It was bound to happen eventually....

Sydney had her first fender bender. Unfortunately (or fortunately from an insurance perspective) the car she hit was mine. She was pulling in to the spot next to me and scraped along the side of my car. The damage looks fairly minimal, but we haven't taken it in yet to be sure.

I forget sometimes how much she has going on this year.  She's working and swimming and still getting straight A's. The night in question, she was leaving the district swim meet to rush to her choir concert. She was trying to get there on time because she had a solo and wanted time to warm up. She also was taking the PSAT the next morning. No pressure, right?

I think we handled it okay. We still try to impart the importance of driving safely, but we've all made silly mistakes behind the wheel. Our saving grace is that we have more experience and can often times recover before it's too late.

I'm pretty confident she will be a lot more careful from now on. She was pretty darn freaked out!

Unfortunately, while this was her first accident, it may not be her last. Hopefully if it does happen again, it will be equally as minor. 

For now, she's just having to deal with a whole lot of teasing...and a lot of parking practice!

Sweet 16!

It doesn't get much sweeter than this girl!

It's hard to believe that our "Absent-Minded Professor" is 16 already! Syd is one of the smartest people I know. She also has moments where I'm completely terrified for her. We have story after story of times when Sydney just made us shake our heads in wonderment. Both good, and bad. Ha!

One of the things that has always struck me about Sydney is that she is seemingly fearless. When she was really little, she would jump into any pool she saw. Whether she was wearing clothes or not...and even though she couldn't swim. It was extremely difficult parenting her through the toddler years. Childproofing was just a challenge that she was always willing to tackle. We never did find anything that would work to thwart her. Thankfully she was (and is) adorable!

As she's grown and matured, she has transferred that fearlessness into other areas. Including this:

Mark took the girls to the Basque picnic a couple weeks ago. Syd decided she wanted to try the weight competition. Maybe it's the fact that I'm pretty timid when it comes to things that could end up making me look foolish, but I'm always surprised when she volunteers for something like this. She never, ever worries about looking silly! Amazing. Oh, and I guess she actually did quite well, especially for never having seen this competition before!

She is also fearless when it comes to performing in public. 

 Even if she's wearing a swim suit!


I've never met someone who is more comfortable in their own skin. To be honest, I'm a little jealous! Whether she's cutting her hair super short, being into totally "geeky" things, or wearing whatever she wants, she definitely stays true to herself.

One of her other amazing qualities is her willingness to work hard. She's definitely willing to do the work and try to improve. I really love watching her determination in the pool!

I do think she's a little nervous about her sister heading to college. Not only will they really, really miss each other, I imagine she's terrified that she'll be our sole focus. I think Peyton's big personality has always let Syd fly under the radar. A role which she plays quite well. Hopefully we can temper our helicoptering a little. 

I am pretty thankful that she still likes to hang out with us. She really is about as sweet as they come!

Happy birthday, Tommy Waffles! We love you and are so humbled to be your parents. I'm still not sure how we got so lucky!  XOXO

Adult-ish

To borrow a phrase from one of my friends, we have a "newly minted adult" at our house. Yep, Peyton turned 18.

What is even happening right now? The joke has always been that our goal was to keep her alive until she turned 18. Nailed it! But it wasn't always easy...

 In honor of her birthday, I decided to catalog a couple of the big events in her life. 

Starting with:

Probably the first time we were a disappointment as parents...still in the hospital

And then there was this:

Her baptism...this was right after we had to fish her pacifier out of the baptismal font...

Or this:

The first, but not last, time we broke her...

Her arm was actually broken in this photo...

And her first haircut, as if we hadn't traumatized her enough already.

Or this:

30 photos later, and this was the best...

I will say, this was probably one of the biggest life changes for all of us!

There are so many other momentous events that have taken place. This post could go on forever and ever!

But, I'll just post one more event:

Happy 18th, Dude! (Peyton on the right...)

The above tattoos are in memory of this lady. She loved us like no other and we still miss her every day.

Next up is graduation and college. It really has flown by in the blink of an eye. We are super proud of you, Peyt!

And I promise I won't tell anyone about you getting pulled over on your birthday last night. ;-)

There is something about 
a red-headed girl.
She'll make you crazy, 
and shake up your world.

Life skills...

"I can't believe I'm 15 years old and I already have to pay taxes!" - Sydney Tverdy

Dude, you're preaching to the choir. I can't believe I'm 43 and still have to pay taxes!

A year or so ago, Peyton mentioned that she didn't think she was ready for college because she didn't know how to do anything.  Including filing tax returns. Well, as much as I think this would have been a good skill to teach her this year, I ended up just doing them for her...again. Maybe next year. (Yeah, right.) Hopefully we have prepared her for being on her own. Thankfully, she will have her friend Emma as a roommate. Pretty sure they will be a good balance of adulting skills. Peyton knows how to cook, do laundry, manage money. I'm not at all worried about her study skills. What are we missing? I'm sure there is something.





We seem to be screaming through April, which means my first baby will be turning 18 shortly. And then there is graduation. We should probably work on getting those announcements out. Throw in a few swim meets for Syd and another nerd camp and a driving test to obtain her license and she seems even busier than her sister.

I think the next few months are going to be a blur.

Accidents Happen...

So, I got one of those dreaded calls. If you have teen drivers, you know what I'm talking about. The calls we all hope never to get...

Driving home my phone rings...caller id says "Georgio Armani".

Me: Hey Dude, what's up?
Peyton: *crying* Mom?
M: What happened?
P: I had a little fender bender.
M: OK.  Are you okay? Is anyone hurt? Do I need to come get you? Where are you?
P: I pulled over on a side street to call you. It was minor. I'm fine.
M: Did you exchange info?
P: Yes.
M: OK, you did the right thing. We can talk when I get home. Calm down, go home and do your homework.

It could have been SO much worse. So much that I can't even imagine. Or pretend like I can't imagine or I'd never let her out of my sight...

So, Mark and I get home and there is a message from the guy that she hit. I think he was mainly just making sure she told us. Ha! But, he left his home number and also told us it was minor. I think just a scuff on his bumper. We tried to call him back with no luck. So will try again.

After talking more to Peyton, we find out she didn't even realize she hit him. (Exactly why we bought her the big green tank!) She explained what happened from what he said, and told us she at first didn't even know why he was honking at her. awesome.

Anyway, we will find out the damage when we get a hold of him. If it's enough to turn in to our insurance and our rates go up, she will be responsible for paying the difference. Or, if it's not worth turning in, she will have to pay for his repairs. It sucks for her, but this is not without consequences.

My guess is she just got over-confident. As far as I can tell, she mostly drives too slow.

Although, if you ever see differently, we would really like to know.

BOLO  Just kidding...kind of.

Well, she was just 17, you know what I mean...

And the way she looked was way beyond compare. You know that Beatles song, right? Please tell me I'm not horribly old!

I mean I do feel horribly old as my first baby turns 17 today! Last year on her birthday, I wrote this post and it's all still true.

My new favorite thing going in to her 17th year is that we are 99% sure she will be gainfully employed this summer! No more free-loader! Just kidding, she will totally still mooch off of us for a long while. Sigh.

This is part of her gift:

And yes, those might be lottery tickets. Shhh...

Her other gift is getting her car detailed. I mean, what teenager doesn't dream of car detailing as a gift? Actually, she's pretty excited. Her third gift didn't ship in time. I'm awesome like that. She is celebrating with friends tonight by having a bonfire in our back yard. Unless it's super windy...then I will shove a bunch of money at them and send them to a movie or something. Not that I'm praying for wind or anything. ;-)  Just kidding, these friends of hers are amazing.

So, here is what 17 looks like at our house...

Pretty exciting, huh? I'm sure that melted wax in the sausage patty was delicious!

17...get it? This definitely earned me an eye roll.

Happy 17, Peyton Grace!

Sigh...

Smiling's my favorite! - Buddy the Elf

Peyton has declared 3/16/16 the BEST DAY EVER!!!!

After 4 1/2 years (3 years longer than anticipated) the braces are off. Can I get an Amen?

Without retainer

With retainer...that hopefully won't get lost for at least a little while!

This is what she looked like the day they put them on...

She's changed a little I think.

I took the morning off work to go with her...and to document the occasion, of course. Because if THIS isn't blog-worthy, I don't know what is.  :-)

I almost don't know which of us is happier. J/k, it's definitely me...

Surprise! Surprise that we finally got something done, that is...

So Syd had a birthday...7 months ago. One of her gifts was a re-do of her room. Mark and I finally got around to the paint update this weekend. The girls were gone the whole weekend so we definitely walked on the wild side. Ha to the ha ha.

Here is the before picture:

As you can probably tell, Syd got to pick her room color when we moved to the new house. It really is as obnoxious as it looks. In fact, more than once, I've walked by thinking she left the light on when in fact, it's just the loud paint.

Sydney has had trouble sleeping for the last few years. It finally dawned on me that maybe her wall color had something to do with it? So, we researched the best wall color to help sleep. And we came up with blue.

Unfortunately, we had a little bit too much "BSU" coloring around the house for a couple hours. Thankfully, we survived the embarrassment...

Here are a few "action" shots:

Impressive, huh?

Macie was really curious what we were doing too.

Mark and I are not the cleanest painters...

This doesn't even show when I bumped the wall with my entire arm. Oops.

Here is a "final" picture. We are still trying to decide what she wants on the sign I'm going to make for above her bed.

It's difficult to tell the color from my awesome photography. But here is the swatch:

She was pretty surprised when she got home. I imagine that is mainly due to the fact that her parents are totally unreliable dolts. I also think that if she wasn't so completely exhausted, she would have been really excited. She did thank us several times. So, there is that. Parenting win? Probably...if we weren't closer to her next birthday than the last.

Responsibility

This morning, in my usual Saturday fashion, I was unable to sleep past 6 AM. Which totally makes sense since on weekdays, I'm having to drag myself out of bed at 6:45 so I'm not late for work.

As I was sitting there drinking my coffee, I heard Peyton's shower go on. I was thinking she forgot it was Saturday and was going to be super annoyed. About the time I realized what was going on, Mark came out and said "I completely forgot Peyton was taking the ACT today." Oops.

Peyton was not excited about being up early on a Saturday. She was not excited about taking the ACT. She was stressed, nervous, irritated, and completely annoyed with us. Yet, in the back of my mind I could only think "She is becoming responsible!!"

All through her breakfast, she was complaining. As she was getting ready, she was complaining. Before she left, she was complaining. But, still, I was happy. She's becoming responsible!

We tried to talk to her, but that only seemed to make it worse. And then I started to get annoyed with her bad attitude. Which also made it worse. Shocking, I know. But, at the end of the day, I'm elated. She's becoming responsible.

And I couldn't be prouder.

A Stroll Down Facebook Memory Lane...

If you're not on Facebook, this post might seem a bit odd to you.

However, if you ARE on FB, you may have seen the Facebook Memory photo pop up on your news feed. Lately, the ones on my page have been complete tear-jerkers! It's just another reminder that the girls are growing up SO fast!

The first one that hit me hard was this:

 They were so little.

And the next day, I got hit with this one:

Seriously Facebook!

Some of the others that have popped up:

Yikes! I'm not sure how much more of this I can handle. I'm not usually the most sentimental when it comes to the girls growing up.

At least I didn't used to be. Sigh.