Earlier this summer, one of Nathan’s friends asked if he was going to play soccer this fall. We thought about it and decided he could even though NONE of our other kids have started any team sports this young – he’s only FIVE! The girls were in gymnastics when they were this age, but it wasn’t a team sport. They both went at the same time so it didn’t take too much time from our schedule. Anyway. We thought about it and decided that Nathan could take soccer this fall since none of the other kids had anything going on this fall, Tim is working near home this year so we aren’t traveling alot, etc.

THEN.. this is what happened. A couple of Em’s friends and one of the volleyball coaches kept encouraging her to give volleyball a try again. She went to practice yesterday and today and now she’s signed up and we’re off and running. We have to leave here at 4:50 every morning, Monday – Friday to make it to the 5:30 a.m. practice on time.

THEN.. this is what happened. Josh wanted to play football last year, but at the last minute decided not to when it was time for the signups. This year signups were a few weeks early and I didn’t mention anything to him because I didn’t think he wanted to play after he decided to not play last year. I guess I was wrong. He does want to play and the last round of signups are this week. I have no idea when those practices are, but I’m guessing evenings.

I keep thinking one of these days things will be caught up and hoping that I can have one slow week before we’re off and running with school and co-op, etc. I’ve officially given up that hope now since VB has already started, soccer starts next Saturday, I’m guessing football will start in another week as well. Co-op starts 3 weeks from Monday. ACK! I feel like I haven’t had any summer because this is what our days have been looking like and this is BEFORE we even start into a routine schedule of any sort.

We’ve been sort of crazy busy here. We don’t normally schedule a lot of dinners with friends especially not in a week when we’re “on” for worship since that takes a lot of hours out of a week, but last week we had dinner with friends 5 out of 7 nights! It was nice to connect with some people we haven’t had much time to spend with lately. I’ve made several dinners for the worship team lately. I tried to warn them that those will come to a screeching halt come September, but I don’t think they believed me since they asked about my freezer meals (LOL). We had to buy a new freezer a few weeks ago so that took an entire afternoon of unplanned for shopping and while we were at it we decided we may as well get a new washer and dryer as well since we were already out shopping. I guess we’ll do our part to help the economy with or without any economic stimulus whatever it is that some have received. We’ll take our old washer and dryer into Amanda’s house sometime this week. Josh’s drum teacher and the tech sound person at our church have been helping us research what type of electric drum kit to get the boys and we’ve finally settled on one and it’s on the way. Tim is still working on the underground sprinklers and I think this year it might actually happen! Sunday night I went to scrapbook and visit with a friend for a few hours. Friend’s dh and son came out here to visit Tim and the boys. They headed to town to find some dinner and I went to pick them up before heading home. Hmmm… I’m sure we’ve had more going on, but I can’t remember what else at the moment. I decided to just pick a day and blog it – I’ll do yesterday since it’s still fresh on my mind.

4:30 a.m. – get up, wake up Em to go to VB

4:40 – grab some b-fast to eat on the way to town

4:50 – leave for town

5:30 – arrive at vb practice, talk to the coaches, see what the schedule looks like, etc

5:50 – head home… trying to think of anyone who might be up to chat at this hour of the a.m…(LOL). Decide no one would appreciate a call at this hour.

6:30 – get home in time for Tim to leave for work

7:00 – I take a quick nap asking the boys to wake me up by 8:00

7:30 – Em rides home from VB with a friend who will take her to the VBS that her youth group is putting on for some underpriviledged kids in the area.

8:30 – the boys work on cleaning off their desks. I do some co-op work, visit on the phone, do a few emails, laundry, dishes, etc.

9:00 – work on sorting my HUGE Creative Memories order and about 8 boxes of co-op book orders. Waiting for 5 more boxes to arrive and then I can distribute them to everyone and get them off from my floor! Visit with one of the co-op writing teachers about how to do the mid year prizes. She has GREAT IDEAS! I can hardly wait for that class. Visit with another co-op mom about a couple of questions she has regarding book orders.

10:30 – Josh and Nathan see a crane working back behind our house and want to go watch it. I let Josh drive us back there on a road I didn’t even know existed even though I’ve lived here all my life. We watch it for awhile and then I have him drive me to the post office – on the backroads, if that makes any difference to anyone.

11:00 – talk to the post master about some books I mailed that haven’t arrived and mail my $100 rebate for Rosetta Stone.

11:15 – Josh drives us over to Grandma’s house

11:30 – drop the boys off at Grandma’s because they don’t want to go to town with me to pick up Em. I borrowed her little red sports car since it gets better gas mileage and there will only be 2 of us coming home.

11:40 – head in to pick up Em. A friend who has been out of town for a week or two called just as I was leaving and it was nice to visit with her most of the way to town.

12:10 – pick up Em, visit with another mom, make plans for Em to stay the night a few times this week, figure out the rest of the schedule for that and vb practice as well as some vb team building party on TH night. Talk to the same mom about some auditions for the girls that are coming up on Friday sometime.

12:20 – stop at Subway for lunch with Em so we can visit about school, friends, volleyball, etc., without interruptions from the boys

12:45 – head home

1:15 – stop to pick up the boys and do some paperwork at the office – work comp report, pay bills, misc other reports, reconcile bank account, etc. plus make a few business phone calls.

1:20 – Josh calls to say that he and Nathan and Grandma have left to chase a train that had an odd looking something or other on it that he wanted to get a picture of.

1:30 – Em naps while I’m doing all of the bookwork

3:30 – finish what had to be done. Josh drives us to the other post office to mail some bills and reports. Then to the Farmer’s Union to pay a bill there. Then he drives us to the grocery store and home.

4:00 – get home. Field a few phone calls, mad dash to clean up a few things around the house

4:20 – hop in the shower

4:30 – head to town because Em is going to the fair with her friends

4:35 – drop Josh off on the road in front of the other grandma’s house… no time to go in.

5:00 – my brother calls to talk about a SCUBA event coming up next weekend and to tell us that he has tickets for us to get into the fair. The girls will pick them up from him tonight.

5:10 – pick up Amanda at her house so she and Em can be buddies to get into the fair for 1/2 off

5:15 – check in with Tim so he can pick up Josh since he’ll get home before me.

5:30 – stop to pick up pizza (YUCK.. but I didn’t have any time to even take something out for dinner today)
– visit with a friend on the way home and see said friend 2x while talking to them on the phone.

6:00 – get home and start pizza, check a few emails, sort the mail.

7:00 – clean out the utility room because new washer and dryer are coming on Tuesday

8:00 – STILL working on the utility room

9:00 – head to bed. Em is staying the night with a friend since she’ll be at the fair late and has to be to vb early. 9:30 – Em calls to say she just went on the Bungee something or other and was all excited to tell us about it.

10:00 – realize the power was off and we should probably reset the alarm clock

WHEW… did anyone catch that there were THREE trips to town yesterday and each trip is about 1.5 hours round trip? That took 1/2 a day out of my day just driving to and fro!

TODAY. My mom went in to pick up Emily because I had to wait here for the washer/dryer and freezer to be delivered. The boys and I work some more on the school room. After the freezer is delivered we plug it in, wait until it’s plenty cold and then go down to get our 1/2 of beef that has been waiting for us for 2 weeks now. I find out that Work Comp will give us a couple of new codes which should significantly reduce our bill, but that will mean another couple hours redoing the report I just did yesterday. Washer and dryer are not hooked up because they will only hook up if there are NEW plugin something or others and new dryer vent hose. Tim will have to pick those things up on his way home.

The rest of this week: A couple of co-op meetings, more bookwork, making plans to go to the fair with some friends, a birthday party for one of Nathan’s friends, a team building vb party for Em, football signups for Josh, worship team practice (it’s my week “off”, but I’m going to help the new keyboard player who will play in the band at our satellite location), early a.m. vb practices and I think I’ll make plans to join the Y now for a few months since it looks like either Em or Josh will be there every nearly every morning from now until Mid March or so… I’m sure there are more things I’m forgetting, but at least this gives you an idea of what we’ve been up to around here.

Oh. And to answer Dorothy’s question from a few weeks ago. She asked when we rest because, evidently, summer is supposed to be for resting (LOL). I told her rest is for eternity. There will be plenty of time for resting when I die. For now… we keep plugging away knowing that we’ll one day look back on these days as the “good old days” when we had something to look forward to doing each day! For now, I’ll rest a few minutes here and there whenever I can… visiting with a friend, sitting in line at the bank, etc.