happenings

In the past month...

Darren and Aidan ran the Cowtown 5K; Aidan beat Darren's time by about 40 seconds, clocking in a time of 27:58 and placing 8th out of 281 other 7 and 8 year olds. He was most proud of beating Mr. Dague's (PE teacher) time! I love to see Aidan after a good run. He glows, and I'm not talking about the afterglow of a hard workout. He glows from the INSIDE. Running is such a natural thing for him, and he loves how it makes him feel. I think that's so cool.

Dani competed at UIL with both choir and history. She earned a "1" with her ensemble - a SSA piece that she and two friends performed, and a "2" on her solo. The ensemble gets to compete at State in late May. In history, she placed 5th individually, the only one on her team to medal. Her team rank was 2nd, though. This was a preliminary competition - the main one is March 28, so there's still time for improvement.

The bummer about that date is that it means she'll miss her "Meet and Greet" with Drew University. Drew (in Madison, NJ) is her #1 choice for college, and they're hosting a regional meet and greet in Dallas for accepted students in this area. It's from 2-4 on the 28th - the exact time of her UIL event. Bah!

She's also been accepted to a handful of other schools, including Texas A&M. She's holding out hope for UT, but hasn't gotten her acceptance letter yet. Texas has a law that allows automatic admission to students with a class rank in the top 10%. That's all well and good, you'd think, but the rub is that even though Dani has a GPA of 4.5, she's still only in the top 12% of her highly competitive honors program. Some of the individual schools at UT (business and architecture, for instance) fill up long before they reach the 10%ers. The College or Architecture, for instance, is so competitive that they sometimes only admit the top 4% of high school graduates before the reach capacity. This makes getting into UT very difficult even for top-ranked students. Still, Dani's holding onto hope that she'll be admitted. In the meantime, she has a trip to College Station scheduled with our friend Jake, Fort Worth's most enthusiastic Aggie. ;) I'm a little disappointed that I'm not taking her myself, but she'll have a lot more fun with Jake. For one, he's a lot cuter than I am, and a lot more cool. I'm just a Mom. Nevermind that being an Aggie was my DREAM for 4 years of high school. No, nevermind that. Dani would rather go with Jake (and Nikki, who promises me that by the time she and Jake are through with her, Dani will be bleeding maroon).

Ian is beyond excited right now about an upcoming play date with his friend Curran. He's excited about Karate, too - or Kung Fu or Tae Kwon Do or whichever one Darren decides on. Who knew that martial arts was so stinkin' expensive?? I don't know where we'll dig up the scratch to pay for it, but Ian's heart is set on it, and unfortunately, we agreed to it before we did the research. Ian's not much for team sports - he's too shy and worried about not excelling. He can't WAIT to try martial arts, though, and I think the discipline and self-confidence it'll provide will be wonderful for him.

You know how you know you're a real adult? No, not when you pay taxes for the first time. Not when you clean up someone else's barf while holding back your own. Not even when you buy your first house. No, you know you're an adult when you're able to spend your tax refund on something you WANT rather than a looming, unwanted but necessary bill, and what you WANT is something as mundane as a new dishwasher to replace your broken and unfixable one, and a new BED! YAY for us!

We'd been sleeping on The Cheapest Mattress We Could Find Fourteen Years Ago for, well, fourteen years. For a long time, I've been waking up feeling exhausted and sore - and cranky. (Can't really blame that on the bed, though. I've woken up cranky all my life. It takes me two hours to become human.) This morning, after my 3rd night on the new bed, I woke up an hour earlier than usual for no reason other than I WOKE UP ON MY OWN FEELING RESTED. And get this - I was in a good mood. SILLY mood, even. Singing in the shower, even. Weird. The earth must be off its axis. Could it be that this new bed is turning me into a morning person after all these years of hard core night-persondom? I'm betting it was a fluke. Tomorrow morning, if I don't wake up with a growl and a snarl and a hmpftoyourmomma, we'll know that the end time is near.

Funny story about the mattress shop. We walked into Sleep Experts because it was "there". We really didn't think we'd be buying that night; we were just gonna test drive some new models. We agreed rather quickly on a bed and decided to just go ahead and make the purchase, which is so unlike us. I'm the one who always wants to hunt for a better deal, and Darren doesn't make snap decisions about ANYthing, EVER. So this was strange for us. We went with a mid-range model - not too pricey, but not cheap, either. Just right, Goldilocks would say. (Simmons Beauty Rest something or other, though that doesn't tell you much, as there are a million Simmons Beauty Rests in all price ranges.)

As Darren signed all the papers and turned down all the extra warranty crap, I decided to test drive one more mattress, simply because of its placement right next to the register. It was a gorgeous bed, too. Within 45 seconds, maybe less, I was OUT. Like a LIGHT. Darren and the salesman woke me up when the deal was sealed, and after checking that I hadn't left a pool of drool on the pristine foam, I said, "I changed my mind. I want this one." The salesman laughed and said, "Yah. This one will run you $3600. And that's just the mattress, not the box." No wonder I fell fast alseep. I could buy a CAR for $3600!

Man. This post proves what a barrel of laughs we are around here. History UILs, 5k runs, martial arts and new mattresses. This is the stuff we get excited about. Try not to be too jealous now, ya hear? ;)