Sunday, September 28, 2008

A Wonderful Family Weekend

As promised, here is an update about our weekend.........

Saturday was a hard working day to start off, we had a lot of clean-up that we needed to do around the house and yard. As a result, the boys worked on the storage shed and got it all cleaned up and organized, while Rachel and I worked on going through totes upon totes of books. We are donating them to a school library. If I knew how to get them to Texas without having to pay a fortune in shipping I would send them there, as there are books from the very early years to the tween years. We saved all the very special books and those that were given to the children by special people! Then Russell and I got cleaned up and went and did our weekly shopping. It is wonderful to have two children that are old enough to watch the younger one.........we have become very spoiled! Then we came home and did a family activity, we had a fire out back and roasted marshmallows and were lucky enough that one of the neighboring towns was having their Tobacco Festival (yest you read correctly, Tobacco Festival - tobacco growing is a major crop around where we live) and they had fireworks. We could see them from our back deck. It was so fun to watch them with Isaac. The other two really didn't care about them, but he is still my little boy and likes things like that. Here were a few common phrases..........."sweet"; "Mommy - did you see that one?"; "totally awesome"! What a wonderful memory! Then while he and I were watching those, Russell went in and got out his telescope that he received from Uncle Brad and Aunt Glenda for Christmas. Isaac didn't know he was going to get to look at stars and the moon - once he figured out what was going on, he was finished with the fireworks. He and Russell had a great time looking through the telescope, the only bad part was that the moon was bright it made it difficult to see the stars.

Today, Rachel and I went to Cincinnati to go shopping - I desperately needed to replace a few key pieces of my work wardrobe - it was getting bad when you put on your pants without having to unbutton or zip them! After 2 days this past week of getting dressed and having my husband say that it looks way too big and makes you look way bigger than you are, you know it time to clean out the closet (oh, which I did on Saturday). I managed to find that essential pair of black pants and a few new shirts (mostly to go with already existing suit jackets), and of course, what would be a shopping trip without a new pair of shoes. We spent time with Laura, as she went shopping with us. The boys stayed home and played their computer games and had a grand ole' time!

Well, I have a kitchen to clean up (the weekends I have KP duty - to give Russell a break), and a load of my work laundry to put in the dryer, and then it is off to snuggle with my husband and watch a movie!

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Saturday, September 27, 2008

What a Month............

Hello at long last! We really didn't go to Mars or fall off of planet Earth! We have been extremely busy with kids schedules.

Our month has gone well, we are back into the swing of a school schedule with a mix of activities. This is the first year that all three children have been involved in something. Darryl and the marching band (small but mighty it is) is doing really well under the direction or our new Band Director - we absolutely love him, it took us a while to get adjusted to him and his sense of humor, but I am sure it took him a while to adjust to us too! Over the summer we made an investment in a new oboe...........boy those things are not cheap! Darryl is thrilled to have his new oboe. He has also become quite the keyboard player, now if we could only find a very cheap/free upright piano. We really want to have all the kids take piano lessons (how we would fit that one into the schedule, I'm not really sure, but we would manage). Oh, I almost forgot, Darryl is now in second year Spanish and so of course, almost all his conversations he wants to have in Spanish. This would be great if the mom knew Spanish! I can count to ten, say son, good morning, good bye and few other phrases with his constant help! It is hysterical to listen to me try and converse with him. Now on to number two son, Isaac, he is almost as busy as Darryl. He is playing flag football this year and loving it. We had our first game on Tuesday night and I don't think that many of the boys on the team had much of a clue! I am sure they could all tell us how many birds flew overhead, how many cars went by, and how many dandelions were in the grass!!! So, needless to say, we lost in a major way. But on Thursday night, I guess the boys decided they didn't like to know what it felt like to loss so badly, so they came out and played a great game. Isaac made an extra point (in flag football they run in the extra point instead of kicking) and ran for an almost touchdown....he was a few inches shy of making it over the line. But he called for a penalty at the end of his run - the other player was pushing him, so he shoved him back. We figured out this is not allowed, and the ball was taken back to point where we started. He loves to run and will run down our driveway at every chance he gets. I am really hoping that he decides to train with the Cross Country team next year instead of play football, because it becomes tackle football.....I am such a wimp of a mom! Now one to our girl....my first thought is to call her my "baby" girl, but she is not a baby anymore. She is as tall as I am and growing up so fast. She is involved in chorus, Beta and academic team. She was doing marching band, but that had become a major conflict with basketball and since she wanted to do basketball more than marching band we allowed her to make the choice. So then basketball started and she was doing the conditioning and then the coaches didn't like the fact that she was doing academic team and chorus (that would pose too much of a potential game conflict I guess) that she had to make a choice between basketball, chorus and academic team......and the decision was? That is pretty much a no brainer, she chose chorus and academic team. On Monday the academic team had their first meet and she did really well, she did arts and humanities. The team won its first meet! This coming Monday, she gets to do quick recall, social studies, arts and humanities. We are so happy for her - she is really thriving on being able to do that.

Wednesday's continue to be a very busy day with church. I am now leading the elementary age children - they are so precious and want to learn about Jesus and take it all in. I have wonderful help from my friend Joyce with this group - she is so awesome for the kids. She has lived her whole life in Trimble county and knows just about all the kids and their parents. Darryl is going to start doing the music for this group and Rachel is going to help him. We are so blessed to have such musically talented children. I am also leading the middle school group, which is more of a challenge. I have a large number of sixth graders in proportion of the seventh and eighth graders..........I had forgotten how immature sixth graders were. I pray that God gives me the patience to make it through the year! Thank goodness for my friend Pam, or I would not be able to hold it together with the middle school group!

Russell has been doing a lot work outside, due to the remnants of Hurricane Ike that flew through Kentucky (never thought I would experience a hurricane living here)! We lost several trees, thank goodness most of them were back behind the pond and you can't really tell. We didn't lose any of the major trees in our yard, and for that we are thankful. We did lose our back storm door, but we weren't horribly sad about that. We had been wanting a new one for the front door, so now we will be moving the front to the back!

Well, I promise picture next time and it won't be so long....I have to get moving! We are going to go through some storage totes and see what we can pass on to charity and Goodwill.

Hope everyone has a blessed day and I will try to post more often and add some much needed updated pictures!