Catching up

So much to record, never enough time. I figured once school started I'd have tons more time to myself. Hasn't seemed to be the case. I feel like I'm constantly running kids places (and that's just with 2 kids in school)! I am loving our back to school schedule though. I love having time with Elle and Cal in the mornings. They're fun little buddies, play super well together, and not too hard to run errands with. I love my hour and a half of alone time every afternoon! It's heavenly and I don't like for anything to interfere with it. I love my time with Madi from 2-2:45, but it's never long enough. And I love how after we pick Elle up from school at 3, everyone's happy to be back together!

I don't like how busy this past week has been for me. This is the first time I've ever felt like things are taking me away from my family and I'm not liking it at all. Trying to get it back in check.

Spencer went away this past weekend for BYU's opening season football game against Texas. I was glad he got to go, but it was hard not to be totally annoyed hearing about how much fun he was having. I'm fine when he's busy with work - makes me want to work harder too, but I get super jealous when I know he's off playing and I'm stuck carting all three kids around with me on a busy weekend. He got home Sunday (just in time to walk out the door to church), and I was pretty stressed with a bunch of stuff, so I know he thought I was totally ticked that he went. Which I wasn't, I'm glad that he got to go. I just wish it was as easy for me to take off for the weekend as it is for him.

It's my fault that I've been stressed though. I'm usually really good with saying "no" and not taking too much on, but I got suckered into joining Mary Kay at the end of August- mostly cause I wanted the cute bag and discount on the product, but I'm starting to feel that I took a lot more on than I wanted. I had my first party, placed a big order, went to a couple meetings, and am quickly getting burnt out. We'll see how it goes. I think I have a plan for how to make it work for me.

Aside from that new adventure, Primary has been keeping me super busy. I've never written a primary program and I think I made more work for myself. Instead of writing questions to ask the kids, emailing the questions to the parents, trying to get responses, and then plugging those responses into the program, I ought to have just written out parts and called it good. Oh well... next time.

This week Elle started soccer. I've been against putting the girls into stuff that they haven't expressed interest in, and obviously don't want to pay for a bunch of classes just to create more places to go and things to be at, but Elle's buddy Lily signed up for the class so we signed up too. Elle didn't really want to play initially, but ended up loving it and having a total blast. Made me so happy!

This week I also started a joyschool co-op with some girl friends. Seven little 4 year olds, once a week, 9-11:30am. I taught today and had such a great time! We had circle time, reading, writing, math, snack, science, and a craft. I was totally exhausted by the end, but am so glad that we're doing it! It's a great group of kids and I'll only have to teach every 7 weeks!

Such a FUN bunch (and all with super good behavior which is huge)!

I love how even Cal got into it!

On top of all that, we've had Truly staying with us for the past 10 days. Spencer's parents have been away on a canoeing trip and Truly's much too old to be left alone. Her days are numbered and sadly she won't be with us much longer. I was glad to have her here and let the kids make some good last memories with her. She can't get up on her own though, falls down a lot, and walks super slow (using only 3 legs) once she's finally up and stabilized. So it was quite a big job, especially the weekend Spencer was away- just getting Truly into bed for the night would take at least 30 minutes. But we made sure she got lots of love and attention!

In other exciting news... this week we found out that Madi's new friend from school (the one she got lost in conversation with on the first day of school) lives just 4 houses down from us!! I'm really hoping this turns out to be a great friendship for Madi!