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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.  🙂

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!

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. ❤️❤️

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. 😂

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. 

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! 

My son is loving marching band which makes me very happy for him. It’s really crazy to see the effort it takes to get to football games and competitions. They have multiple school buses and a tractor trailer full of equipment. They also have two other large trailers. Tonight it looked like the semi and 4 busses, but I know I have seen check ins for 6 busses although I think they combined two of them. My kid is one the trombone/baritone bus. 

Tonight he was really getting into the game which is also good. It was an away game that they won in over time when the other team missed an extra point. We watch football at the house, but he has never been super interested so it’s great to see him learning the game.

Another interesting thing is that he is looking into playing the synthesizer in the marching band. He got his music today and was very excited. The challenge is that it’s basically piano music, and he does not play the piano. I have a keyboard from when I took piano lessons in grad school so he is going to try and figure out how to do it. I love that about him. I love that he’s having fun.

There are still some things about band that confused me (like where is the water bottle I ordered), but he is doing a great job figuring it all out.

I feel great today. 

Before work I opened a package from Dillards since I had some extra time today.  I found some great sale items at the end of August from the community tab of someone I follow on YouTube (I can’t find it again!).  I have been using my black MCM tote and red MCM pouch/shoulder bag and some other random things.  My wallet has been my Damier Graphite Louis Vuitton key pouch. I can easily clip it to my key and it holds my necessary cards, a small pair of glasses, some tummy meds, and cough drops.  I also have a pen pouch and some random things in my bag right now, too.

Anyway, I found a strawberry mini skinny ID case and a strawberry cosmetic case that I thought would be super cute with my backpack. I then found a blue bitty bogg bag to make my swim mom bag.🙂 Finally, I rounded it out with a pillow quilted card case in a dark olive color that is not my normal color palette but appealed to me. Those were all unboxed this AM and the strawberry SLGs are currently in use. 🙂

I grabbed a latte before work, and had a slow start which was nice and peaceful.  

I feel like I am on top of things with my kids and the school year.  My oldest is doing well with everything he has going on.  He is learning to balance conflicting priorities.  My younger two have their outside of school activities (swim, scouts) at the same time which makes logistics easier.  I am really so proud of all of my kids. I was going to pay a neighbor who swims at the DI collegiate level to teach my daughter flip turns this summer, but a hurricane messed up the pool and timeline and we never got to it. Fast forward to tonight – I am watching her do flip turns. I had no clue she could do them. Ha! Very happy with the kiddos right now. 

Next mom win for the day was booking my daughter’s birthday party. Score! The next win was getting middle child rides to and from his orchestra social tomorrow so the rest of us can go watch the big guy play water polo. 

That does not mean that I don’t have a huge to do list, but I feel like I am not missing anything big so that’s really important to me.

Yep, I am having a good day.

It’s back to school time!  My oldest started high school on Tuesday!  He has been balancing playing water polo and being in marching band really well.  I am so proud of him.  If he can get the school stuff down, too, then we will be all set.    My middle kiddo started 7th grade.  He has been really good about doing chores and helping around the house.  He is motivated to show he’s responsible so he can play more video games. 😉  My daughter is sassy and ready to take on 3rd grade!  She picks out her clothes the night before and loves riding the bus because she sits by her latest bestie.  They have the same birthday (separated by a year) and their maternal grandmothers have the same birthday.  The younger two are planning to swim on our year round team so I need to get them signed up!  I am hoping their practice times will overlap.  

I ordered new socks, underwear, shorts, and some school shirts for my oldest.  My middle kid needed lots of school supplies.  My youngest got her supplies from an order I did at the end of last year (love that for elementary).  I still have more back to school shopping to do, but that’s OK. 

I am also working on a new family calendar system. We got really complicated this year!  I started using the Apple calendar system since we all have iPhones.  My friend had started using a Skylight calendar to organize her family so I looked at that a little.  It has a display you can hang and you can do chores and more on it.  She is using it to replace her white board.  I will definitely check it out next time I am at her house, but the Apple calendar has been good so far.  My son loves to be on his phone so he actually uses it so far!  Curious if I can do something similar for chores and home work next.

More to come, but the kids are back in school!!

DAY 1 (Monday, July 8th)

Hurricane Beryl has made landfall.  The storm made landfall to the west of us which, as us gulf coasters know, means we are on the dirty side. Lots of rain and wind happening because of the way hurricanes spin. 

After the swim meet last night, a bunch of folks went to the pool to sandbag at the entrance and get everything secured. Hubs just left to go check on things.  Yes, he’s kind of crazy. We still have high winds whistling around the house. 

It was windy all night, and we lost power just before 4 am. There are a bunch of branches in our back yard. The lounger chairs we had stacked under the breezeway actually were blown towards the gate!  Powerful winds!

I was not planning to transition out of summer swim season immediately into a day of hunkering down, but here we are. 

It’s early in the hurricane season, but hopefully things don’t get too bad this year. 

…later that day…

We have no power, no internet, no 5G. Disconnected!  We started up the generator and then had the router going, but when the internet died we became disconnected. We can still make phone calls and send SMS messages.  At least we know the storm has passed. We were still getting some pretty strong bands throughout the morning. 

Hubs is out and about doing some cleanup and checking on things. The bayou got over the berm at the pool so it’s a mess now. The new roof at the marina has damage. Did you know he’s the pool and marina rep for the HOA?  Busy, busy! We had branches from one of our trees fall on the garage of a neighbor behind us so he is going to remove them and inspect the roof. He also has another neighbor that needs help with a tree. Too bad we left the chainsaw up at the property!

Tonight we will set up to get A/C in the back room.  Right now my dog is laying across my chest to get some of my fan action. Love her!  I am sipping iced coffee from our generator powered fridge. That’s a luxury!  It’s like when we go for a trip in the camper for a week and I get home to my shower that runs the entire duration of my shower. It’s glorious. 

…later that day…

We cleaned up the in-laws house and the house behind us this afternoon. Hubs went to help some others while I got the kids bathed, and now we have the back room set up to sleep in. 

We have two generators we can gang together, and we are doing that now. It has allowed us to power the fridge, the deep freeze, the entertainment center, the portable A/C, and of course make a charging station. 

For the portable A/C – as the storm was coming, hubs went out and bought one. He was a little worried about spending $369 on something we might not need, but it was been great for us and keeping that back room cool now that we have it set up. I think it’s a great investment in our hurricane preparedness. My neighbor was talking about getting a hotel room for a couple of nights if they had power, but this is perfect – home with the dogs. 

We also have gas water heater and stove so we can shower and we made tacos for supper. Not too shabby! We had the main house entertainment center hooked up so we could power our router, but then the internet stopped working. Doh! So we connected the back room TV and stuff which allowed us to put a movie on for the kids before bed. That’s something we have done so many times in the trailer. Even when boon docking we let the kids watch a movie as they go to bed. 

We all fit in the back room, but I didn’t want to sleep on that couch so I am in bed with a fan blowing on my face.