All Alone Again

Poor mom- dad and I have left her all alone again while we galavant off to a super fun vacay, but more on that in a bit.

We had a pretty quiet week around here except for the fact that I got my homeroom teacher assignment for 6th grade and I AM NOT A HAPPY CAMPER.  We get divided up into 4 groups of kids assigned to different homeroom teachers.  Three of the teachers are super cool and one is not.  Guess which I got?  Not any of the super cool ones.  I got Dr. Schaub who is mean and from Germany or Poland or something so you can't understand her and to make matter worse, the boys I ended up with in my group are my least favorite people on the planet.  Ugh.  Dig me a grave now.  (That's what I texted to the 6th grade girl's squad).  The only saving grace is that I sure like all the girls in my group.  Sigh.

So anyway, dad and I headed out to San Diego for my softball camp on Saturday morning, leaving mom all by herself again.  She made the most of her time alone.  On Saturday, she spent the whole day waiting for the air conditioner service guy to come and fix the unit only to have them not come due to weather and then they didn't bother to call back to reschedule.  Grrrrrrr.

On Sunday, she went for a really nice bike ride first thing in the morning.  It was still cloudy from the huge storm the night before and she got sprinkled on too so it was really nice.  And humid.  So humid.

Meanwhile, in San Diego, the sun was shining and all was right with the world.  Dad took me to camp for check in at three on Sunday with strict instructions from mom to help get my sheets on my bed, get my suitcase unpacked, remind me to wear flip flops in the shower only to have him kicked out!  He wasn't allowed back to the dorms to help me AT ALL!   In fact, the parents were told not call us or come to practice etc.  We can call them if we want but otherwise, parents are on their own.  Can you believe it!?  I did give mom a 30 second FaceTime call at 10 o'clock at night to let her know I took a shower.  'Cause I know that's what she would want to know.
But now, I'm busy hanging out with my friends Ella, Laura and Riley and trying to work on my pitching.  We'll see how things go!

Mom is joining us Tuesday afternoon and we are going to hang out in San Diego until Sunday so we have lots of vacation left and some good things planned.  Catch you on the flip side!

Family Reunion Time!

I think we have recovered from our 2 in row whirlwind weekends.  We're not as young as we used to be so recovery is slower.....

We spent last weekend in Ohio for the McConnell Family Reunion.  We hopped on a plane out of Tucson at 6AM and met up with the entire Albuquerque Walker Clan in Chicago to fly to Cleveland.  All 9 of us boarded the plane and invaded Wellington.  Mom always loves going back to the farm and seeing Grandma.  I have finally overtaken her in height.  Poor Grandma, she's such a sport!

Once we got settled, we headed to Fort's, a Wellington institution, for their Friday night fish fry.  We met up with cousins Jack and Cait and ran around like crazy kids.  Mom was able to corral us for about 15 seconds to get this picture.

After dinner, we headed back to the farm and did our annual "walk around".  We had to check out the creek, the back 40 and the barn.  We will never stop being amazed by how green it is.

On Saturday, we headed up to Vermillion and Main Street Beach for a day of fun in the sun on Lake Erie.  The water was so warm and we enjoyed it until someone suggested that brain eating ameoba live in warm water.  Waa waa waaaahhhh.  That freaked everyone out just a little bit but we still had a good day.

Nana D and Mr. Walker took Grandma home and the rest of us headed to a cute little local restaurant for a late lunch with some local brewskis.  The food was good, the beer was decent and there were a few outdoor games to keep us kids busy so it was a win, win, win.

We left Sunday morning but before we headed out, we got in one last breakfast with the family.  We managed to get most of the crew in for one final shot but Sophia's agent forgot to tell her about the photo shoot so she decided not to participate.  Maybe next time!

We didn't actually make it to the reunion but Mr. Walker sent us this super cute picture of Aunt Hazel, Grandma and Aunt Ida.  We love these ladies!

We spent this week just recovering.  I had a civil engineering day camp and I got to build bridges, earthquake and tornado proof buildings etc.  I decided I liked civil engineering over bioengineering but either way, I had a good time.
Dad spent his week ramping up at work - he was named acting director which means all of the work but none of the pay.  Hopefully, this will be short term and he can be named "official" director.
Mom's week was nothing exciting, which is really a good thing.
We have one more quiet week and then I head off for softball camp next weekend so we'll have a more exciting post then!

We Survived!

We survived!  We made it a whole week without the whole family unit being together!  That hasn't happened since our Denver days when dad had to head out to the great white north for days on end.  At least this time, it was much more fun for everyone.  We did miss each other though.

Last we checked in, dad and I were driving away, leaving mom standing all by herself in the middle of the street watching us go.  She had a relatively relaxing week of eating cheese and crackers for dinner with a big bowl of ice cream for dessert and an even bigger glass of wine.  She did also eat all the fruits and veggies that were loaded into her grocery cart from the previous blog.

Meanwhile, dad and I were whooping it up good at Disney.  We are such experts at this now.  

We do make an effort to try one new thing each time we go.  And yes, as much as we've been, there are still new things to discover.  This time around, we found a new restaurant that had ribs!  I loves me some ribs!

We also rode Guardians of the Galaxy several times.  That is a brand new ride and we pretty much loved it.

 Believe it or not, we also headed to Knott's Berry Farm for a day.  That was just so-so except for the biggest wooden roller coaster on the west coast.  Dad didn't think it would be all that bad since it was just a wooden coaster but holy cow, we both about lost our breakfast on it!  It was super fast, super tall and kind of scary.  But we survived.

The next day, we headed to their water park.  That was a whole lot better.  We had our own cabana and spent the day screaming down water slide, being lazy in the lazy river and washing up in the wave pool.

This is just a random picture of the cake mom took to a 4th of July party.  She is impressed with her artistic talent....

While we were amusement parking away, mom headed up to Portland, Oregon to go to a co-workers wedding and meet up with her college roommate for a girl's weekend.  Mom has never been to Portland and it was perfect timing because it was 111 degrees the day mom left Tucson and about 70 degrees in Portland.  Sweet relief.

 Mom and Heidi did tons and tons of walking and really got to explore the city.  They found and ate Voodoo doughnuts, walked to the Japanese Gardens.....

headed to the wedding (which was super fun by the way)...

 woke up Saturday and walked all over again.  This time, they went to Pok Pok for some amazing Thai food and then walked about 12 miles back into downtown to go to Powell's book store which is an amazingly huge (like really super huge) used book store.  They spent some time being completely overwhelmed by the shear hugeness of it all before heading out to do a little shopping and then a beer tour and history lesson of old Portland.

It was an impressively busy weekend considering that Heidi was sick (their weekend also involved a quick stop at an urgent care for drugs to deal with a sinus infection and cough.  They got to see all sides of Portland) and both of them were exhausted from lack of sleep.  Just like college!

Mom got back to Tucson Sunday afternoon and was pleasantly surprised to see it was only 100 degrees.  Ahhhhh!  That's the good stuff.  We were all so very happy to see each other again.

And finally, Monday night, our monsoon kicked off with a bang.  It started at about sunset with everything turning pink and then it started raining and didn't stop until 7:30 this morning.  I think we are through the worst of the summer heat.

The Heat Goes On

We are still roasty and toasty here- whew!  Good thing for me, I had my first and only swim meet of the year.  I've going to swim practice 4 days a week for the past 6 weeks and the only way mom talked me into swim team was the promise that I wouldn't have to do swim meets.  I claim to hate swim team, but I actually kind of like it.  Anyway, I agreed to ONE meet and the only reason I agreed was because my friend Claire was on the team we were swimming against.  That and I was promised a big ol' Kona Ice.  It also turned out that half my softball team was on the other team as well, including my softball coach's daughter.  Which means my softball coach was there.  Which means she and dad were thisclose to having an impromptu softball practice.  I had just an average night but as mom likes to say- "It's a good learning experience!"

Friday night, Claire and I had a sleep over- it was even more fun than usual because Claire just got a kitten!  A kitten is my wildest dream and so really,  I spent more time with the cat than I did with Claire but we both understood.

On Saturday, mom and dad picked me up from Claire's and we headed to the grocery store so dad and I could do our food shopping for our week long Daddy-Daughter Vacation!  Woot-Woot!  Mom did a very good job keeping her mouth shut as we filled our cart with cookies, chips, gravy, Lucky Charms.  She did sneak in some carrots and strawberries but those will probably be coming home with us.

Saturday afternoon, dad invited some St. Michael's dads to go golfing (in the 109 degrees heat) and us kids and the moms hung out at the pool.  I was exhausted from the sleep over with Claire and the boys were all exhausted from a sleep over they had the night before too so we were all just kind of floating around but it was fun either way.

Dad and I were up bright and early to head off to Disneyland.  I got to sit in mom's seat and be the co-pilot.  She told me my job was to keep dad awake by talking the whole way.  I kind of like it in the front seat but I was told to not get used to it.  Bummer.

So now, mom is on her own until Thursday when she leaves for a weekend in Portland.  After we left, she headed to the store to do her own shopping for the week.  Her cart looked a little different then our did.

She spent the rest of the day wandering around the house and then tooled around the neighborhood in the golf cart taking pictures.  It was an elderly person, retirement kind of day.   There is a fire burning the mountains not too far from our house so she got a picture of that and then some pictures of this amazing century plant.

 We will fill you in on all our adventures next week!  Have a great one!