Summer Re-cap: July

Ok, so the blog has been getting less attention as of late....ok it has been getting no attention.  Life has been hurtling by at the speed of light and the blog has not been my top priority.  We shall see if I can manage to keep it going this year now that we have settled back into school routines.

My last post left you at my two week post-op recovery so we will move ahead from there.  I started driving and life started to return to normal.  Normal meaning I drive the kids everywhere they need to be.  I still had to have Sofia with me at the grocery store to push the cart (have you tried pushing a cart while on crutches??), I still had to have Jason and the girls carry things for me and I will still slow, sore and tired.  Life moves on though and we still made the best of it.

The girls participated in their first triathlon at MIT.  It included a 100 yard swim, 3 mile bike, and a 1/2 mile run.  It was such a well run event and the girls had a fabulous time.  Oddly the place where they both could have greatly improved was the bike portion of the race.  I would think this is the easiest portion for most kids however the girls don't ride their bikes all that much.  This year in particular since I wasn't running it meant they weren't riding their bikes.  Last year I would have them ride on the bike path while I ran but this year they only got in one bike ride before the race.  Here are there stats for the junior division (age 6-10):









Sofia                                            Place       Swim Rank      Bike Rank      Run Rank
Overall                                          100              23                    217               82
Age group (66 - 9 year old girls)     13                 2                      28               12

Ali                                                Place       Swim Rank      Bike Rank      Run Rank
Overall                                          270              344                    291               112
Age group (41 - 8 year old girls)     17                 26                      19                  5

They had such a fun time that the first thing Sofia said after crossing the finish line was she wanted to do another one!.  We are very proud of the girls for trying something new and for putting their best effort out there.

We finished up July with going to my cousin's wedding.  The girls love weddings.  What is more awesome than a beautiful bride??  The wedding that the girls remember though is the wedding we went to in Slovakia which was so far beyond what would be considered a normal wedding here.  We toned down their expectations of the wedding but in the end all that mattered was the beautiful bride :).  I had to laugh during the ceremony though (not out loud) because I could see that the girls were perplexed by the mass.  While I can still mouth the words along with the priest our girls have not been brought up Catholic and they are used to a Presbyterian church service.  They didn't really get the sit,stand, kneel approach and when the alter boy rang the bell they were completely baffled. It was strange for me to see something that seemed so normal because it was all I ever knew as a child seen through the eyes of someone else.  Why do they ring the bell?? I don't know. I just accepted it as part of the the service and never questioned it.  So I gave them the perfectly acceptable parental answer, "I don't know.  It's just the way they do it."  Fortunately the kids accept that reasoning and just continued to take it all in.  The reception was fun and the kids had fun playing with their cousin Bella.  They were sad to leave the reception but my hip had had enough and we headed home.  Since the kids did not love the cake though we stopped for dunkin donuts on the way home.  I have to agree that a donut is often better than wedding cake. :)