from the last couple weeks. I'm feeling long-winded so prepare yourself :)
Mike has been on a couple small business trips to Minneapolis, Detroit and Chicago. It's been so nice to have him home! The first 8 years we lived here, he was gone at least 2 weeks out of every month and not having his support at home really stunk. So with the changes at work in the last year, we've been blessed with less travel. After a trip to Sweden a couple months ago, we realized it had been nearly 11 months since he had to fly somewhere. YAHOO!
Hannah is doing really well in school. She is happy with her schedule and has some really great teachers, one being the dad of a kid she's been friends with since 3rd grade. She was elected to Student Government and will be going to camp at the beginning of October. Swimming started again after a short 4 week break and she's stoked to be back in the water. It's funny how we're all so ready for the rest, and after only a couple weeks she starts getting antsy to swim again. We have a new coach this year so that is an exciting change. What's been hard is that she swims with older kids and they are all doing high school swimming right now. She's missing her friends and can't wait until they return in a couple months.
Nathan is also doing well. His teacher is a blast and he loves her! He just finished testing for the gifted program called E2. We should find out in a few days if he gets in. He was excited for homework and now that he has it, not so much. I think we all saw that one coming :) He has decided that he'd like to give swim team a try. It has been fun to watch him, he's so cute. There's another little girl that has the same condition as he does that signed up also. We know their family well, as the kids ski together in the winter. It was a nice surprise to see them at the pool the first day and I think it was a sigh of relief for the two of them. Being different is easier when there's a friend to go through it with you. Of course, he is counting down the days until he can hit the slopes!
I'm still plugging along with the different committees and such that I am a part of. Right now, I am the Vice-President in the PTO at Nathan's elementary. I also serve on a committee at the district level and we're working on re-districting. It's never fun going through those changes let alone being one of the people to make those changes a reality for others. Mike and I are both on the parent board for the swim team and that's a ton of work. My task load is scaled down alot compared to recent years. This summer was a real turning point for me and it opened my eyes to the necessity of saying no to a few things. I don't let go of things easily so it's been a challenge to stick to keeping things to a minimum. Next year, I plan on being done with almost all of it and sticking to swimming and Nathan's classroom.
We send our love to everyone and hope you are all doing well. Until next time :)
We had to laugh when Nathan was riding his bike the other day and we could hear him outside huffing and puffing about something. I thought he was complaining about his bike but it turns out he saw a snake and freaked. So we went out to see if we could find it and there it was. Mike was keeping it from slithering away by using two sticks so I could run in and grab the camera. He finally gave up on the sticks and just picked it up, eeeew. Anywho, when it's tongue came out and we saw it was red, Nathan got totally interested and decided that it was pretty cool. He even pet it a few times. By the time we let it go, he was bummed he couldn't keep it.
