End of August 2016

Nowadays you blink and a month has gone by.  This past week has been full of highs and lows.

We started the week with Joe enduring an awful head cold.  Most likely he got it from going back to school.  Even so, he went ahead with his MRI that was scheduled for his brain on Tuesday.  Joe has been having headaches for a few years now and we just wanted to rule out anything serious.  Thankfully we have a great doctor who is fully invested in helping Joe figure this out.  His office called us on Wednesday to tell us the MRI was clear - no bleeds, no tumors.  We still need to figure out the headaches, but at least we know it's not something serious.

Survived the MRI

I (Patty) was looking forward to Thursday morning when I would participate in the Western Colorado Senior Games swimming the 500 meter freestyle.  This is something I wanted to do (get back in the water and compete) for the past 14 years, but I have always felt too heavy.  With encouragement from a lot of people, I signed up for the event even though I was not at the weight I wanted to be at in order to "don" a swim suit.  It felt great to swim again; albeit it was very difficult, but rewarding.  The two women my age who I was to compete against did not swim, so I was moved up to swim with the 60 year olds.  I did win my age group - because I was the only siwmmer in my age group.  I met a lot of new friends.  And I was so thankful for the friends that came to the pool that morning to watch me swim.

Go Patty!

Jessica had a big week as she applied to Grad school and was accepted.  She started her Senior year at Colorado School of Mines this week.  They offer a 5 year Masters, so she applied for that and was accepted.  She can begin taking grad classes this year.  She worked up a whole budget for a year from now so she would know how she can pay for that 5th year.  Needless to say, we are very proud of her.  Her undergrad is in Applied Mathematics and her Masters will be in Statistics.

I guess we will see her in December.  :)  

    

After the swim on Thursday, I came home and saw that our dog was in pain.  We knew that it was time to put him down.  They could take him on Thursday or Friday.  If I did Thursday, the boys wouldn't be able to say good bye, so I scheduled it for Friday.  Ben took real good care of Buddy on Thursday night and Friday (Ben doesn't have school on Fridays.)  Then I took Buddy to the vet on Friday afternoon and said goodbye.

Buddy

I had caught Joe's cold on Wednesday night and spent most of Thursday afternoon, Friday and Saturday in bed.  Sunday I worked all day to get caught up on all the work I didn't do last week.  

Dave and his worker had a great week getting a lot accomplished with our business and bidding new jobs.  We can hardly believe it is almost September already.  That about sums up our week.  I will try to keep this blog updated weekly as well.

August - Already?

Time for a family update.  Mr. Ben started high school two weeks ago.  He has classes like Advanced Latin, Mythology, Moral Philosopy, as well as Classic Literature, Math, Science and Band.  He's doing great.

He was having a lot of knee pain the past 6 months or so, so we made an appointment with his doctor. The conclusion was that it probably was growing pains as his knees checked out well.  He's been going to Gold's gym seeing Ryan, the trainer that has helped me.  Ben goes twice a week and since he has been going, his knees hurt less and less.  At this same doctor appointment, we felt the need for a new xray to check for scoliosis.  He had an x-ray two years ago when Joe was first diagnosed.  At that time Ben had 0 curve.  His xray came back this time with an 8% curve.  So it's just something we have to watch.  Now Joe's was 65% or higher, so 8% is okay.  We just don't want it  to curve as he continues to grow. He's 75% grown, so the doctors feel confident he'll be okay.  Oh yeah, Ben is 6 feet tall.

Ben's snapchat

Joe just registered for his Junior year of high school.  He has crazy classes like AP Physics, Calculus, AP US History, Chemistry, AP Literature, Spanish and I don't even know what else.  He starts school on Wednesday.

He has taken over his dad's window cleaning business.  He makes about 500.00 a month for about 8-10 hours a month.  He does a great job with it too.  He also has been helping with our commercial installs.  We have a full time installer, but sometimes we send Joe with him to help.

Joe is super fit and super strong.  He's been going to Gold's consistently for a little over a year now and he has a great trainer, Mana.  When Joe had his annual check up at Children's Hospital, the doctor said that he looked incredible and he should keep doing what he's doing.

Jessica has been working all summer at Colorado School of Mines with a Center for Bright Kids Summer camp.  She has been the residential director for three different camps.  She will be coming home tomorrow for a few days before she begins her senior year of college.  It sure goes by crazy fast.

Helping Jessica move - Dave, Jess, Joe

Dave and I are doing great.  I'm "blogging" my fitness journey at http://pattysfitnessjourney.blogspot.com/   So I'm not going to talk about that much here.  I have been disappointed lately, but in reality I have just hit my first plateau.  So I am working through that, changing some things up, and hopefully we'll get the weight loss moving again.  It's all good though.

Getting brave enough to wear a tank top.

Our business is busy right now as a lot of our jobs are schools.  They are trying to get the work done before the school year begins.  Dave does a great job keeping up with it all.

We did just find out yesterday that our dog, Buddy has a tumor that has metastasized.  It's growing every day, so we will probably need to have him put down soon.  I was hoping he'd make it until Ben got out of high school, but he's made it 7 years.