Plummer Party

Happy Birthday to me- my thoughts on swim lessons, mohawks, bikes and the earthquake.

I always feel like I have to post pictures with my posts. I have no new pictures today. I need to take the camera to swim lessons and snap a few. We have been going to swim lessons for the past week and a half. Jack is, as he puts it, "learning to do bobs." (bobs are when you hold on to the side and bob up and down under the water.) Tristan has finally mastered side-breathing! He can FINALLY swim across the width of the pool. I think it's about 25 meters. It's just long enough that you really can't swim across it without taking a breath. Even though, I witnessed Tristan doing just that the other day. I said, "Wow! You were swimming so fast!" (he really was fast) He said, "Yeah, I couldn't get a breath when I raised my head and so I was running out of air. Basically I was panicking." Oh.
This is really great for him. Just last month we were at a backyard pool party and two separate moms had to go in fully clothed, it was me the 2nd time, because he panicked and was starting to drown.

Also... our other big news is that Jack learned, last night, to ride his bike without the training wheels! This sums up the difference in my sons completely. They both learned to ride without training wheels this year. One of them is 6 and one is 3. Ah yes... Jack is unique. As he was riding around the backyard he was yelling all sorts of things like, "Yeah, that's how you ride like a man." or "Who's a tough guy now?" Chad shaved his hair into a mohawk and we let him keep it for 3 days. I think it was making his behavior even worse. After we shaved it he went to swimming where his teacher asked him what happened to his mohawk. He said, "We had to shave it off because my mom doesn't like to keep mohawks." (Mohawks make troublesome pets.)

We finished painting the kitchen cupboards white and we started last night painting the kitchen red. Red is tricky and so far it just looks hot pink.

Lastly, the earthquake was scary for us. Jack and I were standing in our family room when it started. It was a big jolt and then the shaking started. Tristan was in the kitchen and I told him to come where I was and he was paralyzed with fear. I shoved Jack down into the "triangle of safety" spot, and away from all the glass of the sliding glass doors and yelled at Tristan again. He came running and I put him next to Jack. It lasted for a long time. The walls of the house were moving a lot! You could see it. All of the pictures were swinging back and forth. Just after it was over an aftershock hit. We just stayed down. Then a little while later another hit. The boys were really shaken up. They just wanted to lie in the safe spot all day. We had a lot of things fall off shelves and everything fell out of our medicine cabinets, etc. Brian works in a high rise in Orange and I was worried about him. I had no phone service after it happened. Jack announced the next day that he didn't like the earthquake and could we please not have one that day. The quake was centered in Sleepy Hollow which is in the middle of Carbon Canyon 7 miles from our house and only 5 miles from dad's. We felt a 3.0 aftershock last night before we went to sleep. I was ready to spring into action, but it was small.