Waiting for Godot: Second Half of 2017 Highlights, Part I

As I look back at photos from the year, I'm struck by the number of family bike rides. This has become my favorite thing that we do together as a family. Tyler and I are now bicycle commuters on a daily basis, and we often bike as a family to his Saturday Little Dragons class, then stop by the library on the way home. Occasionally we also bike on Sundays, either to 4th Ave or downtown for lunch, but stopping at the university on the way.

The fountain in front of Old Main is everyone's favorite rest spot.

In June we celebrated Grandma A's birthday. Cakes are my thing. Tyson alerted me that his mom loves cookies more than cake, so I made her a gigantic cookie cake. I forgot to take a picture of it, but it was about like this.

We still love our new house and yard, and are becoming more familiar with the necessary upkeep. The big issue we tackled this year was the health of the trees. We learned that we have more than 30 trees on our property, and alot of them are not healthy - they are the living dead, courtesy of boring insects and granuloderma. We removed a few trees, but hired pros to service the tougher jobs. Quality Tree Service did a great job with this one.

Neighbors actually rang our doorbell to ask about it, they were so excited with the results.

This summer, Tyler alternated between time with Grandma A, and summer day camps at Tyrien's preschool, Catalina Methodist, and programs at the UofA. While it was convenient to have both boys at the same place, Tyler definitely enjoyed the greater variety of activities offered at A Camp, especially because friends from school AND Little Dragons were there, and especially at Flandrau planetarium's Fusion Camp, because he loves astronomy. After camp, we'd drive to the campus rec center for swim lessons. Tyrien's lesson was at 5:30, while Tyler's wasn't until 6. We often didn't get home until almost 7 at night. It felt like the summer days were more work than school days! But it was wonderful to see Tyler's progress. He often had free swim time during his camps, and during A Camp he had extra swim lessons, so that he was getting two lessons per day. Our plan for this coming summer is to have him spend the first month at A Camp with swim lessons during the day, so we can get home at 6:30 instead of 7.

Tyrien passed his swim class on his first try. Unfortunately, he was not permitted to take the next level of classes because he was not yet 3! His instructor requested an exception, but was denied. We'll get started as early as we can this swim season. Definitely, the UofA rec center swim lessons are the best swim lessons we've seen thus far in Tucson, having tried YMCA, DeMont, and Parks and Rec first.

We spent most Sunday afternoons at the Mulcahy YMCA pool, with Tyler spending most of his time on the water slide. Tyrien loves the water. His favorite game at the Mulcahy Y pool was to fall forward face first, then float face down for as long as possible. Nervewracking to watch, but awesome to see someone so young so comfortable in the water. He was definitely playing with buoyancy, using his lung capacity to rise or sink. His other favorite game was to unexpectedly climb out of the pool and dash across the peninsula, jumping in on the other side, out of our sight and reach, in water deeper than he could stand. The lifeguards practiced "rescuing" him more than once. This kid is just comfortable hanging out underwater for long periods of time, but that's terrifying to us. You can see why we wanted so much to continue his swim lessons.

We continued to celebrating spontaneous sleeping.

The brothers deepened their relationship, seeking each other's company often - sometimes to cuddle, occasionally to play, and often to antagonize one another.

In July, we again vacationed with the Bushmans, this time renting a cabin in Greer. It is so fun to go hikinng with former camp counselors! We learn so much.