LAZY BLOGGER

Yep, that is me! Wow.....I have done a terrible job of it.

I will try to catch up briefly.

We got back from our trip on Labor Day weekend and got very involved in school for both boys, volunteer time at Keenan's school and just being busy in general. Kevin was working long days since it was the "shutting down" time for irrigation and I was working and teacher and "mommying".

Then in the blink of an eye it was time for Bird City convention. That in itself was an adventure in mud....I found out that somehow, sitting next to Keenan in meeting, it was possible to get mud on my scarf,which was around my neck....Now, I know he wasn't kicking me in the face so that is still a mystery!

We got home from Convention and found out that we were likely going to get to move but nothing was sure until the 16th of October. We started going through the stuff in the storage unit anyway and found out that remarkably, most of it was junk that we were paying to store...that could be thrown or given away! Lesson learned, don't keep things you don't use! On the 16th we found out that we were indeed going to be able to move and we got started with arranging painting and carpet cleaning and packing!

On the first weekend of November we moved in and then had a week to wrap things up at the old house. We were moving things quickly and just piling boxes everywhere...planning on unpacking right away. We did pretty well with all of that and were fairly well settled in when Aunt Pat and Uncle Harold came for Thanksgiving. That was a real treat and we had a nice quiet Thanksgiving in our new home. Then on Saturday of that weekend my friend from home, April, came and gave me decorating ideas (and a whole pile of wonderful goodies!!) There are no pictures on the walls yet but it is getting there. The only boxes are in one half of the 2 car garage so that is not too bad.

I actually ended up quitting one of my practices at the end of November due to some "accounting challenges" on their part (they thought it wasn't necessarily important to pay their vendors and I didn't agree!). So now for the past 2 weeks I have had only part time work. I really thought that would mean I had a lot of time for unpacking etc but it seems like life just gets busier when you don't have work to fill your time! I had a week at Keenan's school volunteering in the Holiday Shoppe, then we had lots of projects for Conner's school, a game day, some other events and field trips, special meeting and special company, and then school is out!

Now we are at Grandma and Grandpa Lerwick's house waiting for a "big storm" but it hasn't hit yet!

School is going relatively well for both kids. Conner still loves COVA and is doing well with it. I believe he is nearly at 50% or greater for all of his classes, and he is required to be at 42% by the end of the semester for advanced so he is well beyond that. He likes math a lot and science is interesting but a bit frustrating. If I have one complaint about the K12 curriculum it is that there is no text book, not online OR hard copy. The information is in each lesson and they have to take notes and then if they need to go back and find information they have to go through the lesson to find it. Conner learns very similar in style to the way I do, which means going back and looking things up several times to remember them. He is very interested in science though and overall is enjoying the class very much. Reading is definitely his challenge class as he really doesn't enjoy it that much, but he did read Tom Sawyer and enjoyed that very much.

Keenan has had some bullying issues in his school this year and I think that coupled with the long drive every day is making all of us eager for him to home school next year. Unfortunately I believe that the public school is rapidly going downhill, even the great charter that our kids have been a part of. The problem we have come up against is that it seems that the trouble makers have more of a right to misbehave than the good kids have a right to a safe environment. Currently the school is taking some measures to deal with the issue but it is frustrating to mom for sure. It is disappointing to see what was an excellent school go down in quality because of behavioral issues. I guess that maybe it has to do with more and more people removing their kids from the environment that is bad so what is left is the ones who make the environment bad!

One really good thing though is that one of Keenan's best friends has also moved north in Colorado Springs so he actually lives only about 5 minutes from our house and it will be easy to get the two of them together! Conner's good friend still lives down south but we have been able to get together regularly with him as well so they will be able to maintain those friendships.

I will attempt to get some pictures posted of the house as we get some things done to make it a home in the next week....(Laura is coming for a week so maybe between the two of us we can figure out how to hang pictures!) And maybe we will have some cousin pics this week too!

I will really attempt to get more into the nuts and bolts of schooling this semester and keep you updated on some of the things we are doing. We have some really exciting field trips coming up and are looking forward to those (I think Keenan may get self declared holidays for the ones in Denver and get to go along with us).

No pictures this time, I have to get some off of my camera and get them into this computer.