Connor wanted to redesign his room; Stuart talked him into only rearranging his furniture for now, and drawing out the layout of the room first.  At the end, Connor is very happy with how his room looks and how much more space he has now.  After seeing Connor’s room, Logan decided to move his furniture back to how he had them before.  With this arrangement, Logan is also glad to have more free space as well.

     Stuart bought this Switch game awhile back, and we all played a bit with it but stopped shortly after.  Recently the boys got back on it to get exercise and discovered that the game is more interesting as the levels get higher.  Now the boys seem quite into it and had to call for their turns as only one person can play at a time.  This game becomes good exercise for us after their school day ends and when the weather is too warm outside.  It helps work different muscles in the body; I definitely get sore from playing with it  Connor leads the group with the highest level and Logan is the next.

    Around two weeks ago when the weather was so strange and we had a couple of days with “orange sky”, Buddy had a scary encounter.  In the morning when Logan and I just came down after waking up, I was distracted with the orange sky and just opened the backdoor to let Buddy out.  But as soon as I closed the door, I noticed there was a huge deer with large antlers up on our backyard hill.  The following events happened so quickly.  Buddy and the deer had a stare down; next I saw Buddy tensed up and braced himself, then the deer jumped down from the hill.  Buddy got knocked down onto the ground and the deer was over Buddy.  By then I had been screaming and running out hoping to break up the fight; when I was just a couple feet from them, the deer decided to run away.  Buddy hurried up to his feet, dashed around due to the adrenaline, and fortunately he did not chase after the deer.  I would not know what to do if he did.  We then quickly took Buddy inside the house to exam him and calm him down.  We noticed a small droplet of blood on the carpet but otherwise Buddy was ok.  This was a very scary and close encounter; I had nightmares just thinking about a worse outcome.  Now Logan is super protective and worried about Buddy going out to the backyard on his own; Logan also has a different feeling about the deer visiting our backyard.  

     After we put Connor on the stomach medicine, omeprazole, for another month, his tummy no longer bothers him. He does continue to feel something in his throat, and the need to clear his throat periodically.  Thus the doctor felt that it was worthwhile to do some blood tests and stool test to make sure there were no other issues.  So we took Connor in for the tests a couple of Saturday ago.  Connor was very nervous about the blood draw but he did well waiting for the extra 45 minutes despite having a lab appointment.  When the phlebotomist started helping him, Connor was actually quite chatty talking about how scared he was, but fortunately it went very well.  We had do a collection at home and so I brought that back few days later.  That drop off incidence was even worse; it was one of the most infuriating events as I had to wait 45 minutes just to drop off the sample.  At the end, we are very pleased that all of Connor’s tests came back with no issue.  Now the doctor just had Connor try allergy med in case the throat sensation is due to a postnasal drip.

     With the COVID pandemic, the cabana finally set up some safety precautions in June and we were able to start making reservations to have a swim.  Being in high demand, we had to watch for schedules closely to make our bookings, and we had a couple of weekends that we were not able to get in.  Then with the extreme heat in August, we had power outage then fires leading to poor air quality, many of our reserved days were cancelled.  For the past Labor Day weekend, we had another heat wave up to 107 degrees.  We were able to cool down with a swim on Saturday which was awesome.  On Labor’s Day as we were looking forward to another swim at 103 degrees, it was unfortunately cancelled at the last minute due to poor air quality.  We were definitely disappointed.

    Now the weather is cooling down and I can imagine that our swimming day is coming to an end soon.  We honestly did not get to swim as much as we had with the previous summers, however it has been really fun whenever we did make it there.  All four of us love the space we were given, a quarter of the pool.  We often bring all of our pool toys.  We played “kick the can”, “sharks with minnows” and “basketball” in the pool.  These games also allowed us to have good exercise swimming around too.  We could also took some action pictures in the pool without worrying about privacy with others.  All in all, we are very thankful to have this great entertainment during this crazy time.