I Should Be Sleeping

Yep, it's totally 11pm on a Monday night and I was asleep on the floor until about half an hour ago when I realized I needed to get online and order some stuff for church...and then one thing led to another and now I'm wide awake so I might as well update this while I'm at it!  I did promise to do better, right?  Since the last post, Charlotte and Caroline have both had stomach bugs ( at different times) and I've been to the doctor twice to try to figure out what's going on with me...long story short, looks like I need to go back on some birth control to regulate myself better...and all of that adds up to another very long month!!

In addition to still being sick, I had to coordinate the winter fundraiser at the kids' school...it was a Spell-a-Thon...it was OK, but I'm really glad it's (almost) over.  All that's left is handing out prizes.  Brandon has been busy making some big changes in the children's education program at church (and the reason for me having to wake myself up to order sticker labels and bags tags and things) so he's been working really hard on all of that.  He even got to preach this past Sunday, I was so proud of him, he did great! 

The kids have been OK, other than still being sick.  Charlotte ended up missing almost a week and a half of school and then came back for a couple of days and then they had a 6 day weekend break for the holiday in February.  So she's still adjusting to being back in school full time and not taking it too well.  We've had a lot of fussy days.  Caroline was doing great, had a great birthday and then she got sick and has been super clingy since then.  Timothy didn't get sick but has been really emotional lately.  Needless to say, I'm exhausted!

So the big change was Caroline's birthday!  I can't believe she's two and I'm not pregnant...it's weird, but I'm so glad she's growing up and our family is moving into the next stage of life.  She had a great birthday, Brandon was able to come home at lunch and stay home for the rest of the day with us.  She got to go to Bible class and had a lot of people singing to her all day!  We had her party last weekend, she is very much into Minne Mouse, so it was a fun pink polka dot day.  At two years old, she loves Minnie Mouse, books, baby dolls, princesses, dressing up, playing outside, swings and slides, her scooter, and her brother.  She likes to eat pizza, strawberries, grapes, chicken and she loves milk.  She can say pretty much anything you want her to say, the girl talks ALL THE TIME!!  She loves to sing, her favorite song is "We Will Rock You".  She is such a sweet feisty little girl, I think we're going to be in trouble when she gets older!

The other big change we've had around here is that we decided to go ahead and pull Timothy out of school and begin homeschooling.  It's a decision that has been a long time coming and we finally felt the time was right.  We had planned to wait till he started 2nd grade, and then that moved up to Spring Break and then I got a letter in his bag about Spring conferences and how she wanted to meet with us before the end of the month and we decided to just bite the bullet and do it now.  So today was our official "first day"!  We didn't do much, I'm going to give us both some time to adjust before jumping in too far!  For anyone wondering the reasoning behind the decision...there are many reasons.  The most important being that we felt we needed to take a larger part in making sure his education included God in it and we plan to use the Bible to teach a lot.  I also think it's a better fit for him.  He is so far ahead of the rest of the kids in class academically, but behind in maturity, so it's been a constant struggle all year and frankly, I'm tired of picking him up every day and seeing him in tears about something that happened that day.  He has plenty of "socialization" opportunities already, so I'm not worried about him missing out on being with other kids.  He had also picked up several bad habits that just plain needed to stop!  Today's first day went great, like I said, we didn't do much.  I know it will be a hard road, but I think the benefit is just too great to outweigh the costs.  We plan on keeping Charlotte in preschool for now, she's getting so much extra help with Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy that I think she needs to be there...and we may keep her in for Kindergarten...but past that, it's all about being together as a family and learning together. 

The not so big change that's happened (well, it's big in that it cost $ and time on mine and Brandon's part, but not really a big deal) is that we finally decided on a color and painted the inside of our house!  It was the ugly "builder beige" and the people that lived her before us had painted a wall in the living room dark red....and now all of that is gone and replaced by a beautiful "gentle rain" gray!  I also chose a bright yellow for the wall in the kitchen, gotta have some color in there, right?  I'm so excited to decorate now, I'm getting all crafty these days!  My next project is making my own curtain rods and burlap curtains...we'll see how that goes!

Anyway, that's been our month in a nutshell...not much else going on for the rest of the month besides my birthday and that is shaping up to be a pretty uneventful day!  The first week in April is Spring Break for Charlotte and we are doing an early birthday party that week for Timothy to surprise him with a puppy for his birthday!!  More to come on that later, she's adorable and I know he'll be excited!