The kids had a good first week of school. Our district starts with a four-day week and then a four-day weekend. We celebrated our first day off of the year with some mild sleeping in, one early cross country practice, and a few free donuts from the summer reading program. And lots of chores.
Bryan was well enough to go outside for a few minutes today. Progress is good, even if it's small.
Today Bryan and I tried to catch up on sleep while the kids were at school.
And yet I'm so tired that after more than seventeen years of blogging regularly, I almost forgot to post.
I guess I have more catching up to do.
FYI, Bryan is feeling better. He's okay standing and sitting, but switching between the two is pretty rough.
This is me at 3:11 this morning. It's the only picture I took of Bryan's stay in the ER. He was in so much pain, I didn't think we would appreciate any pictures I took of him.
Last night the kidney stone pain combined with medication induced nausea to create a perfect storm. He was back forth about going to the ER again. After he threw up for the third time in less than an hour I said it was time to head to the hospital. He checked in just before midnight. Around 3:30 in the morning we were told that he was being admitted and had been put on the list for surgery. They were going to remove the stone.
Nearly twelve hours and several anti-nausea and pain medication doses later, a nurse arrived in his ER room to wheel him to surgery. Just over an hour later he was out of surgery and in the recovery room. The surgeon found me in the waiting room and told me the stone was so big Bryan likely wouldn't have passed it on his own. They were able to blast the stone and break it into smaller pieces. Then they endoscopically used a tiny basket to scoop out the pieces.
He was finally able to eat food after he came out of the anesthesia, roughly twenty hours after he had started feeling so intensely awful. He has a stent, which is both supposed to help the process and will really hurt over the next five days.
Thankfully he's home. He's still in pain, but hopefully that pain has an end date. And he's really glad to be in his own bed.
Great work, Cooper! He's had two very good days in a row.
Congratulations, Cooper!
Topher gave a talk in primary last Sunday. I've been so busy driving kids around, getting them ready for school to start, that I wasn't home to help him. Bryan took over that job this time. He said he and Topher studied the lesson, watched a few church videos, and discussed. This talk was the result. He did a great job delivering it.
Today is our 24th family birthday. We had planned to eat our traditional family birthday meal, but we needed to postpone it to Wednesday. Bryan woke me up at 6:00 in the morning to tell me that he was having a kidney stone. We think this is his ninth, but that's just a guess since we've kind of lost count. He spent the morning in the ER getting some very strong medication and the rest of the day going in and out of sleep, still on very strong medication.
This is not how he wanted to spend today.
Since the day went sideways, let us instead focus on this day twenty four years ago.
Aw, look at those cute kids.
I found this sign on Topher's door. I understand that he wants us to know that his room is private property. I'm not quite sure what C8T means.
I kept putting off Topher's haircut because I knew we were getting closer to school and I figured it would be better to send him to second grade looking tidy and not with a few weeks of growth. That meant that his hair got longer than I intended. Yesterday he went from this:
He looked through a book of haircut ideas and he picked this one. I think he looks very handsome and ready for school.
We're getting closer to school starting. Miss Phoebe went to freshman orientation today.
These two completed the summer reading program at our library and earned two free donuts in the process. They cashed in their first coupon today and enjoyed fancy donuts for breakfast.
Sophie had a grand evening yesterday. She attended a fancy dinner party that her good friend threw. There were four attendees (including the hostess) and two parents who acted as waiters. We (yep, I was one of them) even costumed in white dress shirts and blacks slacks so we could be totally in character.
Sophie was given the assignment to contribute potatoes to the meal. I talked her through how to cook them in the instant pot and Bryan supervised the mashing and seasoning. They were the perfect compliment to the pork tenderloin main dish.
After the fancy dinner, the girls decorated masks, had a dance party, covered their faces in glitter, made raspberry frosting for their brownie dessert, and sang in harmony. It was a grand night for all.
And they've informed the moms that they plan to do it again next week.
I took the kids to Skyzone today to hang out with friends. I thought I hadn't taken pictures of all of them, but I discovered I did. I took these pictures of Cooper, Sophie, and Topher shooting hoops.
And this picture of Phoebe after she got natural lip filler (her words) from a run in with a parkour ring. It bled a lot and kind of ruined her fun, but it's looking much better now.
Tonight for YM/YW activities Cooper, Phoebe, and Sophie decorated mini cakes, which was an idea that Sophie had come up with.
Can you tell which cake belongs to which kid?
I think I earned the Hamlet Triple Crown this weekend. Our family went to Shakespeare for Kids on Saturday morning. They performed an hour-long, kid friendly, musical version of Hamlet. It was awesome and hopefully will help Shakespeare to be a little more accessible, at least to Topher. I think the others are already cool with The Bard.
One thing they had that I haven't seen in other theaters was a fidget table. In the lobby they had a table full of quiet fidgets that the kids could take into the theater and hold during the show. I think it helped Topher to focus.
I wasn't planning to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Hamlet, and Hamlet Jr all within a week of each other this summer, but I'm glad I did!
