Here are the June highlights:
- Kids finish another year of school
- Lilah selects Joya as the subject of her oral report — afterwards the entire class meets Joya
- Lilah celebrates her 8th birthday
- The kids join me at my first triathlon of the season
Lilah
Lilah turned 8 this month. She’s grown a lot this year, not just with all she knows how to do, but physically as well. The doctor confirmed this at her checkup, letting Cathy know that Lilah had grown 2.5 inches and gained around 15 lbs. According to her pediatrician she is doing well and well within her growth rate — piggy back rides just aren’t as easy for daddy, but hey, soon enough the day will come when Lilah won’t want anymore rides so I’m enjoying them while they last.
For her party, Lilah decided to forego the personal gifts and have her friends bring her donations for a dog shelter instead. Of course, we had a small family party afterwards where we got her a few things, but nothing too extravagant. She really like the idea of the donation party and Cathy was able to coordinate things so that we could drop things off with the same dog shelter she used to volunteer for way back in day. As a thank you, the owner of the shelter presented Lilah with a cool shirt she absolutely loved.
At her party, Lilah got to roller skate with her friends, win a skating competition, and find another thing to crusade about. The competitive side of Lilah really comes out when she competes. When the announcer said go, Lilah took off and never looked back. Later, her cousin Sebastian entered the competition for the boys and was narrowly edged out by another boy. However, controversy ensued — at least, according to Lilah. A few minutes after the event she came up to me exasperated over what had just happened. What had just happened? I didn’t know until she told me that the boy who won had cheated because he had pushed Sebastian on one of the turns and because of that push he had managed to steal the victory.
I asked if she was sure and she said she was and quickly and breathlessly proceeded to tell me that it was not fair and that she needed to find the cheater and tell him to give his prize to Sebastian. When I tried to tell Lilah that everything was okay, she said “No, it’s not,” and all her little buddies backed her up and said it was definitely not okay and that it was not right to cheat. Then they stormed off to find the culprit. Luckily, Sebastian later informed them that it had all just been an accident and the confrontation was averted. Although I’m not sure if any of the girls would have gone up to the boy had they found him anyway. It was mostly talk, but it was interesting to see that self righteous side of a child who very much sees things in black and white.
Luke
Luke’s latest skill is swimming. Granted, he’s still not super sure of himself in the water and the swim is more like a jumbled dog paddle than anything else, but he’s getting there and hopefully will be doing okay by the time we go to Lake Tahoe later this month. Since we’re now in the full swing of summer, we’re also doing a lot more outdoor activities. We’ve gotten into a nice groove of playing tennis in the evenings after dinner. And since I finally went out and bought my new camera, I am now able to document this stuff much better than I could before. I didn’t really know why I needed a camera that could take 3.5 pictures per second, but now I do. Here are two action sequences I took of Luke performing different activities (these are pictures I never could have gotten had I just stuck to my point and shoot camera):
Luke throwing rocks
Luke smacking a tennis ball
However, this month, I think Cathy got the winning action sequence during Luke’s last day of school party. For the party, Cathy dressed Luke up in a nice sporty dress shirt. While there the kids got snacks, played a few activities inside, collected some of the work they had done throughout the year, etc. But it turns out the real party took place outside. I laughed pretty hard when Cathy e-mailed these pictures to me at work:
And so concludes another month ;-)…more next month…