Sunday, October 26, 2008

Natalie's blog resurrected...maybe

So, despite all signs that I had packed up and moved away in a relocation assistance program...I have merely been.....busy.


I suddenly became SUPER busy last spring when I signed my children up for every class and activity known to man - tennis lessons, pottery classes, guitar lessons, piano lessons, computer classes etc... (times 4 children). I kept meaning to write, but I got hung up in my "I have to write stories in chronological order" syndrome and then just never had time to go back and catch up.


Then came summer. You know - the time when life slows down. Apparently, I enjoy sabotaging myself because I signed my kids up for every VBS under the sun - thinking I'd have all of this alone time to complete projects around the house. What I had was, lots of shuttling kids back and forth to VBS with a small window of time in-between to frantically complete more projects than I could ever hope to.


So the summer went something like this:


Summer camp, VBS, VBS, VBS, trip to Montana, blew tire in the middle of nowhere in Montana, VBS, VBS, day at the beach, built new bunkbeds for the boys, planned curriculum for the school year, back to school.


And school this year...? *insert nervous breakdown and a few dozen lattes* Let's just say we've "ramped up". With all 4 kids now school-age, Georgia hitting 6th grade, AND joining a homeschool co-op that assigns homework like they're in graduate school... (Georgia alone has 7-9 hours of homework assigned each week) we are clinging desperately to survival mode.


I'm so tired that I even had a LOW-KEY birthday. Ok, now you KNOW its bad!


Life is good and rewarding, I'm just perpetually exhausted - I haven't found my groove with the school year yet - every week feels manic. With joining the co-op, we've lost a whole day of schooling at home and gained a lot of homework, so it's a matter of re-adjusting everything. I'm hoping that as the kids adjust to all of the changes (ie: adding classes and lots of homework) we will eventually find the groove and settle in.


I have realized, that I HAVE to make time to write down all of the craziness and the funny things in our life or I will forget them! There are SO many things that I've meant to write down over the past months and now I've totally forgotten what they were.


But now - I have to go write out everyone's schoolwork schedule for tomorrow. Georgia's history homework assignment should be coming via email from the teacher any minute now and I need to divide it up for the week so she knows what she's doing each day...


Hopefully, I'll be around more...