September 2026

 The big topic to cover for September (for me at least) was Nova's transition to Takoma Park. We started with her taking the bus from Drew (their home elementary school, where neither of my kids ever attended lol). It picked her up at 6:43 am and arrived at Takoma Park around 8 am. She loved it, so we did it.

After a few weeks, the book series she was reading on the bus ran out (over the summer, she read all of the Keeper of the Lost Cities books obsessively!!) Since she didn't have anything she loved to read, and swim season had started up again on September 8 (with 2 hour practices almost every day), she wasn't getting enough sleep.

So we started going to Page elementary (Lynx's current school) to pick up the bus there. It arrived at 7:01 but took me about 13 minutes to get there. After a few weeks of that, I convinced her to let me take her to Cannon Road Elementary which picks up at 7:05 and is just a 10 minute drive. So much more sleep!

In fact, she had been waking up at 6:15 to get the 6:43 am bus stop at Drew, but now, we've simplified her morning routine to literally just getting in my van. So she's waking up at 6:50 now. That's about 35 more minutes of sleep!

At Takoma, she didn't know anyone the first week, but read during lunch and told me she felt like she was surrounded by friends because she loves the characters in the books so much. But after just a few days, she made friends with Zara, Maggie, Satia. And, by the end of September, her group expanded to include a few more friends (whose names I've forgotten!)

Lynx is back at Page and has the BEST teachers. I'm trying to advocate for him to receive more challenging math opportunities at school (since he tests at at 7th grade level!) but they won't do it. So we're just continuing with tutoring with Carrie and he's learning a TON from her!

I've mostly given up on running but I've been able to pivot to really enjoy biking on my Peloton. With that as my new athletic endeavor, I've been feeling good and setting new fun goals! 

August 2026

 In August, we went to Richmond, VA for Lynx's Zones debut! He did really well and had fun with his swim buddies. The day after his last event, Lynn took Lynx and Nova to a trampoline park where he sprained his ankle. It put a damper on the rest of our trip, but he was able to walk on it reasonably well after just a few days. 

After Richmond, they were supposed to go to a KAH camp but I didn't think it'd be very fun with a sprained ankle. Instead, we hung out at home and at Stonegate, playing with our friends and I got to save $800!

Then, we went to Minnesota to stay with Grancy and Scrampa! This was Nova's idea. She just loves being in Mankato with her grandparents. Lynn had to stay behind to work, but the rest of us had a great time. We also got to see Breck, Ford, Jenn, Kaia. And my high school friends all got together at Ty's lake house for a day. The weather was perfect.

The day before we were supposed to go to Mankato, Nova got invited to go to Takoma Park Middle School! This is a highly sought after magnet program for STEM. It was a tough decision to take her out of her Spanish Immersion middle school (where she'd know about 40 kids) to Takoma where she'd know absolutely nobody. But, after many conversations, I convinced her of the merits of this new school and we signed her up! 

July 2026

 For the record, my Mac has made uploading pictures from my phone to my computer nearly impossible. So I've been procrastinating making these posts because it's been such a pain! I've now gotten them downloaded into a photo library separate from the usual library, but I can't pull the photos (or videos) into this blog. So this is just a written blog post, for now.

July was a big swim month for our kids. Lynx won for the county at both the Coaches's Long Course meet and the All-Star (short course) meet. He won by 3 seconds in the Coaches' Long course and got himself a Zones cut!! PLAYLIST OF LYNX'S HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SEASON

And, Lynx's medley 8U relay team won the county's record (again!) They beat their record from last year by a few seconds...which is a lot in a short-course 100 race. 

Nova won the high-point scorer award for the girls at Stonegate. Which means she won the most points out of all of the girls on her team. This is really tough to do as Stonegate is stacked with incredible swimmers!

Sadly, her coach, Brian, did the math wrong and gave the trophy to another girl. He apologized to me, to Nova and then gave her a trophy later at the All-Stars meet. 

PLAYLIST OF NOVA'S HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SEASON