Birthday Season

 It is the beginning of Birthday Season here in Kendig Land.

By that, I am referring to the amusing fact that with 11 people in the house, we have zero birthdays January through April. Daniel's birthday was in May, and we have two birthdays in June, one of whom is Rose.

So our youngest three are now 15 and 14 and 12. They are growing up!

My parents bought Rose a giant flamingo floatie, and it is a HUGE hit.  

Daniel has always been huskier than most of our kids which frankly (given that some of them struggle with being underweight) has been a relief for me. He is growing very fast right now because he is having a major growth spurt. He hasn't passed me and Kevin up YET, but he is working on it.

The last couple of weeks have been hard on Kevin. He has been having back issues, PLUS an ear infection. He is on antibiotics now but the infection is clearing up slowly. All very annoying.

I have been trying to swim almost every day, and it is definitely such good exercise. When we bought this house more than 20 years ago, I adored the size of the house, and the large bedrooms, and three full baths on the second floor...

But I was nervous about the pool. We had a bunch of little kids at the time and I naturally worried about a child falling in and drowing.

But the house was perfect for us so we bought it, and now I can look back and be so thankful for the pool. It is a fair amount of work to keep it in good shape, but it enabled us to teach 9 children how to swim, and that is a valuable skill. When I was in the throes of caring for 9 kids, running to and from swimming classes would have been tough.

I am on a cave diving kick; not, of course, scuba diving in caves personally. I am not crazy. I am reading about it, and watching videos. A few days ago, I watched a documentary called Dave Not Coming Back.

Dave Shaw was a cave diver who died while trying to retrive the body of ANOTHER cave diver from a very deep freshwater sinkhold in South Africa. And when I say deep, I mean DEEP. The first dude was at about 900 feet deep. 900 feet. Think about the pressure involved! It is INSANE.

Dave Shaw went down there, found the body of 20 year Deon Dryer from a decade earlier, and when he came back up to the surface, decided to try to bring his body up for his family's sake. He and his closest diver friend pulled together a bunch of support divers and also a documentary crew, and then when Shaw went down to the bottom to retrieve the body, he got tangled up in a line and also died.

It is horrifying and also just WEIRD. Because there was no real reason to risk life and limb to bring up this body in such a difficult place.

But in the documentary his friends and widow said a lot of it was just that Shaw wanted to push the limits. He mostly did it to test himself, and tragically died. He left a wife and two pretty young kids.

It is incredibly selfish, I think, to do something like that. But then again, some people are drawn to intense danger. They want to push themselves hard. It is a good thing there are people like that, because they are firefighers who run into burning buildings, and chopper pilots who hang off of cliffs to save stranded people.

So yeah, I guess I shouldn't judge, though realistically I am judging. I told Kevin that I am grateful he has no desire to engage in super risky hobbies like climbing very tall mountains and diving caves.

Mid June

 Our three youngest kids spent last week with my parents and their only cousin on my side of the family. They went to zoos and parks and Sauder Village in Ohio. They played games.  They ate delicious food. They made friends with a girl who lives next to my parents. It was all very good.

My Dad took this pic so he isn't in it obviously. The guy on the far left is my younger brother, who lives close to my parents.

This is the second year that my parents have taken our younger kids for a week in the summer. Last year, I was in pain from an anal fissure that took literally months to heal and was very unpleasant.

THIS year, Kevin was the one hit with stupid health stuff. He has something going on with one ear which is causing hearing problems and some  dizziness. He has also been having substantial back and right leg pain. So we didn't do anything very special this week together because he wasn't feeling good.

Well, we did one thing; we finally watched Project Hail Mary, based on the book by that name by Andy Weir. It was a brilliant movie. I love it so much. It is a little less sciency than the book, but there are some additions to the movie that are actually an improvement over the book. 

So yeah, that was FUN. We bought it on Amazon so we can watch it again whenever we want. Just as a "hey, that's hilarious" thing... to rent the movie and watch it once was $20. To buy it was $25.

Ok, we will buy it.

I met my parents in Sauder Village yesterday and brought our kids home. The house was SO quiet while they were gone, but today we have seven kids roaming around because no one is working and Isaac is visiting.

The kids opened their Universal Yums box today. We have a monthly subscription. Universal Yums provides snacks and foods from various countries, one country each month. This month was India.

I swam almost every day last week and now that the kids are back, there will be even more swimming. the pool is a delicious temperature.

The kids were hanging in the living room this morning, chattering with one another.  Warms the cockles of my heart.

That's about it!  We have two birthdays this month, which is exciting. I am working away on another book, of course, which is exciting.

Kevin is not feeling great, which stinks, but we think these will heal up in time. It is just very annoying.