The Kids are OK...

This is a little hard to make out but I believe it's one of Sam's recent pen drawings of Ben 10 in his various alien forms. They're fairly intricate. Emily recounts a conversation she had where she counted up about 20 different aliens and then Sam remembered he "forgot one." He's been watching a fair amount of Ben 10 lately.

The kids all seem quite happy today. This was our local Father's day dinner tonight and we went to our favorite pizza place. The kids had a blast. We ordered chicken legs, salad, pizza, and Emily got a calzone. Yum! The boys are pretty eager meat eaters.

Tonight, Eli's favorite toys were a snake, a Ben 10 watch, and a spider man. Eva had a little bag she carried around with her that she got at school. Sam got two dinosaurs and two black spidermans (spidermen?) from his teacher and has a favorite spiderman these last couple of days. Friday night we did some legos. They're into a lot of different things. We have a drawer of dinosaur animals that Eli loves also. He has to get a foot stool in order to pull out the drawer, but he does it daily.

Sam's had some growing pains with his legs. Last Friday and the Friday before he resisted his swim lesson. We let him skip once but Emily made him go the other time. We can't tell why he's resisting the swim class or how to push him to attend. Emily remembers refusing to swim or ride a horse at camp (for several years in a row), but she says her resistance was straightforward (and apparently more honorable). In contrast, she doesn't like how Sam is blaming it on his legs or being tired. We'll try to get him checked out Monday just to make sure he's okay.

I also took Sam to a movie earlier this week, Incredibles 2. Earlier movies were Cars 2, Brave, Rise of the Guardians, and something else. He liked this one a lot. It reminded me of happy movie viewing with the family over the years.

That's the family news from here. I've been complaining more than I mean to lately. Partly it's that the summer is the time when things are cemented from the fall. I know this will be a busy fall so I'm especially protective about extra things that take my time. Often what's fifteen minutes of work for a native speaker is hours for me, or at least a lot more anxiety than I want. I feel like we've made pretty continuous language progress and my workload has increased every semester, but there are limits to what I can do. That said, there's a lot in our life to be happy about, and we're glad the kids are doing so well. I am going to try to leave a little more of work at work. I know this stage of life is one that means a lot of balancing. I'm hoping that in coming years we'll continue to find our way.