I can't believe it's been so long! 

So what's happening around here?

For school:  We're about a week and a half behind, but I plan on getting us caught up this next week. 

For Family:  Friday the 29th, DH and I are leaving town.  The boys are going to stay with my parents while we're ce;ebrating our 10th wedding anniversary a little early in HAWAII!  Maui to be exact.  I'm so excited!  Once week from today I'll be on my way to Luau-land.  LOL!  We've never been to Hawaii before, so can hardly wait.  Am sending some of my eldest son's school work with him to Grandma's.  She can help him while we're away.  And the baby will enjoy playing with Grandpa and having the run of their house.  (They have a little more open space over there for him to move.)  

Speaking of the baby...I'm a little afraid that I'll miss some of his development while we're away.  He'll be 17 months old.  He's just starting to walk (crawling's so much faster, don'tcha know!) , so he may be walking on his own more when we get back.   He doesn't talk much yet, either.  He sign's "more", "please', "eat", "drink", and a bunch of other signs he's learned by watching the Baby Signing Time dvds.  He babbles lots and every now and then he sounds like he's saying a real word, but since he doesn't repeat it, I have to assume it's not on purpose.  So, there's a chance he'll be saying more than just "Daddy" when we get home too.   

I'm going to enjoy the time away--even if I miss my boys a little while we're gone.  I'm especially looking forward to getting outside and being in the sun.  It's kinda hard to do so when it's below zero more days than not like it has been here lately.  Today's actually really nice...in the mid-30s.  Balmy, as my hubby would say.  The sun's out too.  I should have gone outside this afternoon, but I didn't.  We'll be busy walking beaches and lying around and maybe do some swimming and hiking while we're on Maui, so it should be a nice combination of activity and relaxation.  We both really need it.

We've been back to doing our school work for a couple weeks now.  Due to getting behind over the holidays we've been doing a bit of "catch up" work.  Thankfully, it hasn't been taking a lot of extra work...just the time to do a bit of extra reading each day.  I'm not doing "catch up" work for math, science or handwritng.  Those we'll just keep doing at the normal pace.  So, I just took a look at my school planning calendar and I noticed that next week is the end of our 2nd quarter (and 1st semester).  I'm going to have to see where we're at and evaluate how ds is doing.  Even though I'm not required to send in report cards to anyone, I decided to start giving them to ds this year so he knows how he's doing in school and it also is a good starting point for dh and I to discuss how homeschooling is going.   

Happy 2008!

It's been a while since I've had time to sit and write.  Christmas is such a wonderful time, but a busy one too!  We didn't get much school work done in December.  So much else going on, I just got lazy about school, I guess.  But we are back at it now.  And only a few weeks behind.  It won't take too long to get caught up. 

A case of Buyer Beware:  My dh bought me a mandolin for Christmas.  I've been wanting one for quite some time.  He tried to get a good deal.  He searched around online and decided to purchase one he saw on ebay.  I love ebay.  However, after this experience, I do not recommend it for musical instruments.  I'm not sure buying an instrument online is wise at all unless you are familiar with the company you are purchasing from and they have excellent warranties/guarantees and a great return policy if there's a problem with what you get.  Anyways, we've had nothing but trouble with this mandolin.  First, I just thought the problem was that the strings were bad so we had to get replacements.  We live in the middle of nowhere (at least as far as shopping is concerned) so had to wait a few days till we could take a shopping trip.  Got some decent new strings, dh changed a couple that were giving me trouble and I got excited thinking I would be able to get started learning this new instrument.  Then as I was beginning to learn, I quickly discovered yet another problem.  Two or three of the frets are too high under the E and A strings and are causing my strings to play incorrect notes.  It's really aggravating.  It's no longer returnable (they only offer a 7 day after arrival guarantee and you pay to ship it back which wouldn't have done us any good as dh didn't open the box until a couple weeks after it arrived--remember, it was my Christmas gift and he wanted to keep it packaged nice for me).  After quite a bit more research dh learned that this particular seller is becoming notorious for selling cheaply made instruments by making them sound like he's selling you great quality for such a great deal.  The brand of this mandolin is Santini.  Doesn't that sound nice?  Reality is, you can't find it anywhere but through this ebay seller.  These instruments are very likely made in a factory in China with little to no musical quality control.  The instruments aren't set up properly before being sent to the consumer, thus, you are extremely likely to receive an unplayable instrument as I have.  I will have to find out if it's worth it to have someone replace the frets.  If that will cost what we think it will, dh has already told me we will get a new mandolin for me at a music store that's only about an hour from here, so is relatively local.  And if this mandolin is not fixable due to cost, will find itself mounted as wall art.  (Hey, at least it does look pretty nice!)  Moral of my story:  It's not wise buying "sight unseen"! 

Well, I'm coordinating my church's VBS this year.  Last year I worked on it as co-director, but I've discovered through that experience that I much prefer the behind-the-scenes planning and organizing and let someone else take care of the discipline issues, etc.  Hopefully someone will step up as VBS Director and I can just be coordinator.  Anyways, I'm trying to decide which curriculum to use.  We've used Standard Publishing's VBS curriculum for the past 2 years, but quite honestly, I'm not thrilled by this year's theme.  So I guess I get to do some research and see what my options are.  Then to get some input/opinions from those who have already agreed to teach or help out next year.  Oh and I'd better get it on the church calendar...in fact, I'm going to email my pastor now so I don't forget! 

Anyone else in charge of coordinating your church's VBS?  I'd love to know what you're doing this year.  Also, any good ideas for recruiting helpers?  We have a relatively small church...about 130 would be average attendance, but it seems that it's mostly the 50 or so members that do most of the church work (and therefore don't like adding one more thing to their already busy and overworked lives).  It's really really really hard to get people to volunteer for ANYTHING at this church.  Last year (my first year helping with VBS in a while and my first year helping with the program's organization) it worked out and we ended up with 40 workers and 69 students during the week.  The year before they had only about 15 workers and about 45-50 students.  So I can see God is working to advance this ministry.  I guess I need to trust God that He will work in the hearts of His people to see the importance of the ministry and where they can fill a need and allow His Spirit to convince them that they need to help out!  How's that for giving yourself a pep-talk?!?!?!

Today I'm feeling a bit discouraged, depressed and ummm...down.  Oh yeah and really overwhelmed. 

It's the feeling that I've got too much to do and not nearly enough time to do it all.  What I'm dealing with is my house and housework.  I feel like my house has gotten out of control (again) as we tend towards being "messies".  We've been trying to not let the papers stack up in piles as much, but it still seems that we get too busy for a week or two and just can't keep up and those paper piles return.  After a couple more weeks of living with mounds of paper in various places throughout the house, it's finally starting to drive me up a wall again.  For those people who by nature tend to be tidy, all I can say is they are blessed with a gift.  For the rest of us who LOVE to have our homes tidy, but can't seem to either get it that way or keep it consistently neat, it would sure be nice to have a magic wand or a cleaning "fairie"!     

I've read the Messies Manual and tried following FlyLady's suggestions.  I just haven't quite found a system that works well for my family.  OH well.  Maybe someday we'll figure out a better way.