NO, I have not fallen of the earth……

…..I have just been caught up in life.

Since our vacation, I feel like I have been running in circles.  The kids have been hard at work with school, which really takes up so much of my day.  Joel has started taking guitar lessons and loves them.  Whenever he finds a free minute he is upstairs strumming away!  Hannah has started a dance class with a group of other homeschoolers.  It is not very challenging for her, but I think she likes the social aspect.  Both Joel and Hannah have gotten involved in the Youth Groups at church, which we have finally found a church that feels like home.  It is a non-denominational church and the pastor is very good getting to the heart of a matter, without taking a lot of detours.  The church was started by a group of “mid-westerners” so maybe that is part of the reason we feel so at home. 

Jacob had a birthday on the 17th.  He turned 12.  His big hobby right now is he is growing Sea Monkeys.  He had been bugging us for a pet of his own (Joel has the dog and Hannah has hermit crabs) but I wanted something he could maybe keep alive for a while and is low maintenance.

We have been enjoying the beautiful fall colors.  Up until a few days ago the weather has been absolutely gorgeous!  We have tried to spend as much time outside as possible.  I have gotten some really good pictures of the kids, I even had our christmas cards printed with one of the pictues.  (And for those of you who know me, yes, they are already addressed and ready to mail after Thanksgiving! (I know, it is a sickness!))

Other than that, I have been working on getting the house more organized and functional.  Trying to finish up birthday and Christmas shopping and working on all my last minute projects. I also have a holiday apron swap I am participating in so I need to get busy on that!

I promise to keep up on my blog and hopefully share some of my projects I have in the works.

Update

We are finally into the swing of school and I am finding that it takes up a good portion of my day right now.  We are still dealing with the quirks of our curriculum.  You cannot misspell a word by even one letter or it marks it wrong, so I have to go in and manually check everything to see whether the error is a spelling or comprehension error.  Other than that the kids seem to like the curriculum and get up and get started on school without a lot of prodding from mom.

I have been working on a few projects, I whipped up a couple more of the colored pencil holders.  I made a beach tent for the beach on Friday, but I cannot take pictures of it until then, I have nowhere to set it up.  I have also been working on cutting warp for the loom.  I finally have it all cut and now I am working on getting it on the loom.  I would take a picture but there really isn’t anything exciting about a jumbled mass of yarn draped all over the place.

I must admit I have been staying up way too late watching the Olympics!  But really, it is so exciting to watch things like Michael Phelps and the other guys on the relay team beat the French!!!  Now if all of these exciting events happened before Midnight it might be better, but it is only a couple of weeks.  Maybe I will have to up my coffee quotient in the mornings to keep me going.

Michael Phelps of the U.S.
Reuters – Aug 11, 10:38 pm EDT

The weather here has been cool and rainy for several days and it doesn’t look like today is going to be to much different.  I think it is going to be a lazy day.  Dan was up early this morning to catch a flight for Houston, so I am operating on about 5 hours sleep (definitely not enough for me).  The kids should be finishing up school soon, and then I just might curl up and take a movie nap or something.  I have plenty I need to do, but just can’t find my motivation today.  Hannah made some pancakes for lunch and I just ate a couple with blueberry syrup–yum!

Well, I need to go help with some spelling words and get the kitchen cleaned up in case I decide to get ambitious later and get some bread baked.