When you are not up to Snuff

Well Regan has made the jump to high school at neighboring town 20 miles away, I am busy juggling getting two girls to two different schools which has made my life and routines incredibly difficult. The junior high at the school Regan is going too had a volleyball camp last week that Becca and her friend Kayla attended. There is the option of getting to play sports at the junior high without actually attending there. It is an option offered to the country school kids and there are several of the boys who take advantage of it to play football. The crux of it is that they accept everyone on the football team, but for volleyball they can only deal with so many girls to form an "A" team and a "B." team. So for 7th grade girls who would like to play volleyball i.e. all of them. There are tryouts involved.

Well Becca and Kayla went to the tryouts and both felt like they had made a good showing, but there were 26 girls trying out and he was only going to take 18. Long story short....neither made the team. I immediately received phone calls from mom's who assured me that the skills were there, but the coach had way to many in town girls to deal with and was fearful of taking two country school kids over two town kids. There were confidential asides, that it is all in who your name is. There were jokes that the coach already knew who he was planning to put on the team for the last two years.

None of these help an 11 yr old girl understand that if she did the work she was supposed to, why didn't she make the team. It is sometimes just good and humbling to understand these life lessons. It does me no good to go up to a school and demand differently for my child or bully our way onto the team and spout fairness claims. Sometimes in life you do not get what you want....period. Learn the lesson and learn it well.

The Art of Relaxation

I have always had a problem with teeth. It has a lot to do with being good-natured and internalizing a lot of stress. This leads to grinding of teeth and eventually root canals and cracked molars. On this particular morning I was headed to the local metropolis to see the oral surgeon for my 2nd root canal of my life.

This is when something peculiar happened, the nurse took my blood pressure so they could put be under anesthetic and start the procedure and after she got the reading she left the room to go get the doctor. it turns out he was worried about operating in me because my blood pressure was so high. This is odd, I never had this problem with either pregnancy and  my health besides my teeth has always been very good.

He cautiously proceeded with the root canal after my husband and i both signed waivers and promised to get to my family doctor immediately.

Later that week  I went to see our family doctor and to put to mildly, he was horrified. I am hardly ever sick  so I hadn't been in for anything personally in at least a year and my blood pressure was dangerously high. So High that i had to get started immediately on medicine and now scheduled to see an Internal Medicine specialist to track down the source of the High blood pressure. It is normally attributed to obesity ( my doctor assures me this is not my problem), kidneys, heart, or thyroid. I am in for lots of tests while we figure out exactly what is going on with my typically healthy life.

Review: Oasis of the Seas

We have had such a success traveling with Regan to Disney World and on the Disney Cruise that we thought we would branch out a bit. This summer we once again enjoyed the Caribbean on what is at the time the worlds biggest cruise ship. I'm not even joking, this thing is ginormous! 

We boarded with no problem and the ship had informed us before hand that they had not been able to accommodate us a family size handicapped accessible room so that to make up for it we had one accessible room and a second small two person inside cabin. Of course we were thrilled with the accommodating!  Who wouldn't want to have two rooms on vacation! Our first thought was that John Mark and I would take the nice big room and bring Regan in for all of her toileting needs and the girls could share the inside small cabin. Of course the best intentions were all for naught as we ended up with most of the time Regan and I with the beautiful balcony cabin and her easy to use restroom and space, and John Mark and Becca in the tiny crawl hole of a cabin.

Getting around the ship was not problem at all. Regan enjoyed the teen club, the shows, the pool area and of course the food. The above picture is at Johnny Rockets which was a nice bonus.  The only things Regan really did not get to be a part of were some of the bigger activities. like rock climbing, the surfing pool and ziplining....Of course I think she only really wanted to do the zipline out of those because she has ziplined for years at camp and did not understand why she could not everywhere.

Here is Becca excited that she can ride all the thrilling water rides. We enjoyed the boogie Boarder and the Zipline, but none of us ventured to the Surf pool. It just seemed a little to advanced for us. The Rock wall was tough and i thought i would be better at it than I actually was. Just a small blow to the ego.

The three stops on this cruise were. Bahamas, St, Thomas, and St. Maarten. We have been to Nassau, Bahamas before and  spent our time shopping at the straw market and downtown. We made time for getting our favorite Tortuga Rum Cake, and wandering the quaint shops in the downtown area. St Thomas was supposed to be our excursion snorkeling stop but we were completely rained out!. I was very disappointed, so at this time all I can say about the island is that i have docked there. the weather as so bad we stayed on the ship. Not a bad way to spend a rainy day at all! the last stop was St. Maarten and we truly enjoyed this island. We dined at a great beachside restaurant and wandered the town of Philllipsburg

 

Here are Regan and John Mark posing with the Clock tower. A really charming town. We tried to avoid the beaches because we had been forewarned about them being very European and just didn't want the girls to experience that just yet.

We had an overall wonderful experience with Royal Caribbean and I would definitely Cruise with them again. If you are a Disney Cruise fan i will point out the big differences that caught our eye. There is not the same attention to detail and service that you experience with Disney,but that is okay....it was not bad...just not the same caliber. the other glaring difference was food quality. We could not believe how mediocre the food was. Even in some of the pay to dine establishments, I was disappointed. Otherwise we had a wonderful time. we enjoyed and Ice show and got to see a Broadway caliber production of Hairspray. This was all excellent and we look forward to cruising with Royal Caribbean again.