From April to July

Below are several posts updating things from April until now. We've been busy this summer with lots of fun activities, some of which I posted about. Luke has done fantastic with his swimming. Between week 1 and week 2 of lessons, it just clicked and he swims all over the pool by himself. He still can't touch anywhere, so he goes from edge of pool to Aaron or I and back and forth between us and the pool sides. He can swim 10-20 feet at a time and tries to come up for air, but hasn't quite got that down yet. He will change directions in the water though, and if we give him a shove down, he'll go down and get dive sticks and bring them back up. It's alot of fun to watch our little fish. I plan on getting some video of it, and I'll try to figure out how to put a video clip on the blog sometime this summer so you can see him swim firsthand. Aaron and I are also getting geared up for our trip to Europe. We leave the last week of July, and we'll be in Germany for 3 days and Paris, France for 5 days. Aaron and I will also take a one day detour to Belgium to visit my aunt and uncle who live there. We are so excited. The boys will get some grandparent time with both sets of grandparents. I know they will have fun too, but I do worry how their behavior will deteriorate over the 10 days Aaron and I are gone. We've never left them for more than 2 days at a time. Luke is old enough to understand, but I fear he will become meltdown central the last few days just because his routine will be out of whack with Aaron and I gone, and him wanting us home again. Ben doesn't have the same concept of time, but he may get increasingly whiny and fussy as time goes on, we'll see. I predict he'll be ok overall, but will be extraordinarily clingy for the first few days when we get back. Fortunately, the grandparents are coming to our house, so the boys will be at home in their own beds at least. Oh well, I'm keeping my worries to a minimum because there's nothing I can do to predict or change how they'll act while we're gone. It will be a great vacation for me and Aaron. We've not had a real vacation, as a family or a couple, since we moved to Fort Worth 8 years ago. We've gone on trips with our extended family for some long weekends at various places, but this will be our first extended vacation in 8 years. I also look forward to taking the boys on a family vacation sometime in the next year. We had planned on doing a big family vacation this year, but when the Europe opportunity came up, that trumped any family vacation plans. So we're thinking maybe Sea World/San Antonio next fall or spring, or something like that. So, get ready, I will have lots of pictures and stories coming up in the next month from our European vacation!