Adler got to go to his first NFL game last night thanks to Uncle Steve, his season tickets, and season ticket holders being forced to buy preseason games. He was a little scared at first when we were walking to the seats. And I don't blame him, the hight and steepness of the stairs in the top level can be rather intimidating. But as you can see from the picture above of him sliding down the railing as we went to get another round of junky stadium food, he got over that fear pretty quick.
The other night the big boys were with Grandma & Papa and Kari was at a Friends of Manual Board of Directors meeting so Blane and I had an evening alone together. We got Chinese take out for dinner (although I thought the chicken was too spicy and white rice is one of the few foods Blane doesn't like so he got his favorites of fruit and cheese for dinner) and played in the front yard for a while.
The boys and I did an ice cream sandwich making class the other day. They got to make the dough, roll it, bake it and then the same for the ice cream. At the end, we assembled the sandwiches and ate them!
The big guys had a haircut about a week ago and as usual, Blane joined in the fun. I scheduled his first haircut for 8 weeks from now (probably a little late, but I'm having a hard time with the first last one.) In order to prepare, he spent some time playing in the various cars and choosing the one that might be the most fun. I think he liked t he mercedes SUV the best.
Though the firetruck was a close second.
Landon is a little too big for this place, but it makes my life easier to take everyone at once and he doesn't seem ready to graduate (I ask him everytime).
I have seen the Samples live more than any other band and was shocked (and a little saddened) to see that they were playing for free at the Stapleton Park one night. Reluctantly, the boys joined Brian and I for some old school music with the Wu family.
Baby B was just starting to get sick and wasn't the happiest, but he joined in the fun. I even got serenaded by Brian with "Did you Ever Look so Nice" before the concert. Brian doesn't quite have the twang that Sean Kelly has.
I'm very grateful to have a good job that affords me a pretty good work-life balance. It doesn't always work out perfectly but I'm generally able to hold down my decent and mostly rewarding job and still be a real part of my family's life.
I do travel some for work, however, which is a bit of a mixed blessing. On one hand, the travel is definitely more of a stress on the work–family balance than the typical day-to-day work and can be hard on all of us. On the other hand, the travel often accompanies the more interesting and engaging aspects of my work and the opportunity to visit different parts of the world is truly amazing - just this year for work I've been to Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Vancouver, New Orleans (the family did come along for some of that) and Berlin.
Perhaps it was motivated by some guilt at leaving again, or maybe it was just trying to put a personal human touch on things, but I decided to put baby Blane into a presentation I gave at an Internet Engineering Task Force meeting during a recent trip. A friend was nice enough to share the photo of me presenting above and a copy of the slide from the presentation is below.
Amorphophallus titanum, the so called corpse flower, is nicknamed for the stench of rotting flesh it gives when blooming. It only blooms once ever 7–10 years and it only lasts for about 48 hours when it does. The Denver Botanic Gardens has two of them. The more mature of the two bloomed last year and it was quite the happening around town. Apparently there was a wait of many hours to see it, which was many hours more than we were willing to endure to see a stinky flower. We visited the gardens yesterday and by chance happened upon the other one, named Little Stinker by the staff, blooming for the first time. It was a surprise to the gardens and they hadn't advertised it so thanks to our lucky timing we didn't have to wait at all to see it and it didn't even stink (when we were there anyway). Someone was nice enough to take a photo of us with it but cut baby Blane out of the pic.
We we talking recently about how the end summer is nearly upon us and it reminded me that I had some pictures from events in Landon's class at the end of last school year that I should probably put up before this school year starts. So here's the graduating 2nd grade class and their continuation, the class project for the auction, as well as the class play, "The Land of Candy" where LT was a gummy bear along with some of his friends.
The boys and I walked to Chipotle for dinner the other night. It's not a long way but still an adventure - especially passing the house where a tree had recently fallen. Landon pushed Blane in the stroller there and back, Adler only has one small crash, and the whole outing was generally a success.
We went to jazz at City park this week. Somehow the summer has slipped away and this was the only one that all of us could make it to. We met up with some friends who have similar age kids (theirs are 11,9 and within days of Blane). Above, Blane needed a shoulder ride home, it was late and he was not about to ride in the stroller. Happy kid regardless.
These two are days apart, K was due before Blane, but born a few weeks after. For all purposes, they are the same age and for that matter, the same size, big and squishy.
As usual, Landon loves babies and making them happy.
They were so funny trying to figure each other out. At one point one reached out and touched the other ones nose and then vice versa. Neither of them see many other babies, but are both very used to big kids.
"They did it!" was the text I sent to Kari. I didn't know what else to say and I was too exited to take the time to write anything more. I would follow up a bit later but that's all I could muster at the time.
Landon swam in his first state swim meet on Saturday. Through the summer he managed to qualify in three individual events, the most you can compete in, and his coach considered him good enough to put him on the both the A medley and free relays.
It's just summer club swimming but there were a lot of teams, a lot of kids, and some very talented swimmers competing. Looking over the seed times the night before, Kari and I both worried aloud to one another that he might be in for a difficult and humbling day. And in some ways we were right.
Their medley relay was seeded forth and they improved with a second place finish. But they were never really close to Skyline, the team that beat them. Landon started his team off swimming backstroke and swam well, one of his better legs, but the backstroker for Skyline that day is one of the very best young swimmers in the state and he absolutely demolished LT (and everyone else). VV was never able to make up the difference. You can't really complain about 2nd place in state but I so badly wanted a win for those boys and I could see they were disappointed.
Landon's first individual event was the 100 free and he swam a solid race. He was in the 2nd to last heat but dropped six seconds from his best time and moved up to finish in 8th (which I think means he medaled). Then was the 25 back where he again swam well and improved on his best time. But there was a lot of strong competition and he finished 9th.
50 free was his last individual event. He dove in too early. Way too early. False start. Disqualified. I could see the regret in his face. He took it okay overall but I could tell he was really disappointed. So much so that I was worried it'd impact his last race. I didn't want his disappointment to seed more disappointment. I really didn't want him to let down his teammates. Maybe it was the wrong thing to say but I told him that, if he and his friends went out and won the free relay, he'd probably be able to forget all about disqualifying in one race.
They were seeded second in the free relay so winning wasn't totally unachievable. But Skyline was the team seeded ahead of them, the same kids that had beaten them handily in the medley relay, so winning didn't seem all that likely either. Skyline had also beaten them in this same race in league and Ken Caryl.
Here they are in the heating area. VV is in the middle and Skyline on the right. Even across teams, the kids are all friendly with each other, which I was happy to see.
The boys rose to the occasion and truly put together a team effort. Each one of them did exactly what needed to be done and, as a result, they are state champions! And on top of that they set a new club and state record in the 8-and-under free relay. The very fastest four boys to swim that event in the history of Colorado State Summer Club Swimming Association's state meet.
Here's a shaky video of the race. I'm kind of and self-conscious about hearing myself on these so I'm usually really quiet when filming. But this was just too exiting for me and I lost myself in the moment. They are in one of the the middle lanes - the kid in the pink cap swims first for them and is probably the easiest way to identify them in the video. Landon swims the 3rd leg, which is typically where the weaker swimmers are placed, but it's still part of the team and it took the whole team to get this done. Swimming 3rd also gave him the opportunity to swim against the weaker swimmers of other teams, of which he took full advantage and widened the lead for his team. The kid anchoring their team is legit so, even with very strong competition anchoring the other team, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion when he hits the water with a lead. And it was. What a great way to finish the season. They did it!
Here's the results of that race. They were in lane 5 and finished nearly two full seconds better than the standing record of 1:12.78.
I took video of the other races too. Not as exciting as the final relay but included here mostly for the grandparents to see.
Medley Relay. They are in lane 6, the third from the bottom.
100 Free. Landon is in lane 4 - two to the right from the "no diving" and the kid who doesn't do a flip turn (something to work on for next year).
25 Back. He is in lane 6, the third from the bottom. This wasn't his best race in terms of how he placed but he did improve the most in this event from where he was seeded and I was particularly proud of how he finished the race really strong and won the heat.
50 Free. False start first. Then he swam the race anyway even though it doesn't count.
