For Debbie

O.K., I've apparently been lazy about the blog. My friend, Debbie, is getting on my case about it, so here's what's been going on.

Still love my job. Still want to wake up and get here in the morning. It's crazy here, but it's a good crazy, and I'm thrilled to walk in the door everyday.

Boys are loving their new daycare, and I can already see improvements with Jacob and Johnathan. Jacob is learning, I mean REALLY learning things. He knows some letters (by that I mean if he sees a letter "A" he says, look mommy an "A". . . he's getting better about his colors, he knows his shapes and not just "circle and square" but things like "octagon"). I'm blown away at how much better this daycare is for them. I come home at night with an armload of artwork and papers for them and from them. It's awesome. And their teachers are fantastic. So energetic, so happy to be there, and see our boys. It's a great feeling.

The house is still in disarray. I just can't seem to get to the last few boxes and it's making me nuts. But by the time I get home, feed the kids, bath them, put pj's on them, get dinner for myself and iron clothes for the next day it's 10:00 p.m. and I'm totally beat. On nights when we don't do baths I have laundry to wash, fold and sometimes even put it away. . . I'm so bad about that.

We celebrated John's nieces, Abby and Vicki's fifth birthday this past Saturday and on Sunday we celebrated John's sister Jenny's birthday. I will withhold her age LOL!
We also said Happy Birthday to John's oldest son, Zachary, who turned 17 this past Friday. That birthday just doesn't seem real. I met Zachary when he was 10 and now he's this grown up person. Some days that just doesn't seem possible.

This past weekend, in between all the birthday parties, we had a blackout. Sunday, while the remnants of Ike pushed through, we had winds up and above 30 miles an hour, which is apparently just enough wind to cause trouble. As we drove home Sunday night from Jenny's party, we no sooner got off the interstate then we saw a guy with a construction sign toppled on his car. Drove around toppled-guy's car and rolled up to the next major intersection and POOF! The lights went out. The CVS, the street lights, the traffic lights, EVERYTHING went pitch black. So we rolled on down the hill to find that our neighborhood still had power (Hooray!). I hurried up and gave the boys baths and got them in bed and about 15 minutes later the winds really picked up and as I wondered "could we lose power", every light in the neighborhood went out. John sat in his truck to hear the Steelers game and I found my way around the house with a booklight (note to self: buy more flashlights). Around 11:00 p.m. our power came back on, so then I had to get up and turn off lights, t.v.'s, fans, etc. What a night.