Brushing Teeth with Connor and Millie Mae

The kids have been helping out with Millie Mae, and we've gone to a system where Connor does the puppy work in the morning and Paige does it before bed. They're both responsible for checking on food, water, and puppy pads. Paige has the extra job of "Eye Makeup" which is a powder we put near the tear marks under Millie's eyes. Connor's extra job is tooth brushing. He often "forgets", so it doesn't happen every day, but when it does it's pretty entertaining. Millie cooperates pretty well for most things like showers, nails, and hair brushing. Tooth brushing is another story.

Workouts with Connor

 

Connor's still been working out pretty consistently, but he hasn't been very motivated to go to the morning workouts at school. It's a shame since they're free, but he does like to go with me. I took him over the weekend to the gym at our club and we had a good workout. Connor can really push himself hard and definitely enjoys getting in a good workout.

PVIC Member-Guest Golf Tournament with the Douglas Kids

On Sunday afternoon we picked up Cailyn and Quinn for the Member-Guest Golf tournament for the kids. The tournament was a scramble format so they played the best ball hit between each partnership. Paige and Cailyn played together while Andrea drove, I was with Connor and Quinn. We are such newbies at golf we didn't realize we needed balls and I had to send Connor to the pro shop to buy a box before we started. Thankfully we got a big box of balls because most of them ended up in the water by the end of the day. We played 9 holes on the Lagoon course and it was a cool and cloudy day, but there was a little wind that made things tricky. It was good practice and the kids had a good time together.

Paige, Bryson and Millie Mae

 

This weekend was pretty relaxed, not a lot going on and the weather was a bit rainy. Paige and Bryson played together a bit on Saturday and swam in the pool. Millie Mae went out briefly and got a little wet, but she wasn't interested in swimming. The kids had fun until dark, hit some golf balls on the golf course and then said farewell.

Connor's High School Update and Golf Cart Practice

 

Andrea took Connor out for a drive around the neighborhood in the golf cart this past weekend. When he turns 15 we'll be practicing in a real car, so Andrea wanted him to get some more golf cart practice before then.

Connor's high school experience has been pretty positive so far, although he did have some difficulties with one class. We'd heard that the Spanish teacher at his high school can be difficult and even heard stories of Spanish speaking students that had trouble with the class. Connor's in 5 honors classes and for the first few weeks of high school he's been spending the most time on his Spanish homework and studying. Spanish isn't even an honors course and he's probably spent more time with Spanish than all his other courses combined. Since it's an elective, we discussed with him and decided it'd be best to drop it and take it another time so he can focus on the important classes. It took a bit of finagling and discussions with his principal, but we got the schedule change done last week and Connor's been so relieved. He's taking Team Sports instead and it gives his brain a bit of a break in the middle of the day.

Paige's Middle School Picture Day and Middle School Update

 

Andrea fixed Paige's hair for picture day and she took a quick pic of Paige before she went to the bus stop. 

Paige's been doing so well in school so far this year. She's worked independently on her assignments and studying and has gotten great grades so far. Andrea checks up on things and helps to keep her organized, but overall Paige is doing most of it on her own and doing an awesome job.

ML Tennis Tournament - Level 7

Saturday, September 11th 2021, we went to the neighborhood tennis courts so the kids could participate in a level 7 tennis tournament. 

Paige had close matches to start off her day and sadly lost her first two matches. The tournament format isn't our favorite since there's just one set to 6, so no opportunity to reset after a bad set. Paige was up 5-3 in her first match and it ended up going to a deuce & deciding point at 5-5. Paige lost the point and lost the match. Her second match she was up 5-0 and on the changeover her opponent was sobbing and dejected. I was certain she'd win the match, but the other girl rallied and came back and won. Paige was disappointed as you can imagine, but give her opponent a lot of credit for digging in and working her way back in to the match. Paige won her last match thankfully so she ended the day on a positive note.

Connor started off rough and lost his first match but ended up winning the next three. I think he also would have been better off if the format was different, but unfortunately that was the way they ran the tournament on Saturday.

 

Friday Night Lights - PV Football Home Game

On Friday night we went to the high school football game. We brought along Quinn and Cailyn and sat with the Froehlichs during the game. Connor went up to the student section with his friends and everyone wore red, white, and blue in memory of the September 11th 20 year anniversary. The team didn't end up doing very well, but we enjoyed the night out together.

 

Sea Island Labor Day

For the Labor Day Holiday this year we drove up to Sea Island in Georgia for the weekend. Thankfully Andrea's bout with COVID was very short and she was feeling better and outside the quarantine restrictions in time for our weekend trip. The weather's cooling off slightly, but it was still a warm weekend at Sea Island for our visit. We spent quite a bit of time at the beach and pool, went on some walks, and watched some US Open tennis. Connor's been getting a lot of workouts in lately and wanted to go to the gym, so we went twice and worked out on all the different equipment and talked through different workouts for different muscle groups. I played tennis on Saturday, but Andrea canceled her spot in the clinic since she was still taking it easy after COVID.

Connor bumped in to Parin, a friend from Camp Pinnacle, and they swam at the beach and ocean along with Parin's friend.

Beach Jogging with the Kids and Millie Mae

Last summer I started going to the beach for my jogs during the summer because the yellow horseflies in our neighborhood get bad for a couple months when it's hot out. Millie Mae loves our jogs on the beach. I let her off-leash and she loves exploring, sniffing, digging, and splashing in the water if she gets hot. The kids don't really like to go jogging very often, but I got both of them to come out with me at different times recently. We jogged from the club down to a big piece of driftwood that I use as my halfway turnaround point.

 

Andrea's COVID-19 Recovery

Andrea had been feeling a little off for a few days and on Saturday she decided to take a COVID test that we had at home. I almost discouraged her from taking it because they were hard to come by and she only had some light allergy symptoms. Andrea put the Q-Tip in her nose and then I put it in the reagent, folded the card over to start the test and I was pretty surprised that within a minute a very solid "Positive" line started to appear. The directions are very clear that even a faint line is positive and the line on her test was very dark and clear. We opened another test from a different package and after running it, it also came back positive. We tested everyone and everyone else came back negative so we isolated Andrea away from us and scheduled a test at Mayo Clinic for Sunday morning. Andrea went in first thing on Sunday morning and that test eventually also came back positive. I went in that same day and my Mayo test came back negative as well. 

Andrea's positive test is obviously very surprising. We are all vaccinated and Andrea actually went in and had gotten her booster (3rd) COVID vaccine on Thursday August 26th 2021. I was pretty certain that the symptoms she was feeling were due to the immune response from the booster shot, but obviously I was wrong. Andrea's been doing well so far and on Monday August 30th, she went in to the Mayo Clinic to get a monoclonal antibody treatment, which was recommended for high risk patients. She had an IV for an hour and then had to wait another hour afterwards. 

We have been wearing masks around the house and have divided up different rooms to try and keep everyone else healthy. Paige was feeling some allergy symptoms so we took her through the Mayo Clinic drive through testing yesterday (9/1/2021) and that test came back negative as well. So far Andrea's done well and is feeling better already. She's had some ups and downs and it's definitely been a stressful week, but I'm thankful that she's such a tough girl and has been positive and strong through this. 

Andrea's been a little stir crazy and has taken some long walks and gotten in the pool a few times. Millie Mae has been crazy about the pool and enjoyed swimming with Andrea and keeping her company.

A little additional backstory to the COVID pandemic, it had gotten much better in the early summer but things have gotten worse lately. Mask mandates had been lifted, vaccination rates were increasing, and things seemed to get back to normal for a few months. I think it was right when we got back from our Adventures by Disney vacation that things started to change. There's a new Delta variant that is apparently much more infectious and the hospitals are filling up again. Most of the severe cases have been in unvaccinated patients and we actually know a few people that have recently been hospitalized and in pretty rough shape. Vaccinated people are also getting infected, however most of them tend to have less lethal outcomes. There are stories of multiple additional variants around the globe and it is not looking good for things getting back to normal any time soon.

1st PV High School Football Game

Friday, August 27th, we went to the high school for the first home game of the season. It was the first home game of the season and also against a nearby rival school Nease so the tickets were definitely difficult to get. It didn't help that the school was restricting capacity slightly and also accidentally sold a lot of tickets to Nease families due to a software glitch. We signed up for the booster program so we got two tickets with our booster membership and Andrea was able to find two additional tickets so we all could go. It was an exciting atmosphere and we had a nice night out together although our team lost 7-14 and it was also a nightmare trying to get out of the parking lot afterwards. Paige sat with Andrea and me, while Connor sat in the student section with his friends.