Benet Hoco

Sophomore Homecoming is the first opportunity William has had for a school dance.   He and his date, Addie, went with his volleyball buddy, Will, and his date, Lilly.   They did the "promposal" signs the weekend prior (which I didn't get a good photo of since Addie's neighborhood is as dark as ours) and group photos by the Riverwalk before dinner.  Sounded like it was a nice night but no one was dating so mostly ended up being boys and girls.  William looked sharp in his new suit!  Hopefully it still fits for Confirmation in the spring!

My date and I went out for sushi and enjoyed watching families from other schools gets their photos.  We also had a chance to walk through the Riverwalk Art Festival and found the perfect piece of artwork to complete our bathroom renovation.  

September

During September, we had Rosie for several weeks while her parents were on a safari!   The girls settle into their routines when they are together, and we keep a set of Rosie's favorite balls and toys and a second leash here for here so she doesn't have to bring anything special when she comes.   The girls eat the same food, etc, so the only challenge is who gets my undivided attention!   We even have two dog beds, so I moved both into my office and tucked them both in for naps.  Lucy sleeps about 85% of the work day.  Rosie will sleep for about 8.5 seconds.   But I did get a photo!

Both girls walking William to the morning bus.  One reason we keep a leash for Rosie at our house is to make sure she has a light for the dark walks in our neighborhood.  The spotlights both girls are throwing off are on the ground beneath them.

My dad was in town for a few days on a bus trip that was combining local sites with baseball games, so I joined them on theirs Willis Tower tour.  I don't think I've been inside for 15 years, so it was good to see it again!   I enjoyed seeing my office from above as well as all the interior renovations and enjoying a coffee with my dad before the bus head off to their next stop!  It was an excellent excuse to sneak out of work early that afternoon!

Deloitte building with the grass roof

And here's a shot where the girls switched beds.   My camera roll as 2,000 photos on it.   1,850 are dog pictures?!

Sophomore Year

August brought the start of another school year!  William is now a sophomore at Benet Academy where he is taking AP European History, Chemistry, Honors Geometry, Spanish 2, American Literature, Religion 2 and PE.   He has to get up way too early to be the first kid on the bus, but Lucy and I walk him there to get our morning exercise.   It's an easier to do in August than in January and February, but this is the last year we have to do it, since he'll have his drivers license and a parking spot next year and get to sleep an extra 45 minutes.     The club volleyball season for 16s started with the school season.  He is the Libero on 16-2s after being the DS on 15-3s in the prior year, so his hard work has paid off.    This is also the year he grew taller than both mom and dad and continues to grow.  We love taking lots of photos of the tallest Shields.

Cicadas - Brood X

There really is not a good way to photograph the ridiculousness that was Brood X in our yard this summer.   For the months of June and July it was SO LOUD - I screen shot decibels in the 80s and 90s.  Both of our volleyball teams (Benet and 630 15-3s came over for pool parties during that time and had to tolerate it.)   The real winner was Lucy who must have eaten 1,000 shells.   Her sturdy stomach handled it and her dog walkers (usually me) didn't have too much extra to deal with.   The third - and perhaps worst - wave of it came in late July and August when the cicada mite bites started.   Cicada mites are microscopic creates would in wooded areas where cicadas are present and often fall from trees onto humans and bite them.  Our hot tub, pictured below, was ground zeo in my estimate for cicada mite contact.   

This owl was my Christmas present from John and finally was installed after the ground was clear in the summer.   It's in the front/side yard but another example of why our beautiful yard was so attractive for the cicadas now and I'm sure will be again in 17 years with its mature trees.

Florida Themeparks

 After volleyball wrapped, we could play!  We had an afternoon with our favorites at Animal Kingdom, and then we moved to Universal Studios for one night/two days of parks.  We stayed at the Royal Pacific, which is the hotel we liked previously.  It's a very convenient walk to the parks for early admission.  Our first night we got rained out so didn't get to see the evening shows / fireworks I was hoping to finally see.   We ordered room service and vegged in front of the TV instead.   On the second day there was more rain before we had to head out.  We got in some good rides, but mostly good laughs about how drenched we were.  Luckily we could shower and change in the hotel gym before our flight home.  

New to us on this trip was the Velociraptor Coaster.  We road it front row and back row and then the guys road it some extra times while I wandered back to Hogsmeade for ice cream.   Doesn't look like I took too many photos....it was hot, we were tired, and it's cool but not Disney.   The End.

Florida Volleyball

Our second summer at AAU Nationals in Orlando was a lot different than our first.    The biggest difference is that with 630 Volleyball (honestly, with every team except SPVB), you travel your own kid instead of doing group travel and housing.   So John and I had less of a Disney vacation this year!  We did still stay at Disney, at the Boardwalk Villas, but William was very focused on being game-ready so he didn't join us at the parks until after the tournament ended.   It didn't help that we played afternoons so were volleyball occupied from noon-10 p.m. each day.  At that it was 1,000,000 degrees out!   

But the trade off was the volleyball games themselves were much better!  We were in the games and played well and enjoyed the team a lot.  I enjoyed trying to color coordinate with the uniforms each day.  Definitely not as elaborately themed as my friends at the girls tournament in June, but we were an enthusiastic cheer squad nonetheless!

To shake things up for the third day, William played libero for the first match.   Guess I had guessed right on rewearing that red shirt!  Or because I abandoned my black outfit when it was too hot out.

Fourth and final day was a little bit anti-climatic.   We had started off strong days 1 and 2 but dropped out of gold round on day 3 and on day 4 weren't in competition for the out rounds.   But we showed up to play and got in two good matches before starting our vacation.   It was sad to say goodbye to the families that had welcomed us to the team in November.   We are forever grateful for the experience of 15-3s!