Memorial Day Weekend 2014

Memorial Day 2014 was one of many mixed emotions.  There was the combination of excitement and nerves as our daughter adjusted to her first season on a swim team. 

Her dive sure is pretty for a beginner (she's in the back entering the water)

As an aside, we are enjoying finally having a pool membership after so many years of trying to move closer to a nice pool with a swim team.  The following pics were taken the day the pool opened this year. 

 I do a lot of tutoring prep work while the kids enjoy the pool.

We spent much of the weekend working on more home improvement projects.  With the help of a some painters I hired to finish the job we started, we finally finished the storage building (except for the steps and lawnmower ramp) and cleared out the garage for parking at least one vehicle until we complete all our furniture refinishing projects to make room for another vehicle. My husband installed ceiling fans (9 down, 1 to go), new light fixtures in the bathrooms & new drawer pulls in the master bathroom while I took the kids shopping and attempted to sell old light fixtures via Craig's List. Our front door is 8 feet tall and did not come with glass insets or glass side panels or over the door glass panels as promised initially by the builder due to a last minute change in plans (ugh!), so until we can save up another $4K for a new 8' door with glass insets, I thought a huge wreath would at least give it a pop of color.  I also found some shiny decorative items for our master bedroom.  It's so fun to see the house coming together.

New shed, wall decor, ceiling fans, 4 light fixtures, and a wreath

We took time to remember our veterans who gave their lives for our freedom and protection, and I always feel a bit of pride for my husband's and his brother's military service.

After experiencing my first crazy school uniform consignment sale at a nearby church where I loaded up on school clothes for next year, I took the kids shopping for swimming clothes and fun summer clothes.  After wearing uniforms all year, they really enjoy picking out their own non-school clothes.   Our son selected this festive freedom outfit for Memorial Day.

Photo bomber who usually dresses like a tomboy

Our daughter, the tomboy, surprised me by picking out a fancy dress during our shopping trip. It came with a large aquamarine necklace (that was turned around wrong in this pic) which is her birthstone.

I loathe shopping in general, so I wanted to post these smiles as a reminder that the kids so enjoy shopping with me when I'm on a mission to buy them clothes (or toys).

Some neighbors won free use of the pool gazebo on Memorial Day and invited us to join in on the fun, so we headed to the pool for a short swim.   Our son spent most of his time on the slide and diving boards.

 

The pool was too crowded for our preference so we returned home to find our beloved bunny dead in his pen.  What?  My first thought was that maybe he had a heat stroke, but the temperature was only in the low 80s, and my childhood bunny endured seven years of summers with temperatures reaching the high 90s.  Could he have had a heart attack?  What in the world? We had treated that bunny like a prince compared to the bunny I had as a kid who never came inside, ate only pellets (big no-no now that we know more about proper bunny care), and that bunny lived to be 7 years old!  Cody was only 15 months old. How could he be dead already?  The kids were devastated, especially our daughter.  She wants to be a vet, so I wondered how she would handle her first experience with an animal dying (since vets see animal death every day), but she was really strong and was not bothered by the bunny corpse at all.  She's the one who first found him dead.  She was just sad...so very sad.  There were lots of tears shed that afternoon.

Digging a grave for our kids' first pet was not how my husband had planned to spend his Memorial Day afternoon. 

I had grown very attached to that rascally rabbit as well, so I found myself crying too after wiping all the tears from my kids' eyes and heart and wondering what in the world we did wrong.  Biking to the lake helped a lot, though. There is just something so therapeutic about this view for me.

We had invited some close friends over for dinner that evening, so having their three girls here helped our daughter forget her sadness and actually enjoy herself while they were here.

I spoke with the breeder, and she had lost Cody's mother in the heat as well, so she thinks maybe because it got warmer so quickly (and perhaps because we brought him inside every time any bad weather came or a large temperature change occurred) that he didn't have time to shed and adapt to the heat well enough to tolerate it that day.  He certainly did pant a lot whenever he stayed outside, so maybe his internal temperature controls were weak.

I'm working on a scrapbook keepsake as a memorial to Cody.  I make tons of scrapbooks, and my daughter has spent hours pouring over every single one, so she is excited about me making one for Cody.  Here are a few of our last photos of him.