Update on goings-on

School days are getting closer to the end!!! Austin can't wait until school's out. I feel about the same myself. Cameron is just glad to be going back to school for a while. He's been sick with walking pheumonia. He has had oral steroids and antibiotics, along with breathing treatments. Now he has continued breathing treatments along with steroids through the nebulizer once a day for about a month. We then go back to see if it's all cleared up and if we need to continue with the asthma meds or not. We have to clear up the pheumonia before knowing if it's true asthma. He's feeling much better now. We went to Dave and Busters this weekend and won a huge Spiderman for his room - he hasn't stopped playing with it yet. We did hang it up so it looks like he is suspended in the corner of his room - pretty cool - it's twice the size of Cameron - note the picture.

Austin is ready to play baseball on Thursday, the next game, as he found out that sitting out a game is no fun. You see, during the game on May 18, our team was down 2-0. The opposing team had a really good pitcher and no one could hit off him. So, in the bottom of the 5th inning, they had to put in a new pitcher. We started hitting. Austin was 2nd up to bat. He had a huge hit to the fence, rounded the bases, thought he saw his coach twirling his finger to go home and went. Seems the catcher didn't want Austin to score so he stood just in front of the plate, some say he was standing on the plate, but as he bobbled the ball, it fell to the ground, Austin was more than half way home, then as catcher was picking up the ball, the collision occurred. Austin didn't slide under, but tried to jump over to avoid the head to head collision, but ended up knocking the catcher to the ground, hitting his head as he had already taken his helmet off. The umpire called Austin out (but he did get a runner in) and the catcher laid on the ground for a few minutes. After about 5 min of taking care of a busted lip and sore head, the field umpire told our coach that Austin was ejected from the rest of the game plus the next game. It appeared that Austin was "trying to cause malicious harm to another player" because he didn't slide. Although not true, Austin learned to always slide no matter what in this league. Our coach did protest the ejection from the next game sighting it wasn't malicious intent, but to no avail. According to the board, this was not protestable and was denied. We did end up winning 6-4 that night. We had our next game the very next night. We just so happened to play the 1 team who is even with us in standings except we had beaten them once (or the #2 team I gues I could have said). We are no longer undefeated. Our record is now 10-1. Austin was a good cheerleader though!

He last adventure was a competition this past weekend for lego robotics. He wasn't sure if he was even going to enter since he had missed a few afternoon sessions. He had 3 days to build his robot and ended up coming in 15th out of 31 in the competition. The only other team from his school came in 29th, and he was pretty proud since that team had 3 weeks to work on their robots. There were 4 different things his robot had to do: put darts on a board, put ping pongs in a cone, push a hockey puck into a goal, and pick up a bone and drop it off at another location. The picture shows his creation and the accessories. He programmed it to do the moving things from a computer. Now the only thing left is a band concert, a 6th grade party and 6th grade "graduation" from elementary school. Then, I paid for him to go to summer school to help him prepare for pre-AP math next year. He is taking all pre-AP classes (which are essentially 8th grade classes) and this course is designed to cover all the 7th grade math he will miss in about 3 1/2 weeks for 3 hrs a day. I KNOW he is SO looking forward to that, especially the part about starting at 8am!

Cameron will again take swimming lessons for 2 weeks in June. I don't know what has happened between last summer and now, but he is DEATHLY afraid to get in the water, even with someone holding him. He has a new bathing suit (body suit) that has built-in floatation things, but he won't get out far enough for him to see that he will float. So, lessons without mom in the water will be fun!

Mother's Day

I am so lucky to be a mother. Although it's challenging, and the older I get the less patience I have, I wouldn't change it for the world. I also am very fortunate to still have my mother. I know so many who have lost their mothers and had them in my thoughts yesterday. When you lose a mother, or even a mother figure, Mother's day can be difficult. I miss my 'other' mother dearly and wish I could tell her just once more how much she meant to me. I wish she could see all her grandchildren and how proud I am of all of them and how smart they are. I think she might agree!

My boys gave me a gift certificate to get a 1 hour massage and a gift certificate to Bath and Body Works. Austin told me I needed the massage! He was soooo right! We went out for a Mother's day brunch at Nana's Grill at the top of the Anatole Hotel. It was VERY nice. The view was spectacular. Cameron didn't quite know how to act and was just himself, the whole time, burping outloud and everything. At least he did say excuse me. He learned how to burp with his mouth closed that day. Jessica came in from Austin and we had a great 2 hour long meal with great food, but very expensive! Glad I wasn't paying! The hotel was very nice in the lobby and the pictures show just a little snapshot of the glamour. Cameron didn't mind posing, but Austin just "chilled" since he was a bit tired from playing video games with his buddies on Xbox live into the wee hours of the morning!

Cameron "graduated" from preschool last Friday night. It was a cute ceremony complete with dinner! He is ready for Kindergarten, if he could only keep his mouth shut! I think I might have to work on his social skills this summer. Last week at Austin's baseball game, another parent told Cameron he could ride this scooter and a few minutes later when the scooter's owner told Cameron to get off (unaware that his parents had told Cameron he could ride it) and was trying to lift the scooter so Cameron would get off, Cameron reared back, made a fist and punched the kid right in the face by his left cheek bone/eye area! I couldn't believe it. My 4 year old punching a 7 year old and making him cry. I was so embarrassed and upset that he would do such a thing! I have never seen him act like that. Most of the time he justs cries and screams. I may need to watch a few of these shows he is watching on cartoon network and see what kind of violence is going on before I let him watch that channel again!

Well, that's about it for now - so far we haven't contacted the Swine flu. I know I won't be kissin' on any pigs anytime soon!