xavier's blog

There's a reason that  I haven't blogged here for almost a year, or shared too much about what's going on - Jazz reached an age where she realized that plenty of others were reading, and she became increasingly uncomfortable with me sharing personal details of her life.

We completely respected this request and while we kept taking pictures, we quit posting things as frequently and didn't blog much of anything at all.

Now, as part of her home education, Jazz is going to take over her own blog.  She will be telling you in her own words what's going on with her life.  I'll still be here to monitor and look over it, but I encourage you to interact with her, leave her comments and encourage her to continue to create and develop her personal writing skills.

Oh my goodness.  I can't believe my little girl is now 9 years old.  As Chris is fond of saying, we're halfway there!  Only 9 more years to go until we've (hopefully) raised a successful adult.

I've just gotten the rest of the May and June pictures put up on the site as well as the pictures from our annual Birthday Pool Party.  Jazz had a great time this year and it's so fun to look back and realize that she has been friends with the same group of kids almost all her life.  We realized that same day that she and our neighbor's daughter have basically grown up together as Jazz was 2 when we moved in and MK was 6.  So much fun to know that we are in a stable place that is hopefully providing good, lasting friendships.

In other news, summer homeschooling is going well.  We are a bit more laid back this year and since I took a second summer job there seems to be more sleeping-in happening all the way around but that's okay - it's what's Summer is for!  I'll be posting the end of the year write up here when I get it done, but for now Jazz is still reading at a 6th grade level and above and is doing 6th grade language arts work.  Her Math skills are on target for her age and we are working our way through history lessons with Story of the World.  The rest we are doing as we go - learning the art of spinning Poi, traveling to New York and maybe some other trips over the summer, spending time with our friends from Girl Scouts and making sure there is plenty of time to be a kid and play.

I hope that you all enjoy the pictures, and that you are having great summers yourselves!

Jazz is working on descriptive paragraphs every day as part of our homeschooling  journey.  She's really struggled with writing, and making up stories.  Slowly but surely, things have gotten better and easier for her and she's finally letting loose with her silly, creative side. This is a paragraph that she wrote yesterday for class.

I woke up this morning to hear the bubbly sounds of the coffee pot.  I hopped up on the countertop only to see a creamy muddy mess in the pot.  I sat there for a second and stared before runing [sic] back upstars [sic] to tell my Mom.  I ran into their room.  Me and my dog both jumped on her at the same time.  I brought her back down and when I told her about the nasty stuff she just looked at me, grabbed a cup, filled it with coffee and gave it to me.  I dipped my finger in.  Hot!  Then I tasted it.  It was bitter and sweet.  Yum! I yelled.  My Mom looked at me, then went upstares [sic] and back to bed.

The paragraph absolutely cracked me up.  She nailed my love of coffee and sleep perfectly.  :D

So I'm sitting here next to Jazz on the couch. She's got the flu (the actual Influenza type B kind of flu). She's been on medication since Monday night and is finally starting to feel better. She hasn't spiked a fever in 18 hours or so now which is also a first since Sunday night.

I've used the down time to chill on the couch with her, watch movies, play Wii and read. I've gotten caught up on stuff for Ride for Kids as well as some company things that needed to be taken care of as well.

I managed to pull off a great surprise for Chris' birthday this year.

Several month ago I was having lunch with a friend, and he mentioned that Rush was playing at Verizon on September 29th. I started thinking that since this was the day after Chris' birthday, maybe I could pull off surprise tickets.

Jazz had her 8 year check-up today. She is, of course, in perfect health.

At 8 years, 3 months old she is 52" tall (which puts her just below the 75th percentile for height) and weighs 54 pounds which puts her somewhere between 25-50% for weight (normal for her). She's got her Daddy's "tall and skinny" gene all right.

There are some changes taking place at Chris' work which will likely include several trips out of the country in the future. Because of that, we decided that it was prudent to discuss renewing Jazzy's vaccination schedule with her Pediatrician.

How is it that another month has gone by since I uploaded pictures and updated the website?  This has to have been the fastest August on record.

Jazz was amazing over the last couple of months, helping me to plan the Steve Hitt Memorial Ride.  She sat in on meetings with me, went to visit local businesses to solicit donations and helped to keep all of the other kids entertained during the actual ride.  She's got a life of charity and non-profit work head of her!

We've begun Jazzy's 3rd grade school year.  Third grade?  How on earth did *that* happen?  We are still working on wrapping up

I've been up since 3:45 this morning. Everyone is fine. I chose to get up this early. Actually my alarm was set for 4:15 but I couldn't sleep.

I was up thinking.

About how this time last year I was so excited and nervous to be running my first Peachtree Road Race. I didn't sleep the night before that race either, because I was plagued with doubts about whether or not I would be able to finish. If I would feel okay. Last July 4th would only be the second time I'd run more than 6 miles.

I can't believe that Jazz will be 8 years old tomorrow. I'm working a double so we had her annual pool party today at the house. It was a much more scaled down version than usual due to some scheduling conflicts, but overall we had a great time. The kids swam for almost 4 hours straight.

We had a bit of a surprise yesterday. Went in for Jazzy's Orthodontist appointment that we thought was just going to be impressions and x-rays. Turns out Jazz got her first set of braces! It's just two on the top and four on the bottom but she took it like a champ. She has different colored elastics on each one and is a bit sore today but is adjusting very well.