Holy Homework Batman!

So I finally got off my butt and got registered for school. I found someone who I am comfortable leaving Katie with and so now I had no reason to not go to school. But call me old old-fashioned but WHEN did they start assigning so much homework? It has been pretty ridiculous around my house lately with the sheer amount of pencil to paper crap that has been going on between Gavin & Alana and then adding in my 3 classes? ugh I think we may have already killed of 2 trees. And I have only been in school for about 2 weeks!

But I am doing pretty well other than feeling like I am a senior citizen! I am in one class and there are 3 older than me. 2 fifty somethings, a 70 something and me. The rest are between 18-22. It is ridiculous! I guess that is the majority of college campuses though! :o) Getting a balance between the kids & home life and school & school work has been interesting too. But so far I am making it work. I got a little behind though when Katie decided to squash a matchbox car on my keyboard of my laptop. She shut the lid and it was Awesome!

I was down a computer for about a week while I waited to get the replacement. I had Jeremy help me take apart the computer to remove the old one. Then I actually put it back together by myself!

The kids are doing well in school too. Gavin has an issue with thinking he can't do something. The teacher had sent him home with a book that was about planets and the solar system and he had a tough time with some of the words but he just didn't even want to try to read it. We got through it really well actually. Once I reminded him that he can read at a 4th grade level on some words he was great!

Alana is struggling with math a little bit this year. They are doing more word problems and right now doing rounding and she is having such an issue with that. She is a very exact kinda girl that she is having a rough time wrapping her head around estimating.

Gavin and her decided (at her request) to make a 'Heart Business'. They made and cut out paper hearts and went out to the end of the driveway and started trying to sell them. They actually did sell 2 of them to the neighbors but they had a lot of fun doing it.

Katie started going to her new baby sitter's house on her birthday. I found her on craigslist and she has a almost 3 year old boy and a 9 month old little girl. It is working out really well so far. She is really nice and Katie really likes her and her kids. They all seem to like Katie as well. So hopefully this will work out for the long run. I don't want her to move from person to person. But I also don't want her to be with only me either. She needs to branch out and have some interaction with children her own age. Plus it is working out great for school and also for me to have a little bit of time away from her too.

Sharing a funny with y'all

So way back when, when I was in the process of getting divorced I had a funny thing happen to me. I have always been a barefoot girl.I detest wearing shoes and when spring comes around my feet breath a sigh of relief. So knowing this, I always had an extra pair of shoes or flip flops in my car or trunk somewhere.

One particular morning, my (then) husband had called me and we had gotten into a fight and I was running late to get the kiddos to daycare and school and I run out the door to the sitters house. I got there and since she was a friend as well, I was kinda giving her the short version of what happened, then became even more agitated. I told her I had to leave and get my butt to work before I got fired. So I go ahead and head to work.

Once I got to work, I realize my major faux pas. I have no shoes on my feet. I about died of embarrassment. But I also remembered that I had a pair in my trunk. So I get looking and looking. And I couldn't find anything. Not a single pair. Not even a pair of socks!!! So now I am freaking out because my boss is in the office. Some background, it was a very small company and we were more like family for the most part, but this boss sometimes got very angry.

I had to go in and fess up right away obviously. I am seriously dying of embarrassment at having to tell him something so redneckish! I mean who in the hell actually forgets their shoes on their way to WORK? I told him, "We have a problem. There are two ways that we can deal with it and whatever you want is what I will do. I forgot my shoes and normally I have an extra pair or two of flip flops or shoes in the car but there are none!" about this time he starts DYING laughing! so I continued, "You can either send me home to get the shoes or you can let me work without any shoes!" We had a LOT of laughs that day and many more to come in my 12 years of employment with them. (He chose to let me work without shoes).

The most hilarious part of all of this is that I had two bosses, a father and son. I was a lot closer to the son than the father but on this particular day, the son was on his once a year vacation in Colorado with his family. I even had to call him and tell him. It was one of the most memorable times in my years there. Since then I haven't forgotten my shoes one time!

About to get interesting!!

Just a quick post because this is getting stuck in my head and I think I need to get it out before it swallows what is left of my brain. So things on my plate this week that I am not comfortable with:

1. Katie will be being watched by someone other than Pat.
2. I am starting school (some of the classes started on Monday)
3. One of the classes is online and it is in a format that I am really not familiar with.
4. I have a business venture that I am working on and wanted to get going this weekend.
5. I need to get my calendar organized before I forget something.
6. My medications that have IMMENSELY helped with everything else make me VERY forgetful.(not good when I was already.)

So that is my week in a nutshell. So wish me luck. The classes that I am taking are Math (UGH), American Popular Culture, and English Composition II.
English is the one that I am taking online. So we'll see!!! :o) Excited but nervous too.

My LA, Katie

Yesterday I took my Katie along with Gavin and Alana to a neighbors baby's first birthday party. They had an 18 foot water slide!

Gavin & Alana had a blast going down the slide. Katie not so much. I took her down once and another friend did too and she was less than impressed. She was much more content to play on the swingset with another little girl that was there.

She is such a character! If I had a dollar for every time someone said how cute or adorable she was yesterday I wouldn't be having financial issues!

I do not know how my baby has become a toddler/preschooler! This two years has flown and she sure didn't stay little long. I held a little boy yesterday that is 1.5 yrs old but is super teeny and it really made me miss the little girl cuddles that I used to get from Katie. But I do get some cuddles still! And now I get Lushh ewww's from her too. (I love you's in case you don't speak Katie) She is talking up a storm and just about every day she comes up with more words/phrases that she can say.

**To my fellow blog hoppers, I am sorry this isn't much. I don't do so well on short notice and this is the 2nd Sunday that Jeremy has had off in about a month and a half so I need to be present and accounted for with him or it could get ugly lol**

Yay!!!

Oh So HAPPY!!! I am officially down 8lbs since I moved here right about a month ago! And this was me weighing in at 3pm! So if I would have weighed myself this morning it probably would have been even less! :o) I am SO happy you have no idea! I am only 6lbs away from where I was when I got pregnant with Katie and 28lbs away from where I want to be ideally for my short term goal. (by the start of Fall) Wonder why it is starting to come off? I have been more active. But I really haven't changed a lot on my diet, and sadly, I haven't been excersizing all that consistently. ANY way it is going off and I am ecstatic!

Church

So, I went to church today. hmmm I am not sure what to think. I really liked everyone that I met and talked to. It is a pretty relaxed atmosphere for the most part (more to come on that in a few) and everyone was very welcoming and inviting. I started out the day at Sunday school, which I really liked (this was the first time going for me) because it got in depth on some parts of the bible. Today was mostly Genisis and God creating everything. I figured that is a great place for me to start and coincidentally it was what they were discussing today. Pam, the pastor's wife, was there again welcoming me with open arms. It is really weird for me with that. I don't know why really but it is. We were talking before class started and she actually got tears in her eyes. I am not sure why and I didn't know how to react. So I pretended like I didn't notice...I don't know if that is the right response or not but it is what it is.

Then it was time for (I don't remember the name of this part ) small group thing. It is basically a meeting of about 30 min from what I can tell of prayer requests and getting to know one another. Ours lasted about 15 minutes and the leaders were a girl that I have seen around town with the kids karate class (she has 2 kids a boy and a girl) and her husband. She is super nice and has a purple streak in her hair. Her son about 7 or so has a mohawk. So she seems to be someone that isn't intimidating to me. Her husband also helps lead. He also smokes. That was kinda nice too, to know that others wanted to have a "smoke break" too since I have yet to kick the habit. So score 2 for making me feel more at ease.

On to service. This is where I got kinda uncomfortable. Everything up until this point had been WONDERFUL. So I am not sure what the difference was. To start off, they have a band. two guitars, a keyboard, a set of drums, and two singers. That was REALLY cool. It wasn't just the normal hymns. It was done with a lot of flair and passion. I was really liking it and everyone was kinda singing along. Then people got up and started swaying and dancing either in their spots in the pews or in the aisle. 2nd weird thing. I saw two people (husband and wife about my age) that were both barefoot. They both had shoes with them but not on their feet. This is not a hippie church by any means. It has the regular older people you expect to find in church, a good majority of my age people, quite a bit of kids & teens. But there were a lot of people that were wearing jeans & tshirts. (very cool in my opinion. I hate the fashion show, women must wear dresses or skirts part of church. Then people started praying out loud during the service. ( I was thinking wth?? lol)

The head pastor started doing his sermon and he is a VERY passionate man. I love how everyone really seemed to feel what they were being preached to about and really feeling the Lord. Then people got kinda louder during parts of his sermon. Then he choked up a few times, then started talking about his past as an alcoholic and a bunch of stuff that was really nice to know but it was just pretty weird. I am not sure if this is how most churches are since I only have a spattering of knowledge of most churches. But it seems that they may be more of a "hallelujah!!!" type church than I expected based on my few experiences with them. I really am not comfortable at all with the "wave your arms in the air if you feel JESUS", sing at the top of your lungs, shout AMEN to EVERYTHING that the pastor says, roll around on the floor, exuberant churches. I may have gotten myself into one of them. BUT that being said; I did not do any of the above. And I did not feel anyone staring at me like I had two heads either. And I would definitely take this church over some that I have been in that are way stuffy and OMG you are not wearing a dress/skirt/suit and tie. I was not the only one who was sitting thru most of the service and I was not the only one who was NOT dancing in the aisle and I was not the only one who just listened and took what I could from the service.

So on a whole, my experience today was pretty positive. The negatives; possibly a "holy roller" type church, and a LONG service. It was about an hour of music before the service actually started, then about an hour for the pastor to preach.

Nerves

after my other post Holy Moly you would think that my nerves would be used to being frazzled and not knowing what is next. But alas, not so much. Tomorrow I am going to start going to church for the first time in a long time. I haven't ever had a church "home". I had a couple churches that I have went to and really liked, one I really felt connected to, then I got divorced and went away from it I guess for fear that I would be shamed out of it and was in a really bad spot in my life.  So I have now went almost 6 years without going. Since Alana has been going quite frequently with her dad and grandma since we split up, I promised her once we got settled here that I would find a church and we would go so that she could still go and still do her Awana's program and she would still have that. She LOVES going to church. She loves the songs, the people, she loves God. period. Which is awesome. So I have to do what I can to help her along with that. But in doing that, I am also again stepping out of my comfort zone (big time) into the unknown for me.

When we went to Awanas on Wednesday, I talked to one of the pastors wife's. She was really nice and very inviting. I was very honest with her and I hope that pays off and doesn't come back to bite me in the butt. I have never really went to church with any regularity at all. My mom went until the day she got married, then never went back. I am not sure why but she didn't. She always said that they were going to leave it up to us to decide if/when/where we went but as Mrs. Pam (pastor's wife) said, that is like leaving it up to children to go to school or not.  I really don't want my kids to not feel comfortable going so we hopefully will find a good church home here and then if they disagree with what they are taught when they get older they can make the decision to not go or go somewhere different.  We are starting at a non denominational church. It is WAY out in the country but has a pretty good congregation from what I can tell. There are 3 sets of pastors. The head pastor and his wife, the associate pastor and his wife (Mrs. Pam) and the youth pastor and his wife. They have quite a few child oriented programs and they also have a few different Sunday schools plus the regular service. Everyone that I have met so far has been what I want. Friendly, inviting, non judgemental. I hope that this goes well tomorrow. I think I may leave Katie at home with Jeremy for my first couple times. I think that will help me get more comfortable. I hate feeling like my kids are misbehaving when in fact they are just being kids. I need to see how other people's kids act in church before I let mine into the mess lol.   I always feel so self conscious.

So taking my leap of faith (pun intended) and starting a church. I will let you know how it goes!