Well, we made it through Thanksgiving.  Our first one without Grandpa.  It was hard on the girls, and of course my mother.  It seems empty, even with all of us and the cats, dog, etc.

The month of November is a busy one for me anyway, with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) I usually take the entire month off to focus on writing.  I really tried to take the month off, but with moving, the memorial, my husband starting back to school, my mother's mourning, and her broken ankle, doctor's office visits and more, it wasn't an easy month.

It took me until 11:05pm on November 30 to finish the contest.  I still had a whole hour more that I could have worked, but after my month, I just wanted to see the 50K total and "WINNER" flash on my screen.  When it did I danced around the house and told everyone and I even woke up my kids.  My youngest kept coming in every ten minutes to ask me how many more words I had to go, then when I had about 100 to go she fell asleep.

Today we started schooling again.  We worked for a few hours and I think they were more excited about school than ever before.  They read and listened, well, mostly, and my youngest was very disappointed that she never got to do her math. 

We are starting to settle in and get comfortable.  It has been two months since we got here and finally my cat, Tiger, is speaking to me again.  The girl's cat, Matthew, never really gets upset, but he seems to have been taking notes from Mom's cat, and has been hissing and biting, growling and attacking.  The dog, Max, gets beat up by all three, so he takes out his frustration on the neighbor boy when he comes over.

One of the homeschool groups I belong to had a posting about a really neat homeschool organizing software.  www.home-school-inc.com

It is a free organizer, with quite a bit of flexibility.  I decided to try it and started putting in my girl's info.  I don't know if it was my computer or the site, but I kept getting an error.  I got a message saying they would fix it.  Hopefully they will get it fixed.  I think it could be quite an asset.

Gotta run!

Cara