friends so we are making plans for that. That one is a lot easier.

I wasn’t really sure if there was anything else I wanted as in a traditional gift. I am super happy with my handbag game right now so that’s not on the list. And, let’s face it, I am not good at gifts. But…I think I found what I want!

I was poking around on Amazon in preparation for a Halloween party at work, and the new Oura ring caught my eye when I hit the homepage in the app. I have been a long time Fitbit user and at Christmas started using my Apple Watch, but the ring seems cool and has some additional appeal to it. It’s a new way to track health in a new app and with a new reminder right there in your hand. I really want to try it out. The app seems pretty cool, and it does integrate with Apple Health for whatever that’s worth. Sadly, the biggest thing I do with the watch is just look at the rings. I think Apple makes it too difficult to just look at steps. Curious how the Oura ring is in that respect.

The Oura app seems to be better at sleep tracking and readiness which I am excited to see. Sometimes I am awake for 30 minutes in the morning, and my watch asks me if I am awake. Clearly I don’t feel like it is as good at determining if I am awake. Oura also does cycle tracking and integrates body temp. I just feel like I have so much to learn!! And the ring is designed for health and fitness whereas my watch is designed for productivity.

You can order a ring sizing kit to see what size works best for you and see how you like the feel of the ring since it’s a little chunkier than a normal ring. I really like that because sometimes it’s just hard to know how the sizing it let alone the feel for something like this. They suggest you wear a sample ring for 24 hours so you capture how your ring size fluctuates throughout the day. I think I know which I want, but I am wearing the sample size to make sure I like it and it’s comfortable. The $10 cost of the sizing kit is automatically reduced from the price of the ring if you buy from Amazon so it’s totally worth it to really try it out.

I think I will order myself the silver ring for my birthday. 🙂

Stressed Out Working Mom Week

What a crazy, stressfull week! The hubs is out of town, it’s Homecoming, the younger two had a swim meet, and we decided to try water polo with the younger two. I planned everything out, but that’s really hard when things can change so quickly.

On Tuesday, I had a super stressful day. I thought I was prepared. I got up early and got my daughter up early so she could ride with me to drop off her brother. Kids were all moving, and we left to take my middle schooler to violin sectionals. The high schooler said he’s be ready to leave for the bus, and everything was looking good. We were waiting in the parking lot of the middle school (got there early) to listen to an answer to a question on the radio when the phone rang. It was my older son – he missed the bus.

So my daughter and i went back home and grabbed him. As we were driging to the high school, my daughter pointed out that if we drop him off she will be late for her bus. So we turned around and dropped her off at the house so she could finish getting ready and then went to the high school. My middle schooler called and said he didn’t feel good and wanted to go home. I told him to do his violin sectional and then I can pick him up. I dropped off my son pretty easily, but the light to leave the high school was doing this thing it does sometimes were it never let’s teh people leaving the school go. Luckily I know how to navigate that once unstuck, but it took way more time than needed to leave the high school.

So…I drive to the intermediate school and have to wait for sectionals to finish. I grab the kid and take him home. I wanted to be at work at 7:30 that morning, but I ended up being there at 8:15 and having a very stressful morning. Coffee engaged. Then I started getting texts from my high schooler that he didn’t feel good. I ended up picking him up at lunch time.

I was super bummed out because it was the water polo game (3x district champs!) that night and then the party. And we missed it all. I fed the kids noodle soup and got everyone to bed early. During the night I started coughing and then Wednesday and Thursday (today) I ended up being sick. Of course. The kids went back to school Wednesday. I dialed into a couple of things yesterday, but today I ended up crashing before the younger two kids even leave the house. I was exhausted. I am up now and plan to knock out a few work things because my boss is out of town for two weeks starting tomorrow so I need some inputs from him. Plus, I will be in charge so I need to make sure I know what all needs to be transitioned.

I have some soup being delivered soon which will be nice. Last night I had chick-fil-a soup which was yummy. This soup is part of a Walmart delivery that includes stuff for my daughter’s bday party since I need to start prepping for that.

Life is busy. It’s extremely frustrating when I plan things and the plans don’t stick for reasons out of my control. I don’t see things slowing down any time soon. This week has made me question my career choices (more like plans for my next step) which is not like me. It must be hard because the hubs is out of town and I got sick and my perfectly laid out plans did not work. I can only improve going forward!

More Water Polo

I signed my two younger kids up for a two week trial of club water polo! We went to their first practice tonight!

We have been talking about it, but over the past few days, a lot of people in my village started talking about it and asking about it. I decided it can’t hurt to try! I have built such a great community around our summer swim team, and I am sure this will expand on those relationships.

They currently swim from 5-6 on any weeknight we can get them there with their year round swim team. They are in different swim groups, but luckily are always at the same time and same pool. Water polo will be the same way if we do this longer term (at least a couple of years it looks like). It will be from 5:45-7:15 Mondays and Thursdays even though they are in different age groups.

They both had a lot of fun tonight. Maybe we found our thing? A ball sport that also requires their swimming skills? Definitely worth a try. I had fun with the other parents, too.

So, even more water polo might be in our future. I am having fun with my kids and their aquatic activities. ❤️❤️

Spoiling My Daughter

This morning my daughter told me she needed new fins for swim. Of course the day after someone else claimed free ones in the size she needs from one of my parent circles…. that’s not the point. I went online to order new ones, and I found the cutest Halloween swim suit and swim cap for my daughter. I decided I should spoil her because it’s fun and I want swim to be fun! Of course I want it ASAP now, but I am hoping it will work for a couple of years for her. It’s so much fun! I wish my big guy would wear the speedo version this Halloween season, but I seriously doubt he would it I got it for him. 😂

SWIM MOM!

I am trying to get more into the swim mom thing. I have a kid on the high school aquatics team, and my other two are on a club team. And of course we love our summer league team!!

My daughter got to swim her last 25s at her last meet. I was excited for her to swim and try to get the best times possible since those will be her last official 25 yard races.

My next step as a swim mom is to get IMR and IMX scores. They stand for IM Ready and IM Xtreme and are metrics used by USA Swimming. Each is a series of five events that you are scored on so that you can see how you stack up against other swimmers. If I didn’t make this my new goal, I would probably let the kids just swim 50s and the 100 IM. This will push them to try longer races and help me to have some good goals of things to sign them up for.

Right now I have it planned so that both kids will swim all 5 IMR events in October. Then I can start planning to get them into IMX events and then we can continue to work on getting faster times once we hit those. As a lover of Evernote, I now have notes set up for each kid to track how they do at events and track their best times for their IMR/IMX events for the season.

I am not planning to be focused on times but rather getting the events in. Even if they have swam the events before, it resets for each season on Sept 1. And of course my daughter just aged up so she’s going from being the oldest swimming 25s to the youngest in the 9-10 group.

Here are the events and planned dates for my daughter to finish all of her IMR events:

▫️100 Free (swimming 10/2)

▫️50 Back (swimming 10/2)

▫️50 Breast (swimming 10/12)

▫️50 Fly (swimming 10/2)

▫️100 IM (swimming 10/12)

And for my son:

▫️200 Free (swimming 10/2)

▫️50 Back: 43.01 (he already has a time for this season but will swim again 10/2)

▫️50 Breast (swimming 10/12)

▫️50 Fly (swimming 10/2)

▫️100 IM (swimming 10/12)

USA Swimming has motivational time standards for all of the events by age. Once we get all of the events in, we will start looking at where we can potentially hit various time standards. That’s the next step. Texas Swimming Association also has championship qualification time standards. Those are some tough times, but we will also look to see if there are any we are close to. And when we feel completely frustrated, we can look at Champ and Reserve times for our summer swim league since those are easier to make and really why we started swimming in the first place.

First goal, however, is to get my kiddos into all 10 events this season (5 IMR and 5 IMX). We have very busy schedules, and I have been haphazard in how I select events for meets so this will be a good goal. The IMX events are much longer races so we will see how we get those sprinkled into future meets.

Honestly, I am just glad I am finally paying attention. I still want it to be fun, but this will encourage me to get them in the right kinds of events for the year-round league.

Watching My Son Expand His Interests

It is interesting watching my son develop as a high schooler. He has enjoyed things he’s doing, and has even done something I didn’t expect in marching band – he plays the synthesizer.

He knows one of the band directors from last year, and he asked him if he’d be interested in doing the synthesizer. I found that to be interesting and of course encouraged it. He plays the trombone in the stands and the synthesizer (to help with low brass sounds) on the field.

He told me he had been interested in synthesizer so I am glad this all worked out for him. It’s just like a piano keyboard (from what he said), but with different sounds. He took my keyboard I have from when I was taking piano lessons in grad school and tried out the music. He got it and is now practicing synthesizer at school. So much fun!

I am proud of him doing things he loves and pursuing these things on his own. ❤️❤️

Fun fact: in middle school he was able to play the six pan steel drum as part of a steel drum band even performed at Miller Outdoor Theater!