September 3, 2001

Home, hanging around for Labor Day. The girls are here, hanging out for the weekend. Latest news of them...

Katelyn is still very close to reading. Grandma Adrien bought her some new "first reader" books, and we're working with her. But I think it gets tiring because the other day when I started reading one to her and pointing out words for her to read, she said "Can you just read it to me, without me reading it?" I guess we're pushing hard.

She starts a new session of preschool tomorrow. This is the third level at Hoover, and they start stressing reading and math. If the past two years are any indication, we'll start seeing large changes in her abilities right away.

Haley is also progressing. She's crawling everywhere now, and pulling herself up and cruising the furniture. She gets frustrated that she can't stand and walk sometimes. She's starting to talk, making repeatable sounds like "hello" and "hi" and '"up". We're planning her birthday party on September 23rd. I can't believe she's going to be a year old already!!

The girls went on vacation with Kathie to Colorado and Texas for a week in July. They came back suntanned!

I went to Lake Tahoe with Mom, Val, and Vivian the first weekend in August. We stayed at Harrah's, and had a great time. We ate dinner at the Edgewood Restaurant at the golf course there. Excellent food, overlooking the lake. We stayed at Harrah's. The rooms were quite nice, but the best thing was that they each had two separate full bathrooms!

Val and the kids and I went to southern California the second weekend in August. We visited Granda Frances, still living at Heritage Pointe in Mission Viejo. Dad and Reggie joined us, and we had a special surprise visit from my stepsister Kim and her kids, Kyle and Chelsea.

After the visit we drove to Santa Monica and stayed right on the beach, at the Hotel California (really!). We had a really cute one bedroom suite, with a kitchen and a patio, just a block from the beach and two blocks from the Santa Monica pier.

Susan and her boyfriend Joel and the two kids, Lee and Joe, came to visit on the 18th. We had a great time!

Took Katelyn to play miniature golf yesterday. She got bored after the 13th hole, but had fun anyway.

I finally went in for a detailed evaluation for laser surgery on my eyes. The doctor (Dr. Tearse) thinks I have an excellent change of having my vision fully corrected. Given that my eyesight is so bad (something like -9 in the left eye and -8 in the right), that's amazing. But beforehand I have to let the curvature of my eyes go back to normal, as opposed to how they are from the hard contact lenses I wear. This means going without the contacts for up to one month per 10 years of wearing them. Since I've been wearing them for 26 years, that could be as much as 2 1/2 months! So right now I'm trying some soft contacts, and wearing my glassess a lot. It feels weird, after so many years of not wearing glasses in public. Fingers crossed, though, that it'll all work out, and I'll be able to have the surgery no later than November or so.