May Comes At You Fast

So, May! It ended so many days ago!

I attempted to write a blog post at least five times, but never got more than a few words in. It was a CRAZY month.

We had the usual end of school madness- awards and parties and tests- especially with three kids at three different schools, plus we had a senior with graduation and parties (and friend parties) and swim training, a soon-to-be-junior turning 16 who had been planning her 16th birthday party for two years, a 6th grader taking her first exams, AND I had multiple work trips and a packed work calendar, AND we were taking our big family summer vacation June 5th and our entire downstairs wood floors had to be refinished while we were gone. So. I never quite got to publish anything.

But this little baby Landon graduated!

It was a really wonderful weekend. My sister flew in with her oldest daughter who is only a couple years younger than Cora, my parents drove in, and my brother too, and it was so special to get to celebrate our graduate with them.

Despite previously insisting he would NOT have a graduation party, partly because Landon is a creature who prefers small groups and his home environment, but also because his club team is an hour north of Dallas and he was a year ahead of his grade at his high school so most of his classmates graduated last year. But a teammate up in Frisco offered to do a joint party and that worked out perfectly- all his teammates would be there, my family could come, and his few close friends in Dallas would make the drive.

His teammate is going to swim for Notre Dame, so we did a joint Notre Dame/Indiana party on Saturday night and it worked out great!

His mom was so sweet and I'm so grateful we got to do a joint event.

That morning my sister and I went to my current favorite workout class and then my mom joined us for the best of Dallas consignment shopping! We got some real treasures, particularly my sister, and she now wants to visit even more.

Sunday was Landon's actual graduation. My sister and I worked out again, the ladies shopped again, and then we got ready for the main event.

Graduation itself was a little ... anticlimactic? It was so hot outside, 30 minutes away, graduations are stacked back to back, and you sit and listen to a couple hundred names be read. It's special, it's meaningful, it's a milestone, but your graduate also just comes home with you after? I did have a moment where I teared up when they threw their hats in the air. He's a graduate! with honors! 20th in his class!

We are crazy proud of him.

We came back to our house for a catered BBQ dinner with just our family plus his girlfriend's family. It was lovely. Cora sobbed when it hit her that her big brother was leaving in a couple months.

It really was a great weekend. All my planning worked out and work let me soak it up, it was just really special and kind of surrel. How can I possibly have a high school graduate?

After all of that, I had to go back to work and the girls had to go back to school! Claire had a few more finals and Cora had a couple exams. Cora's last week was great - James and I got to go see her independent project presentation. She picked "South Africa" and did such a good job, and as usual, did it all entirely herself.

I'm so proud of her for this year. She's at a gifted and talented magnet school where she only knew 1 person and it was a really hard adjustment- academically, socially, logistically... and Cora does not like change AT ALL. She worked through so much and her lowest grade for that second semester was a 97 which is honestly pretty incredible.

Claire's last week was also great! She had a round of Sweet 16 parties and did well on her finals and is very ready to be a junior (and take over ownership of her brother's car).

That Sunday we hosted Claire's 16th birthday party at the house.

Her theme was pink and yellow - "freahly 16" - and we went with snacks, mini sandwiches, a lemonade and soda bar, and a DJ in the backyard!

She had a strict budget and we all worked hard to pull it together and I thought it came out so well!

She had a great time and it was nice to see such a great group of girls celebrate her.

That was Sunday night and on Monday morning I had a huge client presentation, flew to Austin that night for a day of witness interviews for a different client on Tuesday, and then flew back late that Tuesday night -- a flight that was delayed by thunderstorms for 4 hours so I got home at 1 am -- and then had a different big presentation for yet another client before the SEC on Wednesday morning. Also calls for a client in Singapore that are always very late or very early. It was a very busy week. (I wore one of my favorite dresses I've ever purchased that I got on the consignment adventures with my mom and sister.)

We were leaving for our big summer trip on Friday and, in addition to packing for that, we had to pack up everything in our downstairs and move it upstairs because all our furniture was going to be moved to the garage the moment we left on Friday so our wood floors could be refinished. Apparently they weren't properly sealed when the house was built in 2021 and they were already looking very worn and damaged. So for many dollars we would get them refinished to look exactly the same!

Oh and Thursday was Claire's real birthday so we did our little decorations and family gifts.

Then we left for the airport! 9 days in Croatia, five Fikes and five carry-on suitcases, and a lot of excitement! Landon's only request for his graduation trip was "jumping off rocks into water" and we were promised plenty of that!

Slow Like Sunday Morning

It's 7:20 am on Mother's Day. I had a great sleep, finished my re-read of Dire Bound snuggled in bed this morning when I woke up early (my very favorite way to read) and am very excited to start the sequel that came out last week, and have a Pilates Barre class waiting for me at 9 am. James is at a swim meet, Landon will be joining him there shortly, and the girls are still asleep. We're getting brunch later, everyone will be home this afternoon, and a big storm is expected to hit around 3 pm. I'm not sure it could be a better day.

(Spoiler alert: I did not finish the post, so we're turning to it now, post-brunch, pre-dinner. The boys did great in their meet this morning, including my James who broke the World Record for his age division in the 50 M breaststroke!)

Spring has been even more of a whirlwind than normal. The end of the year with three kids in three schools is always a lot, but adding a senior to the mix (particularly one who didn't know where he was going to college until a few weeks ago) is a whole other level. I've also had an unusual amount of work travel for a busy client matter with SEC testimony all over the country and then a 6 day partner retreat in San Diego. And I recently decided to listen to the multiple perimenopause podcasts I had saved and have resolved to do more weight training, so I'm fitting that in too. As always, it's annoying how good it feels to make time to exercise.

(Not an essential part of the narrative, but I am OBSESSED with this dress I bought for the awards night of the partner retreat. When I first found it and fell head over heels in love I wondered if it was too much? It's my first retreat, I'm new to the firm, I'd be meeting about 600 new partners. And then I remembered I'm a tropical bird and I should not pre-pluck my own feathers. And it was a HUGE hit.)

Let's check in on the children. Landon signed with Indiana University a couple of weeks ago!! SwimSwam wrote about it. This is how I found out, in SEC testimony prep in Chicago:

Indiana is a great school and an incredible swim program. They got 3rd at NCAA's this Spring and have their eyes set on #2 next year. (For those curious, the Top 10 for Men's Swimming in 2026 was: (1) Texas; (2) Florida; (3) Indiana; (4) Arizona State; (5) Tennessee; (6) NC State; (7) Cal; (8) Michigan; (9) Virginia; (10) Stanford.) He went on a recruiting trip there after Spring Break and loved the coach, campus, facilities, and program.

I'm honestly still a little in shock that this is where he ended up. What an extraordinary senior season he had. It was just six months ago that James and I sat him down and told him he absolutely HAD to reach out to coaches at schools ranked 20-40 because that was far more realistic and while it would be great if he hit his goal times and had new options open up, those were his options now, and he did need to go to college, and there are fantastic schools in that bracket and there's more to his college chapter than just swimming, etc etc etc. Or, as Landon calls it, "Remember that time you didn't believe in my dreams?" He's kidding, I promise.

The official Signing Day was this past Wednesday!

His best friend and one of his club teammates (who is a junior and has also committed to Indiana, so they'll be teammates again in a year!) came to support him!

I didn't realize Senior Year would involve so much homework and arts and crafts for me, but my deep love for pictures and organizational items have been waiting my whole life for this moment.

Oh! And between my 6-day work trip, Landon had two proms: his girlfriend's prom, where we discovered through the camera lens that the suit we thought he'd bought didn't actually match:

And then his own, where we bought the suit he's wearing here literally 2 hours before pictures began:

He had a great time at both, or at least, "a time," and he didn't hate it, so that's a win! He's turning into quite the social butterfly with the girlfriend and multiple club teammates to drag him out of the house. We've had to institute a curfew! Our 85-year-old is finally 18.

Meanwhile Claire already has an entire Pinterest board dedicates to looks she's thinking about for her prom next year.

Speaking of Claire, she has three 16th birthday parties to go to this month, and then her own at the very end, so she needed dresses to match the various "themes". (This feels very Dallas? All the girls are given colors to wear so their photos are coordinated with what is probably a very fancy balloon backdrop.) She also needed dresses for Landon's graduation and graduation party, so I told her I'd buy 3 dresses and she could figure out how to allocate them. We went to TJ Maxx and found three really beautiful ones for a bargain, including this one, that she wore last night for a "Dolce Riviera/Capri" vibes party theme and I feel like we nailed it?

She's been planning her own 16th birthday party for months. I was given a PowerPoint presentation weeks ago. After a firm budget and a lot of compromise we've settled on a pool party held at our house the weekend after Landon's graduation (and the weekend before our trip). The theme is pink and white, with yellow lemons for accents. Etsy provided me with some adorable invitations and other decor. There will be a lemonade bar, snacks, mini bundt cakes for dessert, music, and a balloon backdrop on the back fence. TJ Maxx provided a dress for this affair as well. (Because you start out wearing a dress for 10 minutes and then you change into your swimsuit, obviously.)

She's wrapping up her sophomore year. She's hit her stride more this year with school and social, swimming and emotional. I'm in absolute denial that two years from now we'll be doing this all again and preparing to send her out of the nest and off to college as well. MOVING ON.

Cora! Our little 6th grader. After a rough adjustment to her new school (and we're realizing really all adjustments to new things are rough for Cora), she's settled in as well. She just started playing volleyball, which made us very proud because she HATES starting new things, is wrapping up yet another soccer season, and continues to swim. She's very excited to start middle school athletics in 7th grade where she'll get to go compete with her friends from elementary school since her GT magnate school doesn't have sports.

She remains our painstaking little perfectionist. The other night I found her in the gameroom, agonizing over a flower she was making as an "accent" to a poster project. She had come up with the idea of using a chopstick with a ball of clay on top and then hand cut and shadow penciled each individual petal. As the minutes ticked far past my bedtime, I began to feel my job is to teach her the art of the "good enough," but I do love how intensely she works on everything, including completion grades like I later found out this was!

She also recently brought home two science projects and is now deeply invested in a poster about South Africa for her world cultures class.

In frivolous personal news, in addition to the dress I found for my partner retreat above, I've added another new spring item or two to my wardrobe, all courtesy of my beloved consignment store I found in one of the fancier neighborhoods of Dallas. Like this dress. Love!

And this Tahari top that I am almost as obsessed with as my rainbow dress. Color! All of them, as often as possible.

As I wrap up this update, with pictures of Landon going to prom and news of his college plans, it seems crazy that somehow I've been blogging for nearly 20 years and there are some of you who have been following since I first announced I was a 2L pregnant with a tiny baby Landon. I've been thinking a lot about where this blog is going and what I'm going to do with 20 years of archives now that I so rarely have time to post.

I have spent ages 23 to 43 in these draft blogger windows, typing thoughts, deleting many, publishing more than I probably should, and deeply appreciating the positive feedback and friendship I received in return. There were several stages of adulthood that were deeply lonely for me - with multiple moves, having kids far younger than anyone else I knew, job changes, and more, and there were times this blog truly was my community. I'm deeply grateful for it. I also know I lost many hours of sleep to negative comments, false assumptions and criticisms that my anxiety meds have mostly cured, though there are some I could still recite by heart. On the balance though, this little old-school, unfancy, non-monetized blog has been a deeply positive thread in my adult life.

I keep wondering if it still has a place in my current life. I've built a community here in our new home. The kids are older and occasional readers themselves. Maybe now it's just a record of the big things? I use my own archives all the time to remember dates and stories, to look up vacation details I've forgotten, and to relive favorite memories from the past. So I don't know. Apparently one post a month is what I can manage, so that's where I'm at for now! Happy Mother's Day/Sunday to all!