Return of the Retreat

Rested, yet productive. It was a nice getaway & appreciated time off from usual role & responsibilities.

The ride home was a little messy, but made it through. Glad that I was able to do what I wanted (my own craft project & read a whole book), but happy to be home again.

Half Way Point

High achievers, great accomplishment & very proud parents!

Less Chaos...More Home Together Time

Not as much bustle staying home, but more needed cleanup taking place. We can now walk into at least half of our walk in closet, switched around our bedroom, revamped the worst cupboard ever & cleaned up our half bathroom so considerable work effort/progress (& many sneezes & sniffles stirring up the dust). We all went & got haircuts today too. We did some shopping, the boys learned how to play Stratego & they played many rounds of that. We saw the new Jack Ryan movie yesterday too...intense action & good time by all.

January in full effect

So, I'm going to try this out to see if I can do a better job posting this year.  As you might be able to see, we've got a lot going on these days. The Tweeners went ice skating up at North Park (yes, I was on skates taking pictures...I know, daring but no falling for me). The boys switched their indoor junkyards, I mean, rooms....they almost qualify as them now. Eric started Pep Band season (playing for the Varsity boys basketball team) with an awesome game that they won in overtime. Jesse is appearing in a brochure for the Sci Center & is very pumped up this evening with his big Puzzle-lympics win. He spent the day working his brain out in overdrive at the Jr. High competing against other GATE students in the district & came home with TWO big wins. We are glad to have Monday off too as they have reached the half way point of the school year too. Exciting news!

The Deep Freeze

Never have we seen such negativity...in temperatures...as we have today.  Very very very cold outside and everyone is keeping warm staying inside...no school for the boys and a delay tomorrow.  Jon provided door to door transportation for me so off to work I went today.

Starting out 2014 with "big moves"

It may not sound significant comparatively, however switching the boys rooms has been no easy task.  Jesse "gave" this gift to his brother for Christmas this year and it seems like we have been trying to dig out ever since.  I'm not sure why items, large and small, keep appearing and cluttering up our room, but guess that counts as "moving" too.  Not fun, not easy but definitely can tell the difference in them getting to have a 'new start.'  I did think it was kind of cute that Eric wanted to stay in his "old room" last night one last time for old time's sake.  Jesse, on the other hand, slept in the basement as his bunk beds are currently the Titanic of too much stuff.  Anyway, I did not find it fun going back and fixing links to pictures from the year end wrap up.  I'm not sure yet what we're going to do differently but I'm hoping to not just throw pictures up when I can get to it.  We'll see if the new approach works...no promises, but worth a try.

This week is going to start with a big chill.  Very low temps are expected as the 'normal routine' kicks in...Winter Musical practice, hockey, piano & trombone lessons, Pep Band and that's just the kids' schedules. We'll try to keep up...it's not easy being green but then again, I guess we aren't anymore...haha :)