I’m just going to go back and take a look at my calendar to do this summer re-cap to get caught up once and for all.

— The kids got out of school on June 2nd. My friend Becky’s brain surgery was the day before and we kept Emily overnight if I’m remembering correctly. I really thought we’d have her overnight for a week or more while Becky was in the hospital and recovering at home those first few days, but her dad took a bus from out of state to be here with her for those first few weeks after surgery. I’m so glad he was here otherwise I would’ve been completely overwhelmed.

Becky was released from the hospital a mere 2.5 days after an all-day brain surgery and her recovery at home was awful. I took Emily most days for at least a portion of the day for those three weeks post-surgery and dinner most nights. It was a pretty stressful few weeks.

— Adding to the stress was Max. He was nearing the end of his time here with us and it was weighing pretty heavily on me. I just couldn’t decide if it was time to put him to sleep or not. He started having lots more bad days where he couldn’t get up on his hind legs, even with help and was having multiple accidents every day and just didn’t seem to be happy any longer. We made the tough decision and put him down on June 7th. I started a blog post about Max but never finished it; maybe I’ll get it up eventually.

— During that week, Robert had been coughing at night. He coughed so much that he threw up multiple times one night. He sounded fine during the day and wasn’t acting sick, but he was going to be staying with Grandma and Grandpa later that week, so I made a doctor’s appointment for him the day after Max died just in case. Of course the next two nights before his appointment he didn’t cough a bit, but I kept the appointment. The doctor ordered a chest x-ray after he listened to his lungs and he saw a spot that was concerning to him and he thought it was walking pneumonia and prescribed an antibiotic. (The radiology report would later show that it wasn’t pneumonia so I’m not sure what it was.)

— We finished reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe around that time and then the kids got to watch the movie. Chris ordered some turkish delight off of Amazon and we put it in a fancy candy dish and served it up as we started the movie. They loved it! They wanted so badly to finish it off, but forced themselves to save a couple of pieces. They wanted to eat it during the scene when Edmund requests it and eats it with The White Witch

— That next weekend Clara went to church camp for K-4th graders. Robert wanted to go at first but then had second thoughts when he found out I wouldn’t be there. And because I know my son, I knew he would regret his decision at the last minute and be devastated, so I arranged for him to Temple while Clara was at camp.

So Robert loaded up all the red things he owns and had a whole week with Grandma and Grandpa all to himself.

— It ended up being a whole week because the following weekend we decided to go visit Dan and Linda for Father’s Day weekend. They were getting a new cabinet bed for their guest bedroom and offered their old set to us. Since we didn’t have a footboard or headboard and our mattress was super old, we took them up on the offer. So we took two cars and rented a U-Haul and Chris brought the furniture home while I headed west with the kids to Pecos.

— I actually don’t remember much about our Pecos trip and I don’t have any pictures. This was supposed to be a restful week after being so stressed for the previous weeks. Well, wouldn’t you know it, Clara started feeling sick on the drive to Pecos. By the next day, she felt awful and spent 3 days in bed. I was trying to quarantine her so she wouldn’t spread her cooties to all the cousins. Poor girl didn’t even feel like watching movies most of the time.

I ended up trying to get her into the doctor the morning of the parade. I called and called and called the clinic and no one was answering. I eventually loaded her up and went up there. Lo and behold it was closed until after lunch because of the rodeo parade. Argghhh! It’s the only clinic in town! I forget sometimes that things run a bit differently in a small town. I was able to get her in that afternoon. She had zero energy and had eaten almost nothing for the past couple of days and cried when the dr. mentioned a strep test. Her rapid strep test came back negative but the PA was just certain that’s what it was so I went ahead and got the antibiotic. I had to personally walk the order in to the hospital lab across the street, dragging Clara with me while she sat and waited for the 10 minutes it took to enter her into the system. This was a Wednesday and we didn’t get the test results back until Monday. It was negative. She was feeling mostly better by Friday morning though.

So Friday morning we went with Myrt and took all the kids to the little car museum. I started feeling a little woozy and then ran to the bathroom and dry heaved. Then I told some kid (don’t remember which one) to tell my mom I had gone to lay down in the car. The dizzy nauseous spell passed after a few minutes, but I was not feeling well at all, so I went on back to the house. I would feel sorta okay and then horrible and then so-so and then horrible again for the next day or two. By Monday I was down for the count. I went to the doc and she thought it was just viral since Clara’s strep test came back negative. I went back two days later when I wasn’t feeling any better and she agreed I should have been feeling better by then and so she prescribed me an antibiotic. I was supposed to leave to go back home on Wednesday, but it ended up being Saturday before I felt I was up for the long drive home. So much for my restful week.

— My main reason for wanting to get back home was because we were supposed to have a 4th of July party at the house. Chris went ahead and canceled it, but then asked if I would be ok with having only a couple of families over. I told him that was fine as long as I didn’t have to lift a finger Because of a little change in plans, we ended up having one family over on Sunday and the other on Monday, so two days of entertaining guests.

— The week after that: more Emily, VBS, removal of a bee hive from inside our second story eave, and then we left for my family reunion.

— Clara went to another weekend church camp with area churches the following weekend. She rode with the kids from Bammel and got to see some of her old friends. While she was gone, Chris’ co-worker offered us tickets to the circus because his whole family got sick and couldn’t go. They were supposed to go with a group of friends and had box seats.

We went down and looked at the animals and then watched some of the performers during the pre-show.

Robert had no interest in any of the clowns milling around. He could not be persuaded to take a picture with any of them. I guess ’cause clowns are creepy.

So turns out, private box seats are kinda the pits for a circus. A more accurate description might be “the nosebleeds”.

See? I told you. Proof that clowns are creepy. Yikes. I’m like the clown from your nightmare.

 

Here’s Robert and “Giggles” the clown

— The kids got back from camp after church on Sunday, so we drove up to Bammel for church and then joined the DeCarlos for lunch when we got Clara and Travis back.

That brings us to the beginning of August. Some things happened in August I’m sure, but this is the end of this post because that’s all I have pictures of