Traditions

             

Some traditions are started deliberately and others by accident. Granny kept pictures of her kids from their senior year in high school on her dining room wall. Grandma M. had a large photo of her kids on her dining room wall. I am turning it into a tradition with these photos of the kids in my dining room. Maybe they'll continue the tradition in the next generation. 

This room is much brighter during the day, but I was so excited to get the pictures back today and wanted to share as soon as I got them up!

Doctors

Since I don't like to take sick days during the year, summer is the best time for me to go to a doctor. I always end up putting off making appointments and haven't been for any kind of check-up since 2006. [We do go to the dentist twice a year. :) ] This summer I decided to stop procrastinating and make an appointment. Partly because my insurance sent me a notice in the mail telling me that I'm getting old and should get things checked out, but in nicer words. I also have a small scaly spot on my shoulder that is probably nothing, but I thought it would be better to know for sure.

I have called two different doctors. The first didn't answer the phone and the second said they are accepting patients for next year. I take that as a sign from God that everything is A-OK. Plus, next time some idiot is going on about the evils of socialized medicine and how you'll have to wait eons to get an appointment, I can throw in my experience with un-social medicine where you can't even make an appointment.

Summer Job

There are, admittedly, several mindless hours of pointless Netflix watching during my summers. But quite a bit of my time is spent doing school work. This summer I have cataloged countless books for my classroom library, written close to 100 guided reading lesson plans, spent many hours trolling the internet for storage baskets, bins, and boxes, read/ studied books on classroom management in the hopes of improving instruction in my classroom next year, attended the Math Best Practices workshop, and already started worrying about test scores for next year and how to improve them. I think I'm just feeling a bit defensive because of the general attitude and remarks that people make about teachers getting the summer "off".

A Trip to the Beach

Apologies to anyone who has already seen these pictures from Hilton Head on Facebook. I really don't like Facebook and usually put stuff here instead of there. For some reason it was just easier to post a whole album to that site instead of writing about our trip here. A moment of laziness I guess.

The majority of our time was spent at the beach. Eric and Caleb were in the water and I watched from a very relaxing beach chair. The first couple of days, Caleb used his skim board, until he had an accident that landed us at the nearest Urgent Care. Three x-rays proved that he hadn't broken anything and could continue with a couple of prescription painkillers. However, after that he stuck to his bodyboard.

Besides the beach, we walked around Pinkney Wildlife Reserve, which is an island between Hilton Head and the mainland. It is a very unique place with tons of wildlife and miles of hiking trails. That is where we came across a baby alligator, but luckily not the mama!

Besides regular golf courses, there are several mini-golf courses. We played a round and I came in last place. If we had counted an extra shot each time Caleb's ball ended up in the water, he would have come in last. We had a lot of laughs.

One of the most fun things we did was to go on a 2-hour nature kayaking trip around the Sound. I have never been kayaking, so that was a new experience for me. Eric and I took a double, since I was worried about flipping a single. Remember my paddle boarding experience a couple of weeks ago? We saw lots of wildlife and learned about the nature in the area. One of the coolest things is that the tidal change in the Hilton Head area is 10 feet. It is the largest along the American eastern seaboard. You can really see the dramatic difference along the beach as well as the tidal creeks throughout the day.

Looking through the pictures I thought this one made Eric look really skinny, until I realized that it was Caleb! I find myself constantly taking a second look nowadays, just to see who I'm talking to.

There was a crescent moon during our visit, so I naturally had to try to replicate the South Carolina flag. Not too good. Here's the real thing:

We walked along this path to the beach everyday and this shot epitomizes everything I love about the Low Country: tidal creeks, the birds, marsh grass blowing in a breeze, and especially the Carolina blue sky. I wish this was my backyard!

Summer Heat

This morning when I went for my walk, the sky was overcast or foggy. By the time I sat down to breakfast, the sun was shining through the trees out back. I love taking pictures of how light interacts with the environment. Pretty.

This weekend we went to South Carolina to see Madeleine race in a double. Doubles are sculling boats, which means each rower has two oars. This is how you expect them to look.

This is what it looks like when someone gets overheated. This shot is taken a few meters before the finish line. Notice it looks like our girls in green have already quit. No worries as they maintained their slight lead and finished with a bronze medal.

Afterwards Madeleine's partner was completely beat. When they got back to the trailer she almost passed out and had to be cooled with ice and the AC in a truck. Luckily she was well looked after and soon feeling better.
I can tell you it was hot as hell there. I wasn't doing anything more than standing around in the shade and I was perspiring profusely--Granny would say I was"glowing". We had thought about doing a little sightseeing before heading home, but once we got the AC on in the car we didn't want to get back out again, so we drove straight home. Were we complaining about the snow and cold only a few months ago?

Blue Door

My two favorite things about England were the signs, which I shared here and here, and the blue doors. I kept saying that when I got home I was going to paint my door blue. Well, it took eleven months but I finally have my blue door. And I love it! What do you think? In the past two weeks our house has gone from a red roof, red shutters, and a red door to a charcoal roof, black shutters, and a blue door. It looks like a completely different house. Amazing what a few color changes can do.

In other news. I have been trying to get in shape this summer. Mostly I have been riding my bike on the Riverwalk. However, yesterday we tried something new. Paddle boarding! I was very nervous about falling into the river, especially since a body was just pulled out earlier in the week. Yuck! Everyone assured me that I wouldn't fall in. For me, paddle boarding was like running in a nightmare: working very hard and going about 3 inches. It took about 45 minutes to paddle from Ross's Landing up to Veteran's Bridge and then about 15 minutes to get back down again. Everyone else in the group (Eric, Madeleine, Caleb, and one of Madeleine's friends visiting for the weekend) went a lot faster than me. I was feeling pretty successful by the time I got back to Ross's Landing. Then I had to get out of the water. Oops! I knew I would fall in! Fortunately I didn't hit my head on the concrete landing or anything and I got back up on the board and somehow managed to flop onto dry land. All in all it was a good trip. I would like to do it more often to get my arms toned up. However, we had a freebie (as a "thank you" for carpooling the owner's son during rowing) and I can't afford to go all the time.

Birthday, Part II

For her 19th birthday, we let Madeleine choose any tourist attraction in town for us to go to. She picked the Tennessee Aquarium. Here is her special day in photographs.

"Go on and touch the fish." "Ummm, I don't think so."

"See. They won't hurt you." "Maybe later."

"OK. I'm going to do this!"

"I'm doing it! I'm touching a ray!"

"Hey, this is fun!"

"Hmmm. Butterflies. I don't know about this."

"I like the big fish."

So pretty

"Ice cream before dinner! Yippee for my birthday!"