bad blogger (or just busy?)

Yes, I have been quite busy, but I also haven't prioritized updating this site! So what did the month of June hold?

Tom made a trip to Holland and London for work. Had to laugh when his one facebook post had him in Leicester Square and my comment back was "kitchen, Metairie".....Those trips are always tiring if nothing else, and after the first few times, just a bit more exciting than my dad's regular trips to Indianapolis when I was a kid!

Maggie's been quite the busy one. She spent a week in Los Angeles with her aunt, uncle, and cousins for her 8th grade "graduation". First time flying alone! And I don't recommend Delta for unaccompanied minors. I like the fact that they require you to "sign" for them when they get on/off the plane to ensure they are delivered to the correct people, but I find their fees rather excessive for this "service". She had a GREAT time! Catalina Island, Rodeo Drive, Universal Studios, etc. etc. She's also working her first "real" job (yikes!) as a counselor in training at the JCC -- she'll make more money this year than me.....She's completed 2+ weeks and really seems to like it a lot. AND she's doing as much of the cross country summer running as we can manage -- practice is 6am. I take her and have been jogging again. Today's practice is at night and I cannot take her to it because Abby has a swim meet, so we jogged the neighborhood this morning.

Abby kept VERY busy the beginning of June with her swim team practice and theater camp. Swim practice is 3X a week in the afternoons. She missed the first 3 meets due to camp, and the one last week got stormed out just before her first race. Today's the final meet of the year. However, I think she enjoys the practicing more than the racing! The theater camp was at UNO. I was really impressed with the program. It met every day for 3 weeks and then put on "Peter Pan" for 4 shows. Abby was a mermaid and an indian. She has a quite different persona on stage than you'd suspect just talking to her. And she's expressed interest in doing the holiday show at UNO, depending on what we do for Christmas this year. Abby also went with Tom last week for a short visit to Houston to see his dad. Ray's dealing with chronic lymphatic leukemia and hasn't had an easy past few months. They had a nice visit and came home Saturday.

Unfortunately, Tom returned to Houston Sunday as his dad took a downturn. Tom's brothers checked on him in the morning and found him quite disoriented, so they took him to the hospital. He's suffering from and infection and was severely dehydrated and was admitted to ICU. Thank God he's really improved over the past couple days and should move to a "regular" room today.

Meanwhile many other things have kept us busy -- my parents came to see Peter Pan and spend some time with us. While they were here my washing machine died (after 14 years!) and dad helped Tom with the new one -- the first one they installed didn't work, so it required 3 trips to the store to finally get it done. But the new one works so well! I've seen several movies with the girls -- Super 8 (good), Something Borrowed (good), Green Lantern (not so good). Today Abby and I are meeting friends for Transformers. I'm providing a meal for 25 teenagers tomorrow evening. And I'm keeping busy at the gym (actually, given that Maggie's working at the JCC, Abby swims there, and I work out there, I may just move in!).

No big plans for the rest of the summer and it doesn't look like we'll take a big family vacation, but overall, we're doing well.