Family Update

I know I haven't blogged in almost two weeks. I honestly don't know where the time goes. Here's a quick update on what's going on here since I haven't had time to complete any longer posts.

Sam finishes up his soccer season tomorrow. I think his team is 2-2-3 going into tomorrow's game. He has scored several goals this season, and usually plays pretty well. But the season being over means we can sleep in on Saturdays - at least for a month until basketball season starts! Sam is also enjoying Cub Scouts this year - good friend Gage joining has helped a lot. Ben and Bryan (Gage's dad) take turns taking both boys to the meetings, so that helps out the grown-ups' sanity, and it's more fun for the boys to ride together in the car to and from the meetings. Sam is excelling at school, but still rebels during homework sometimes. He can have real trouble focusing here in the evenings, and subtraction facts have tried both my and his patience this week. But he aced his test today with a 98%! And in his spare time, its all about Pokemon. The Nintendo games, the cards, the videos on YouTube, and my favorite, reading the Pokemon handbook to me every night before he goes to bed. This Pokemon stuff is like a whole other world, and he knows a lot about it. Me, not so much.

Maria is busy, busy, busy. She has jazz dance on Monday evenings, XM (Extreme Motion - like a show choir) on Tuesday nights, and Gymnastics on Wednesday nights. Since school started she was elected to Student Council, and has usually a meeting a week. Then she joined middle school choir - 7:15 A.M. on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Then this week she started a Gifted and Talented program after school on Wednesdays - right now the focus is reading/writing using the Hunger Game series by Suzanne Collins. After Christmas it's math oriented with a stock market game. Next year we might have to consider all of this after school stuff coming up before we sign her up for so much dance before the school year starts. This year we didn't realize the additional opportunities now that she's in middle school. But she's handling it pretty well, and is doing awesome in school as well. Also, the 6th grade teachers have repeatedly told us how much they like Maria, for a variety of reasons, which is always nice to hear. With all of this activity, she is one very tired girl at bedtime each night.

Ben is suffering through the end of a very trying marching band season this year. Contests are over, but tonight he had to travel three hours (one way!) to a football game, after taking the band to the Circleville Pumpkin show all day yesterday. And now we're in 8th place in our division, meaning that barring any unforeseen circumstances, our football team will go to the play-offs on November 6. But losing that night will be a sure-thing, at least. Ben is also running between 25-30 miles a week, which helps keep him sane, I think, and he has several races coming up in November. And he is enjoying his new car.

I am the support system for all of these busy people. I am having a very enjoyable year at work - just really like my kids this year, and such a change after last year. Sometimes I wish I could freeze time - teaching is so much fun with good kids, and so awful with annoying kids. But after work, I am a typical Mom, taking kids here and there, cooking dinner, doing laundry, etc. The good thing is that each of the kids' activity is the same week to week, so we have a system that works pretty well - Ben does a lot of the running around, too. We still manage to all sit down together for dinner every night other than Tuesday. I also manage to exercise Sunday through Thursday (I give myself Friday and Saturday off). I run Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, my goal being 14 miles each week. On Tuesdays I go to a Zumba class, which is a lot of fun and uses some different muscles than running. I can do most of the steps by now, but not sure I look great doing them! And I still read every day, mainly to escape my crazy life!

Everyone who has grown kids tell us that we'll miss all this craziness when they grow up and move out, so we're trying to enjoy every minute. We're just thankful to have great kids who like being involved in different stuff, and who are pretty fun to be around, as well.