I've become one of them.....

Yes, it's official. I have started reading the Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer. I really didn't know much about it other than the covers looked a little too mature for all the teenage girls reading them and it's about vampires. Justin read an article about the books and was shocked to hear I had not read them. (this was especially surprising in light of my recent genre of choice) So I borrowed the first two from a friend and I'm hooked. Sheesh! I read the first one Saturday and Sunday morning and finished the last bit of the second one when I got off work today. I'm dyin' for the next two!! I've already cursed Patti for getting me started..... But at least it will be over soon. Surprisingly, I even kind of want to see the movie! In the theater even!! I've never wanted to do that with Harry Potter. Wonder why this is different? Wonder if I'll actually go to the movie? Since I go to movies oh so often.....

We're going to Vegas baby!! And I'm determined to look good. Well, at least not as blubbery as I look now anyway. I started Weight Watchers last week (say it with me "again") and I've been staying on track pretty well. Hence the hunger pangs I'm currently experiencing. But I should show a loss on Thursday of around 3 pounds. A friend is joining too so we can support each other. And compete against each other too! Hopefully that will help me. I was stressed about a recipe I figured points on last night. I entered all the ingredients into the Recipe Builder on WW's site and it came up as 6 points per serving. Not too bad. After I ate I realized that it actually served more so it changed to 4 points. But then I remembered that it called for 9 1/4 ounces of tuna but I'd put in two 6 ounce cans instead. Suddenly it came to 14 points per serving!!! Whaaa??? Was I originally looking in the wrong place on the screen? I can't believe I just had a fairly small dinner for a total of 18 points. Yikes! I was honestly wondering if I shouldn't barf some of it up! Before I went to bed I looked again and noticed that when I was re-entering the information I didn't change cups into ounces. So 12 cups of tuna is a little more than 12 ounces I'd have to say. Heck, if I'd realized my mistake sooner I could have had a glass of wine!

The girls are doing great in school. Emma ran for ASB Representative for her class. Two are chosen, and she won the Alternate position. There were actually quite a few who ran. I'm so proud of Emma for actually trying this. It's not quite typical for her to do that. Audrey is a Student of the Month for October. This means we all get to go to the school Friday morning for a cinnamon roll breakfast and watch Audrey get a certificate. Will I have pictures to post of this? Who knows.... Audrey is going to start meeting with the school counselor and Speech Language Pathologist. For a couple years now Audrey has had kind of a stutter when she talks. It's happening more often now and becoming more apparent. I talked to the SLP and she went to the classroom to observe Audrey and noticed it right away. She thought she also appeared anxious, so we'll combine speech with working with the counselor on ways she can help her anxiety. Hopefully the combination will help to calm her down a bit and ease her speech. I'm excited for her to start.

Justin is really enjoying his new job. It's still pretty slow for him so far, but as he learns more he'll get busier!

It's Bingo Night at school tonight and I'd better get ready to feed my family before we go. I'm not sure that we should subsist on popcorn and water only....

Widgets Went Awry

Oops. I changed my blog template and lost my widgets. Of course there's lots of info on Saving/Backing-Up your blog and widgets, but virtually nothing on actually restoring them! So I've started over again. And I also switched to a background designer with templates that will support widgets. Er, not support, since the other one did that too. But actually keep them instead of deleting. We'll see how this one works out.

Since I've been messing with this for a while now, I actually need to get off the computer and do other stuff. But I knew that if you showed up here and saw my book list dramatically reduced and other stuff quite likely missing you might get worried and demand to know what happened. Now you know. I'm impatient. :)

A bit of a week

Yeah, a little more than usual went on this week.

Let's see....

Monday I started my new job. I'm officially the Family Involvement Coordinator at Bay View Elementary. Most people seem to be happy about this. Including me! But of course the few who feel the need to justify this as a "job" seem to poke at me a bit more. I did not apply for this as a way to make money. I did not apply for this as a "job". I applied for this position because the school and PTA have this position set up to support the teachers, staff, PTA, etc and I want to help this. I want the PTA to be strong. I want the teachers to feel free to teach because somebody else is helping to make sure the grunt work is getting done. I want to be involved---feel involved. OK, and so the stipend is nice too..... But you know that whoever works as the Family Involvement Coordinator (can I just call it FIC?) will be working more than the three hours/school day. Whether it's at the school or at home you know more will be done. And not so much as "it's my duty as FIC" but more of "even if I wasn't in that position I'd still do it to help".

Tuesday Justin and I celebrated 13 years of marriage. Wow! I feel way too immature to have been married that long!

Emma and Audrey both had friends spend the night tonight. Whew. Just go them to bed around 11:00. I know, I should have done it sooner. But we needed to paint nails and watch Eight Below! OK, maybe not. But it was fun! Remind me in a month and a half when Emma is planning her birthday party to not suggest a slumber party. Same goes for Audrey's February birthday. Aww, I suppose it wasn't that bad. I mean, I had wine!

The top five acts in America's Got Talent have been decided. Alright, so maybe that's not a huge deal. But darn that Nancy for getting me hooked! I tell ya, if Nuttin' But Stringz wins, we may have to book a trip to Las Vegas and watch them perform!

I guess that's really it. Pretty pathetic that those items constitute "a bit of a week".

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. ~Mignon McLaughlin

Cows

Yes, I grew up on a farm.

Yes, we raised cattle.

But I swear ours were never as noisy as the ones down the road!

Between the moo-ing and cock-a-doodle-doo-ing my head is buzzing!

If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care, then the happiest individual would not be either a man or a woman; it would be, I think, an American cow. ~William Lyon Phelps

Procrastination

I am just so darn good at procrastinating! Here it is 10:19am, I've been up and showered since 7:00am, and have done pretty much nothing. Still have boxes to unpack and cupboards to sort out. Floors to clean. Resume and cover letter to write. Bills to pay. And yet here I am, updating my blog with essentially nothing to say.

Yesterday I tried to add a new gadget onto my blog and the "Add a Gadget" box was missing. So I changed my template back to an official blogger one and was unable to change it back to a LeeLou template. So I have this one instead. Whaddya think? Does it look writer-y?

Yes, in the opening paragraph I did mention writing a resume and cover letter. I can only imagine your reaction. Please, you may close your mouth now. That's it...pick your jaw up off your chest. Good. OK, are we ready? The PTA has an opening for a Parent Involvement Coordinator and I'm applying for it. The resume isn't required, but I have much more fun writing that than I do writing the cover letter. I guess maybe it's easier to mention what are possibly good things about myself in bullet form, but much harder to actually write sentences about it. I need to have the letter in by September 10th. Hopefully I'll have it all done enough for Justin to look at it tonight and give me his opinion. The position is Monday-Friday 8:30 to 11:30. Yes, it means I'll have to be up and showered (and dressed, duh) and have both girls ready all by 8:20ish. I know, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get up and ready early every morning. I'm doing good on that so far!

Hmm...have I put things off long enough?

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment. ~Robert Benchley

First Day of School

Audrey started second grade on September 3rd. Think she has a funny smile? She's trying really hard to show off her newly missing tooth! Audrey's teacher (Mrs. Miller) asked her if she was scared. Aud replied that she was not and Mrs. Miller told her she should be. hee hee hee I met Mrs. Miller about 8 years ago at MOPS.

Is Emma really a 4th grader?? Yikes! She was a bit nervous. Sounds like the day went well though. She made a new friend named Tia. She was excited to meet another Tia since that is her cousin's name and I don't think she's met any other girls with that name. So now here's where it becomes weird.....Tia in Em's class has lived in Jakarta Indonesia! (for those of you wondering why this might be "weird"---that's where Cousin Tia lives right now)

Two happy girls on their way to school! The first day is always nice. Everyone has first day jitters and gets up really early. We were ready in plenty of time for me to drive them to school. Today the girls made it to the bus on time and I had even taken a shower! Of course I'm sure every day we'll wind up sleeping just a liiitttlle bit longer. No! No! Mustn't do that! Must awaken early! Oh who am I kidding?

I guess school is really the only big excitement right now. We're still slowly putting things away in the house. Justin worked on the garage quite a bit. He said he didn't put anything away yet, but has it all set up where things should go. It looks great in there! And yes, the Mustang looks lovely in there too. That heated garage will certainly make car work more pleasant this winter!

On Monday Justin and I tackled some of the excess growth in our landscaping. It's amazing how much changes in a year. I was so excited to see how big my hydrangeas had become! I'd wondered if they'd ever really do much. There's still so much to do---mostly inside the house. Many things are at the point of "OK, exactly where do we want this rather trivial item?" I have the most amazing kitchen! But I'm waaay too short to reach many of the cabinets. So I still have plenty of space in the upper cabinets---I just need to figure out which items I use so rarely that I won't mind climbing the big step stool to get to them.

I don't have anything else to do today, so in theory I should get a lot of our things put away. But in reality?? Ha!

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives. ~Clay P. Bedford

Hooooommmmeeeee!!!!!!

Yep, we're really here. Home! We're experiencing a bit of a weather shock though. Didn't we just come from temperatures in the 90s?? Now we have rain and temps around 60. Bizarre! Of course with my excessive weight gain over the past year, I have no long pants that fit. Luckily I went to Goodwill the other day while Audrey and Emma were with friends--now I have three pairs of jeans! Now if I could just convince myself not to eat....

We're getting unpacked. I just have one box of kitchen stuff to find homes for, and the junk drawer/phone stuff needs to get sorted out. Upstairs is massive chaos! All my craft supply bins are scattered about. The computer is set up, but all the things that need to go into the desk are still in boxes. We sold Audrey's huge dresser before we moved last year (obviously didn't expect to return so soon), so I'll figure out what to do with some of my things and give her my purple dresser for a while. Once we get that downstairs for her we can really work on the girls' rooms--putting away clothes, finding space for trinkets, etc. Next will be hanging things on the walls. One of these days it may look like we really belong here!

Lucy is loving living in a giant mud pit again. Happy Dog!

School starts on Wednesday. The girls are both pretty excited. They can't wait to see their friends again! They both have some good friends in their classes. Tonight is the PTA Back to School Ice Cream Social. Hopefully by going to that I can figure out things like....what time school starts....you'd think I'd remember that after only a year. But I guess not! I'm wondering if there's a letter from the school spinning in the black hole of mail forwarding....

What do you think of the new blog template? I finally clicked on the ad for LeeLou Blogs on Alecia's blog. Guess what? It's a site filled with great free blog templates! Any bets as to how often I will change the template?? I'm not completely thrilled with the left alignment. It was set as centered for some reason (the designer wasn't sure why) and I used the directions on the site to change it to left alignment. Now it looks cut off. Maybe I'll just deal with the silly centeredness.

I suppose I should be working on setting up the house. We just finished playing a game of Skip-Bo. It takes a looong time to play a game with two easily distracted children! Holy cow! Justin and I might have to play it alone tonight just to be reminded of how easy and fun it can be.

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends. ~Richard Rorty