Pure Fun!

When we first moved to Georgia it took us quite a while to find friends.

Rich wasn’t working – he didn’t get a job until we’d been here about 7 months. Then, when he did find a job he was traveling to Nashville every week.

We live in a town northwest of Atlanta and I had a job southeast of Atlanta. If you’ve ever experienced Atlanta traffic you know what a hellacious journey it could be! Sometimes 2 hours or more to get to and from work.

When I finally stopped working I set out to find friends. Josh and I would attend story time at the local Borders. Mary, the story teller and I soon discovered we had a lot in common and became friends.

What a Week!

I can’t believe it’s Thursday already! It’s been crazy here!

Rich was out of town this week – he comes home today, YAY! – and the boys and I have been crazy busy!

The weather turned quite cold here Monday and Tuesday – well, cold for here – it was in the low 40’s and overcast/rainy on Monday. Perfect for the last Scoop Night fund raiser at Basken Robbins! The teachers are supposed to come out and scoop the ice cream, but I think they all forgot! The boys and I went up there and ate ice cream while it was freezing outside. The kids didn’t seem to notice – they ran around and chased each other all over the place! I froze my toes!

Meeting Up With Old Friends.

Yesterday, I posted some pictures for Wordless Wednesday of the boys coming down a water slide. Today, I'm participating in "Tell Me Thursday" to explain the photos.

When we first moved here and I quit working, I made some friends through Josh's preschool. There were 4 of us with kids all about the same ages. Mary with Cade & Jack, Linda with Abby & Dylan, Val with Emma & Abby and me with Josh & Sam. Soon Val moved to Alabama (we miss you still Val!) and Linda moved to Canton which is only about 45 minutes away, but still a drive.

With the way life goes, the kids got together less and less. And while I still see Mary regularly and Linda from time to time, the kids don't all get together that often.

On Tuesday the boys and I went to meet up with Linda and her kids - she now has 4! Mary, Cade and Jack came too so it was almost a complete reunion of our old Gang!

Kids: Luke 3 months, Sam 4, Dylan 7, William 2, Abby 9, Jack 4, Cade 9, Josh 8

We met up at a Japanese restaurant for lunch - and I am happy to say the only spillage came from me when I spilled my ice tea all over the table (thankfully at the end of the meal!) The poor server - 3 adults and 8 kids!

After lunch we headed up to Linda's place to play in their community pool. They have the coolest pool. There is the water slide and an adults only pool and a really cool pool for the kids that has one end with a zero entry so you can walk in like a beach. The "kids" pool only gets to 3 1/2 feet too so it's not deep anywhere. And during adult swim (every hour for 10 minutes, same as our pool here) there is a water mushroom the kids play in. Our mushroom has a pool under it, is very cold and, according to Josh, smells like pee. Their mushroom had no pool, just a drain so there is no standing water.

I really wanted to get more pictures, but I was having too much fun going down the slide and talking to my friends.

We had so much fun catching up and hanging out. The boys were so tired on the way home and slept soundly that night! We're already planning a trip back before summer ends!

And Abby and Josh hit it off. I got an email from Linda that night saying Abby talked about Josh all night and how much she liked him! Aww...

Keeping the Kids Busy, and Mom Sane

Now that summer break is in full swing, I'm trying to keep the kids busy and active - most of the time.

I have this fear that they'd spend all summer in front of the TV playing PS3 if I don't lay down some ground rules. Plus, I want Josh to be ready for the routine changes we'll have next school year so I figured summer is a great time to ease into the new workload he'll be getting.

I've reinstated the chore chart. Both kids have some chores they have to do - and honestly it's nothing too taxing and stuff they should just be doing (but don't). When they do their chores they can earn points and trade the points in for things. Like time on the PS3.

I am also making them do "educational activities." Because I really believe they should keep their minds sharp. Sam loves doing the "Homework." Josh, not so much. But, since he can choose what he wants to do, it seems to be getting better.

I'm also trying to do one "field trip" a week and we're taking full advantage of the free summer movies at the local movie theater. This week we went with the mom's group to a "paint your own pottery" place. They had a great time. Josh picked out a guitar and Sam painted a turtle shaped bowl. I can't wait to see how they turned out. We get them next week. I was so busy talking that I forgot to take pictures. I'll take a picture of the finished products so you can see how they turn out.

Other field trips we have scheduled: a trip to the local pizza parlor for a behind the scenes tour, our grocery store and the fire station. I would also like to get up to the Tellus Museum again next week and possibly to the Aquarium sometime this month too.

All this with trips to the pool on nice days and then the normal chores and errands keeps us pretty busy. Thankfully, the boys still have some down time to rest and play like you should on summer break too!

Brain Dump

My bloggy friends really know how to lay on the guilt trip about not blogging!

And my mom too.

I was chatting with CrazedParent -- she was worried because I've been quiet lately. She said, "Blog about the bloggy funk."

In truth, I could be blogging about stuff... I could be out there reading all your blogs... but I'm being selfish.

But, since I haven't blogged about much, here's my brain dump....

Rich officially starts his new job on Monday. I know he's anxious to start that and begin learning some new things. He's started going in to the office every day so that's taken us all a bit of time to get used to. The boys still open up the basement door when they get home because they have to "tell Daddy something."

It's good for him though to get out of the house and get some interaction with people other than Josh, Sam and me. You know?

Josh's birthday is on Sunday. He'll be 8! EIGHT! I can hardly believe it. We're not having a party this year. He wanted to invite a friend over for a sleep over so we're letting him do that.

We're also getting a "family" present - we pooled all the money that granparents, aunts, uncles and friends had given us for birthdays and got a PlayStation3. So we'll be getting that, and Josh is getting GuitarHero and a few other games, some BlueRay DVD's and a few books.

I'll be sure to post pictures of the GuitarHero next week. I'm quite excited to try it out actually!

Sam is doing well too. He had a renal ultrasound yesterday. The doctor's office just called to say all is good. I thought maybe this was the last one from the way she was talking at his last apointment, but she wants another renal ultrasound in two years. But his right kidney is all gone now (that was the bad one) and the left kidney is very big (all good).

That's about all the news here for the moment. Sam and I are about to make playdough for his class. It's my turn to make it. If you want the recipe, let me know.

Random Updates and Things.

As you've probably noticed from my lack of updates, things have been a bit all over the place lately here.

We're really busy, but there's really not much going on. So today I just thought I'd fill you in on some of the randomness that's going on right now. It's really not all that interesting, but I'm sure my parents are dying for an update of some sort.

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So, as you know, our heating has been on the blink. Last weekend it got so bad we decided that maybe there was something wrong with it and we should call someone out.

And with our luck lately -- we seem to be hemorrhaging money at the moment -- we fully expected to need a new furnace. When we bought the house, the inspector told us it really wasn't sufficient to heat our whole house. Which is why we weren't really clued in that it may actually be broken.

So, I called out to a neighbor that has a HVAC company. He came over and said ignitor switch was broken. $55 part, $65 labor. Needless to say, we were thrilled at the $120 price tag as opposed to the $5000 one we thought we may need.

And he said the heater WAS good enough for the house and showed us how to actually set the flow to regulate upstairs-downstairs. We've all been very happy and warm this week!

Our garage door is still hosed but that will have to wait. We're just parking outside at the moment.

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I've been doing a lot of substitute teaching for Sam's school this week. Even though it's only 4 hours a day, it's so tiring! We get home and it's almost time to get Josh from the bus. I never realized how much I missed my mornings and how much I got done until I didn't have them.

One of the teachers at the school is quite ill -- she's in the hospital with some sort of virus and they don't really know what's wrong at the moment. The school did some teacher shuffling since it looks like she'll be out for a bit longer, so I'm only there 2 days this week, and they're short days.

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And finally, as most of you know, we're a bit uncertain what will happen with Rich's job this year. He works for an IT company that has a contract with a large mobile phone/telecomm company. Rich works on the billing application there. The "client" has decided to not use that outsourced application any longer and instead migrate everyone over to their own in-house system.

Which really makes sense. Why run 2 billing applications when you can run one and why pay for outsourcing when you have a team already running it.

So we've known for over a year that Rich's job would be going away eventually. Well it looks like "eventually" is sometime this year.

He's been looking for jobs internally and found a prospect with the same client in the same building doing something he's quite excited about. He's been persuing this opportunity for about 9 months but it looks like things will finally fall into place in February.

He found out yesterday there are some internal politics at play that may have been the reason for the long, drawn out process. But the manager of the group wants Rich and has a good case for him. Hopefully the decision will be made this week or early next week.

Rich is really excited about working with this team, the manager and on the team. He'll be learning something new, and we all know how he loves to learn!

So, please keep us in your thoughts, prayers, whatever... and that this finally comes to a conclusion (one way or the other) this week. It's starting to stress Rich out a bit!

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I've been knitting like crazy. Once I finished Rich's sweater I got the bug! I made a pair of "topless" mittens that I love (I'll post a picture soon). And I am working on a baby sweater for a friend who is having a baby soon.

I still have a queue a mile long of things I want to make. The boys still want me to make some hats for them and I really want to make something for me. I can't work on more than one thing at a time -- I'll get confused!

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That's about it for us for now. I'll try to come back again this week and post more. I'm solo parenting Sam this week. Josh and Rich are on an adventure together and have my camera. More about that later.

Playing Catch Up!

I can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since I wrote last!

We've been busy and been having lots of fun this Christmas break! So... where to begin...

We went to see The Tale of Despereaux on Christmas Eve and both the boys loved it! We'd read the book, which is fantastic, and I knew the movie would be different so I was a bit concerned how Josh would take it.

The movie was different -- but the message in the movie and the book are the same. And it wasn't too different. I thought it was a great movie. Of course, I liked the book better, but both the boys really enjoyed the movie and that's what matters.

Christmas day was fun too. We managed to hold the kids off until about 6:30 or so. Then came downstairs and opened a few presents. We were a bit unfortunate... Sam's only present he asked Santa for was the Playmobil Knights and Castles set. I found one about 2 weeks before Christmas on Amazon and ordered it in plenty of time for a Christmas delivery. We got the notice that it would be delivered on 12/19... and it still hadn't come by Christmas Eve! I wrote Amazon and they told me to "wait until 12/26." Yeah. I don't think so.

I had to go out and buy something else for Sam (I got the Playmobil Skatepark for him). Santa left a note saying the elves ran out of the item he asked for, He was a bit disappointed Santa didn't get him the set he asked for, but still loves the Skatepark anyway.

The boys got a Wii and some games for it from the Grandparents (both sets chipped in for the unit plus a few games, extra controller, etc...). So that has been the main source of entertainment for the past week.

We've been having all sorts of fun "Family Challenges" on the Wii Sport.

We took the kids on a Nature Scavenger hunt one day, and to the Tennessee Aquarium one day. Both were lots of fun and there are pictures up on my Flickr page.

We also had a bit of bad news about our car. On Christmas Eve when I was driving all over trying to get Sam's gift, I noticed the speedometer had stopped working. So we brought it to the dealer shortly after Christmas and discovered it needed (among other things) a new transmission.

We hummed and hawed over getting the repairs or buying a new car and when I mentioned to the dealer we may be interested in a new car, he told me he couldn't help me out there. No wonder they need a bail out!

When that happened, we decided to cut our losses and bring it to an independant garage for a 2nd opinion. He was so nice! He looked at our car and spent a lot of time diagnosing it. He called us frequently and let us know what was going on. Bottom line tough -- yes it did need a new tranny.

We were prepared for this, so we'd been looking at some new car options and decided, for now, the best thing is to keep our car and do the repairs. I love my car and am just not ready to give up on it, downsize or settle for something I don't really want. Hopefully we'll get the car back later in the week.

The boys start back at school on Tuesday. Sam told me the other day he missed his friends and wanted to go back to school. Josh is ready to go back too!

So that's pretty much up to date -- the abridged version anyway!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year! Here's to new beginnings, and a prosperous 2009!