Holiday Sunday

We did the barbeque thing at an Aunt's house, followed by card games the rest of the night. Not a bad day, except for the weather. Yucky drizzle all day long.

Three Down

Yesterday was the last of Shelby's three birthday events. We had her classmates party at Perfect Swing in Norman. She had a good time, but then we had to book it to Yukon for another birthday party.

Some pictures from her birthday party are posted on the events page of the album.

Crutches and Keys

Darby is really starting to get around on those crutches. After her first full-week of school on the crutches, I think she is pretty confident and can get around pretty well. Every now and then she pushes it too much and almost falls over, but since her confidence is up she just presses on. Last week this time if she slipped up like that she didn't want to do the crutches anymore for fear of falling over...


Darby started piano lessons today. She did pretty good and I think she is going to like it. It was a little difficult sitting right with her cast, but she did okay anyway.

When it rains...

When I went to lunch today it was quite sunny and in the mid-90s. I had no clue there was rain in the forecast. So when I returned from lunch I left the windows AND SUNROOF cracked open in the grand tradition of last couple of months in our once seemingly rainless land.

So you might imagine my surprise when, around a quarter til five, I overheard someone say it was pouring outside. So I packed up my stuff and headed out -- umbrella-less mind you. Of course, I am completely soaked by time I reach my car. And naturally it, too, is completely soaked. There was pretty much standing water in most available areas of non-pourous depth thanks to my leaving open of the sunroof.

It took me about thirty minutes to get things reasonably "cleaned-up". I had a couple of rags and some paper towels at my disposal to sop-up the water. Probably used up a half-roll of those paper towels.

On the way to pick up the girls from school I stopped at the store to buy a cheapo box of plastic trash bags so that Darby's cast would not get wet getting to the car when I picked her up. But of course the rain stopped just in time for me to have wasted that grocery store stop as we were able to get to the car without the use of the plastic bag.

Blue & Gold Sausage Time!

For those who are into Blue & Gold Sausage, the girls' school has started the annual fundraising drive. Please let me know if you'd like to order and I'll get you hooked up! But hurry! The order deadline is 5 September!

One crutch at a time

Today was Darby's first full day with just crutches. I took the wheel chair back so she only had her crutches to propel herself. She seemed to do well, though her teacher said she almost fell once, and I got the impression she was carried several times.

I was betrayed today. I hope not personally (though it felt like it), but definitely professionally. By several people, in varying degrees. I felt ill to my stomach when I found out, it was a wonder I didn't lose my previous night's dinner (since I hadn't had breakfast or lunch at the time). Going into details won't make the matter less mind-numbing, so I'll leave it as the simple form of expression it is.

Two Down, One More to Go

Shelby's actual birthday has come and gone, and tonight we had our family celebration at Santa Fe Cattle Co. with about fifteen family members. We went away with two 30-gallon bags of presents (sheesh). And next week is the birthday party with her friends.

Photos from tonight's festivities have been posted on the events page of the album.

We went to CiCi's pizza for dinner tonight and I had Darby use her crutches to go into and out of the restaurant. She didn't like that very much, but she's getting much better at the crutches, however she has only been using them for short distances. As the wheel chair I rented is due back Monday, she will have to propell herself via crutches at school, so we need to be working on her endurance with the crutches. At school, her class moves from their room to the gymnasium to the cafeteria, to the library, etc. during the day, and that will be quite a hike for her on those crutches.

Couple new pics of Shelby are in the album.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHELBY!

Today is Shelby's 6th birthday. My how time flies. In order to ensure adequate notice for her friends (as today was also the first day of school), we'll be celebrating the weekend after next.

Darby is getting much crutch practice. She's getting better all the time. Tomorrow is the first day of school, but it looks like we'll be doing the wheelchair thing still. We'll probably try the crutches at school first thing next week.

Status: Darby's Leg

Darby got her cast on today, in place of the fiberglass splint that was there until the swelling reduced. She's having a hard time with the crutches, so I rented a wheel chair for her for a week while we practice with the crutches. I also purchased a bench for the bath tub so she could sit with her leg out of the tub and take a shower.

Monday and Tuesday evening of this week are Shelby's and Darby's school orientation respectively. So tonight we went to Shelby's orientation. The cool thing there was that once the school faculty saw Darby's plight, they switched her from a class upstairs to a class downstairs so she wouldn't have to worry about traversing the stairs as much. That was way cool as the school integration issue was one of my biggest concerns because of the stairs.


I created a page in the album documenting Darby's experience for those family members not near to see her.

So much for soccer

One day after registering for the upcoming soccer season, Darby broke her leg. She'll be in a cast for six to eight weeks, which is the majority of the soccer season.


The day started out well, and nearly ended well, but for a last minute parental decision.

After visiting the public library that morning and having each kid pick out a book, I took Darby to her friends house. She was spending the day with her friend. So they went off to lunch and to swim, and then Shelby and I went to lunch and spent the day together.

We went to McDonald's to eat as Shelby wanted to play at the playplace for a bit. Afterward we went to Best Buy where I picked up the latest "Ataris" and "Dashboard Confessional" CDs. We were supposed to go skating then, but it was almost 4pm by this point and the rinks around here close at that time and open again for a 7pm session. So we went bowling instead, and afterward we went to the park for awhile before catching some dinner.

I got to Darby's friend's house around 8pm to pick her up and her friend was riding her scooter. So Darby begged me to let her ride her scooter for a little bit, knowing that I had it in the trunk still from recent use. I told her we needed to get home as it was bath time, but she kept pressing on about riding for just a little bit. So I gave in, knowing that I wanted to speak with her friends mom for a little bit anyway about how the day went. Well, not twenty minutes later, Darby made a hard left turn after a high-speed coast down the driveway and whack! Down she went. Those "razor" scooters aren't meant to take turns like that with their little wheels. She screamed out pretty fiercely right away and I was pretty worried. I ran to her and picked her up while someone went to get an ice pack. I held her for about ten minutes with the ice on her very swollen shin. We had her try to stand but she screamed out again. Preferring to err on the side of caution, I loaded the kids and their stuff into the car and we headed to the hospital. About two hours later we were getting x-rays, and maybe half an hour after that we had confirmation of the fracture.

With school starting Thursday, this will make for a more than interesting start to the school year.

Soccer is around the corner

So we officially signed up Darby for soccer today. Not Shelby. She initially said she didn't want to do it, though now she's saying she wants to. Not sure that I'm going to do so, as she wasn't that interested in it last season. She was so excited to sign up, but not as excited when it came time to play. But I have another week before the registration deadline, so we'll see.

Dentist appointment today was MUCH better than the last one. Just a cleaning and x-rays. No complications...

Kids had a birthday party to go to this afternoon. It was a skate party, so I took my rollerblades to participate. Considering it was a three hour party, I bet I skated for two of those. Darby has been a good skater for quite some time. Shelby pretty much couldn't skate before today, she would just "walk with wheels on." I spent a lot of time with her today explaining how to skate, and holding her hand for many laps around the rink, and for probably the last hour we were there she spent the whole time practicing by herself. She wouldn't hold my hand and just wanted to do it herself and she was getting it down pretty good. I can now say that she is at least a beginning skater, rather than just walking around with wheels. I think we may need to go skating again in the next week or two so she can really lock-in what she has learned.

After the skate party we had a CiCi's pizza dinner, followed by a trip to Draper lake to play at the very cool park they have there.

Our traditional Friday night dinner out was at McDonald's at the kids request. They wanted to exploit the PlayPlace.

Also found out today that the first soccer game is 20 September, and the season will run through 8 November. The calendar has been updated with the game days, but we don't have times yet.

Today I took the kids to see Spy Kids 3-D. It was barely OK from the adult perspective, but the kids seemed to like it. Those darn 3-D glasses about gave me a headache. I've only seen parts of the 2nd movie, but it seemed to have a better story.

We also did a little school shopping. Can't believe it's almost that time again.

Travel Recap

Still not fully rested from trip to Long Beach, CA last week. Got to thinking, and there's been quite a bit of travel for me this year, but none planned for the rest of the year so far (barring maybe a short road trip to Tulsa, Kansas City, or Dallas with the kids), though there's slight chance of another business trip in the fall, to a conference, but that's way TBD.

This year's travel scoreboard:

January, Denver, CO - Business
May, Alexandria, IN - Personal
June, Tulsa, OK - Personal
June, Las Vegas, NV - Personal
June, Tucson, AZ - Personal and Business
July, San Diego, CA - Business
July, Long Beach, CA - Business


Probaby the first year my trips have been pretty much equally split between business and personal trips. I hope to keep that trend up rather than biased toward business as has happened in the past.

Back, but not happy about it

The airlines have some serious work to do to bring my faith back. From the time I got to the airport in LA to the time I left the OKC airport to pickup my kids, about thirteen hours had elapsed. I am SO tired of traveling via commercial airlines for the moment. I'm sure I'll get over it, but sheesh...


The catalyst to everything was essentially my fault. But there was no recovering gracefully on this day. Up until now we had been traveling as a group. Though I should have known better as we had been split up on several occasions. Well, we all left for the airport at 5:30am for our 8:00am flight. However when we were all doing our curbside check in the curb guy says "I don't see you on this flight". The bottom (being that which was holding the blood in my head) dropped out right then. I couldn't believe, so I looked (carefully this time) at my itinerary... departure time 7:07am. I looked at the current time at that point... 6:37am. My thoughts at the moment... O M G. So I look at my co-worker and say, this is really bad, to which she replies, oh yeah, it's bad. So I immediately book it inside, first to the self-service electronic ticket line. All I could think was that they start boarding thirty minutes before departure time and there I was still needing to check-in, check my bag, have my bag inspected, and go through security screening. At LAX. How is this possible within the knwon laws of physiscs I remember thinking. So I asked the first official looking person I could find walking around if I had enough time. She looks at my itinerary and replies, "you've pretty much already missed it", pointing to a sign that says there's a forty- minute cut-off for bags to be on the plane before departure time to ensure they aren't lost. She says I need to be "in the other line". I know what line she speaks of and I have great fears. It's the international flights/I stupidly missed my flight can you please fix it line.

So I go to the line which is five rows long on the inside of the airport (each roped-off row being maybe thirty-five yards wide) and I try to get in it, at which point a lady guarding the apparent entrance says, sir, the line starts outside. Again with the O M G. So I go outside and sure enough there's more line out on the sidewalk of LAX, maybe another twenty-five yards worth. So I'm in this line for about an hour and forty-five minutes. Having WAY missed my original flight and the flight I was hoping to get moved to (with my coworkers), I got put on a flight departing at 11:45am. This made me real glad I woke up at 4:15am. So I went through bag inspection and security screening largely without incident, and went up to my gate, grabbing some breakfast along the way. So at this point it's about 8:30am and I know I have another three hours to wait, so I call the cell phone of a coworker to leave a status message, thinking they're long gone. But he answers his phone. ??? Turns out their 8:00 flight was delayed two hours to 10:15. But I still can't be put on that flight as it is full, but a quick updated itinerary check shows that we're all back on the same flight from Dallas to OKC. We just depart LAX an hour appart, which doesn't seem so bad.

So after waiting two hours in the terminal with my coworkers, they board their plane to Dallas (after four gate changes and some delays, not a good sign). I figure I'll catch back up with them in Dallas. But then my flight goes through a couple of gate changes, and a delay. Instead of departing LAX at 11:45, it's now more like 12:30. We finally get in the air and I think it's almost over, but once we land after the three hour flight I call my coworker and ask where they are... he says they're ON THE PLANE. Ugh, I think. We've just landed and are still taxiing to the gate. He says there's no way I'll make it as they're almost done boarding and will be departing. Sure enough, by the time we got to the gate, waited there ten minutes before deplaning because there was still a plane ahead of us at the gate, I had missed the flight. So I had to get the NEXT flight from Dallas to OKC, which was departing an hour and a half later.

So I finally get to OKC about 8:40pm. By the way a check of my original itinerary shows a 1:40pm arrival time in OKC. Needless to say I was a bit behind, as well as a bit unnerved. Had I only made my original flight (which I think was the only on-time flight of the day).