Hodgepodge

It's been a busy summer in a lot of ways and most of it hasn't been very fun or been something I can really blog about.  But we have been doing SOME fun stuff and I wanted to share some updates.

• Pumpkin farming continues apace.  It seems that our first few fruits did not get fertilized (a couple of them didn't even bloom!) so we lost those pumpkins.  But over the weekend I managed to catch a female flower in full bloom and hand pollinated it myself.  We'll see if it worked!
• We eventually reached an impasse with Jamie's speech therapy.  After an especially frustrating and rude (on their part) call with DART, it became clear they were really not willing to help.  We hired a private therapist to work with Jamie and he's making progress again.  I'm really excited for him!  I also found out that if Jamie was to qualify for year round services, he would have to lose 20% of his progress during breaks and not be able to make it up during the 2-3 week summer sessions.  TWENTY PERCENT.  And if all he does is tread water, that's perfectly fine with them.  That is not fine with me so I'm so very glad we have such a great private therapist.
• Liam is really excelling with swim lessons this summer.  We spent a bunch of time at the pool before lessons started and he seemed to finally make the connection between his brain and the necessary coordination.  He started to actually SWIM.  Now we're halfway through lessons and he's doing the big water slide without getting caught at the bottom and he's >thisclose< to going off the diving board on his own.
• Over the 4th of July, the kids and I went up to Michigan to visit with my parents.  My Aunt and Uncle were also there from California and they got to meet the boys for the first time.  It was really good to see them. I haven't seen them since I was very early pregnant with Jamie when I attended one of my cousin's wedding.  We had a good time visiting with everyone.  We went to the beach one day and the kids had a really great time.  Liam swam like a fish (and saw some too!) and Jamie spent most of his time in the shallows with the sand toys - and had a grand time doing it. 

Swimmer Liam!

Playing in the sand. 

• Our air conditioning quit on us a couple of weeks ago during the hottest week we've had yet this summer (of course). We're talking heat indexes over 100 degrees.  When we had the repair guy come out we discovered that our a/c unit was THIRTY-ONE years old. Basically, it was about as old as the house itself.  Solution? Replace. The good news is that we got a good reliable unit that's larger and more efficient that will cut our electric bills down. The bad news is that it cost several thousand dollars.  We've lived in this house for five years and in that time we've replaced the furnace, the water heater, the washer/dryer, the refrigerator, one of the garage door openers, and now the air conditioning.  All that's left is one garage door opener, the dishwasher, and the stove.  Then we'll have a complete new set! /sarcasm
• I'm looking forward to making a happy announcement soon but the time is not quite right. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, enjoy Maggie.