Happy Birthday, Jeanine!

First off, Happy Birthday Jeanine! I hope and pray that the next year is so much better than the last one has been!

credits: Rainbow spirit by Carrie Stephens; Framed Alpha by Lisa Cohen at Scrapartist; font: TXT Monique

I've not been up to much the last couple of days- trying to get back into the groove of getting up at a regular, early hour to get the kids off to school. I walked with the kids to school Monday and Tuesday to take care of some things, like paying classroom fees and for school lunches. That was almost $200- who says public school is free? On Tuesday afternoon after they got home from school, Beth asked me if I needed to do anything else at school and when I said no, she informed me that I didn't need to walk with them any more LOL After Sarah was born last year I pretty much stopped walking them because I didn't want to over do it too quickly and it was so cold I didn't want to take her out unless I really needed to. They've done great walking by themselves and the crossing guards keep an eye out for them. So, I haven't gone to school with them the last two mornings. Things at school seem to be going pretty well; Bryce has had a couple of homework assignments each day- nothing big, but as I am trying to start him off the right foot for the year as far as expectations go we've had some minor issues over when the assignments are done correctly and well. He doesn't like being criticized and told to go back and do things again; 1 time he can handle pretty well, but when I keep pointing things out after that he tends to get upset. Things are only going to get harder as he gets older (he is in 5th grade this year), so best he learn how to handle things a bit better now. The girls have had it pretty easy this week and haven't had any homework. I'm sure assignments for all of the them will pick up starting next week.

Speaking of birthdays, Beth and Carissa's eighth birthday is coming up on Sunday. Because of all of the stress last weekend, I just didn't feel like working on birthday party stuff. So, I decided to put off their birthday party for a week. They weren't very happy about that, but accepted it. Especially after Mark asked them if they wanted to have a 'good' party or not- they agreed they did. It is hard to have a party the weekend after school starts- if you want to give people a week's notice, you really have to send out invites before school even starts. And with this area being a military community you never know who is going to have moved during the summer and there are always new kids they might want to invite too. So, I've been having them think about who all they want to invite and we will fill out the invitations tonight for them to take to school tomorrow.

I also did some looking into the dance lessons- boy, those are going to cost a boatload of money by the time we get the shoes, clothing, and monthly class fees paid for! But, considering the fact that they have spent the last two days listening to the music CD from VBS in the living room and praticing the choreography they learned to go with the songs over and over and over, I think it is an appropriate gift. We finally got a new coupon book in the mail yesterday that had a coupon for one month of free lessons from the dance studio that was recommended to me, so that will help a little. I just have to decide exactly what class to put them in and what time. I'm leaning towards the combo ballet/jazz class and Saturday mornings. I am going to try and get them signed up today or tomorrow so that I can at least present them with that gift on Sunday. The classes start at the beginning of September, so they won't have to wait (and drive us crazy talking about it) too long ;)

OK- back to unzipping, sorting and burning. I spent all day yesterday sorting out the files on my HD. I've got more to do, but at least I have some space freed up so that PSE will run again- boy was it sssssssslllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww. I hate having to burn stuff to DVD and not have it accessible on my HD all of the time, but there just isn't getting around it any more I may be messy when it comes to the house cleaning, but I can't stand to not have my files organized. Kind of a puzzling isn't it? LOL