Basketball is Finished

Ethan had his last basketball game last Thursday night. It's been a fun season. Bryan coached and we had 10 kids from the neighborhood on the team which was great but also a bit rough. Bryan was the coach and he spent most of his time trying to get the team focusing and not goofing off. But they had a great time. Thursday night we had a huge pizza party at our house to celebrate.

Courtney here...

Dear Everybody:

Everybody's the best in my whole family. And everybody in my whole family loves me so much. They take time with me, sharing their toys with me, and I try to share my toys with everybody. I love my family.

Love Courtney


(I was getting ready to update the blog and Courtney wanted to have "her say" in it. So here you go.)

Love SEPs

We had Ethan's SEP last night (like a parent/teacher conference but with the student there too). It was great, not just because Ethan is doing really well and his teacher loves him, but because it gets him excited for the rest of the school year. He loves to read and his teacher really talked about what a good reader he is and really praised him. So when he came home last night all he wanted to do was read and read. It's so fun to see what the influence of a good teacher on a student can be. We are really excited for all he has accomplished and for what a good kid he is!

It Just Got To Me!

Our pantry has been getting more and more messy for the past month and it finally got to me this morning. We had the central vac guy here installing it and he was lying on our kitchen floor next to the pantry door and I just had to cringe. It was such a mess. So when he left I loaded Courtney into the van and we drove to Target to get some organizing stuff I had researched on the internet (I had to do something while the guy was installing the vacuum).

I bought a bunch of containers for flours, legumes, cereal, etc. and some baskets to get things together more. And then I took about 45 minutes cleaning and organizing it all. I need to make another trip to exchange some containers that ended up being too big and get some smaller ones, but for the most part it's all finished. I am actually really surprised by how much more space we have. I am sure that getting rid of boxes and putting things into containers that stack nicely helped a lot, but I feel so accomplished now.

Here is the before:



Here's after:

Forward Thinking

I was once told that I think too far in advance and I don't focus on today. For example: When I was in junior high I was already stressing about colleges...and I could go on and on. Well, it appears that I have passed that on to Courtney.

We were running errands today when I noticed that she was silently crying in the backseat. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "I'm just so sad for when Ethan goes off to college. Do you think I'll ever see him again but I will really miss my brother." I calmed her down and told her not to worry about it for another 11 years and then we'll deal with it, but that Ethan will come home every time he needs his laundry done. ;)

She seemed okay with that.

The Candy is GONE!

I am one of those mean moms who figures that if their children haven't eaten their Halloween/Christmas/Valentines/Easter/Birthday-Party-Gift-Bag/other occasion candy by the time it is a week old, then it should be thrown away. It is now one week after Valentine's Day, so the candy was thrown out this morning and the best part of it is...my kids never notice! They eat as much as they can the first day and then it just sits on the counter and they nibble on it once-in-a-while but not much. So when it is gone, they don't seem to notice. I love it!

Central Vac

We are getting a central vac tomorrow afternoon and I am SO excited! When we built our house we had it plumbed for a central vac system but we didn't have one installed. We have been using a Dirt Devil vacuum I bought new when we were in Vegas and it hasn't worked right for a long time. In August it quit and I had to buy a new brush roller and some belts for it. I had to borrow my parents vacuum each week because all the neighbors have central vacs and so I couldn't borrow theirs. It took 2 months for them to come and the belt only lasted 2 months. We replaced the belt and it lasted another 2 months. Last week Bryan was helping Courtney vacuum and it broke again so we decided that we wanted to get a central vac. We talked to our neighbor yesterday, who sells them, and he got us a really good deal and is having it installed tomorrow! I know what I'm going to be doing all afternoon tomorrow. ;) I'll tell you how it works.