Highs and Lows

Lows…..This week has been a bit difficult as weeks go. I’ll start by rolling backward to last Saturday morning 1:51 a.m. I woke up and saw that I had a text message. This isn’t shocking, I figured it was one of the kids communicating with us. What I read left me stunned and crying. Mike Tabb, a co-worker of ours, had had a massive stroke. He was in the hospital, but they had already read him his last rights and he wasn’t going to make it very long. Mike was an organ donor, so when they took the ventilator off on Sunday, and after they declared him dead, they hooked him back up until they could place all of his organs sometime on Monday. I woke Tim up, we talked, and I cried about this news. Mike was 44. He was a fun, outgoing, life of the party kind of guy. He most always had a smile on his face. He was my resource for gadgets! Whenever I knew of something “new” coming out, I knew Mike Tabb would have it. I could look to him for his thoughts on whatever gadget and I knew he would provide great feedback. I can remember sitting in budget meetings with him for hours and hours upon end and he always made the time go quicker. He would make them fun somehow. He was usually wasting away those times where he wasn’t needed playing on his iPhone – he had that thing jail broken to the point of no return. He was able to do things on his phone that Apple didn’t have available. I haven’t talked to Mike as much in the last year and a half as usual since I am no longer working in IT, but he was always friendly to me and I will truly miss him. His funeral is tomorrow in Cincinnati, Tim, Cooper and I will be going to the viewing.

Highs…..Last Saturday the weather was *fabulous* in Indianapolis, so we decided to take Cooper to the fair. We arrived around 2pm and were there until just after 7:30pm. We visited with my cousin Abby, who shows Llamas at the fair, her husband, Matt, son, Oliver and my aunt and uncle, Sheila and Perry. We took Cooper to see the cows, chickens, rabbits, sheep, pigs and of course the llamas. He got to pet two bunnies as well as a cow and a llama. Coop LOVED the llama. I think because it was big enough and it was soft! THANKS Abby for letting us pet your llamas! We ate some good state fair food (corn dog, ice cream, pork garbage burger, grilled cheese) but not as much as we had hoped. Take that food and split between Tim and me – and it wasn’t nearly what we would normally eat! I think we’re going to take one more evening trip to the fair since we didn’t get to see the cloggers’ perform their entire routine. They were scheduled to go on at 7 – but when we arrived at 6:45, they were nearly finished.

Sunday – Mom and Shawn came for a visit on their way home from a road trip and watched Cooper for us so that we could get a few things done (lawn mowed, some cleaning, etc). Then later that afternoon, one of Tim’s co-workers and his family came for dinner and swimming. Jim owed Tim a steak dinner, so he brought all of the fixins’ and cooked for us! Stephanie and Ryan were there for dinner as well.

Monday night we went to Cracker Barrel for dinner with Mom, Shawn, Larissa and Shawn’s nice Mallory and nephew Joe. It was a good meal, and to top it off, COOPER DRANK FROM A STRAW for the first time!!! We are so proud of our little guy! So we immediately rushed to Target after dinner to pick up a few sippy cups that used straws. Since Cooper isn’t too fond of normal sippy cups, we were so glad that he can finally get some liquid through a straw!

The rest of the week has been normal – nothing big going on, other than this ridiculous HEAT! We’ve been swimming a few times this week, and the pool is like a bath tub. It is sooooooooo warm in there. Cooper loves swimming so we try to take him as often as we can. Tonight we’re going to run a few errands and grab dinner out. Hopefully we’ll get to stay home for the majority of the day on Sunday, after a week/weekend of go-go-go, we’re all going to need some rest to start the next week. As Samuel Johnson once said “All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.”