Planet Texas...

I was very excited when we woke this morning to the radio DJs talking about the "treacherous road conditions." So I went to the window to see the wonderful snow storm that should accompany those words, but all I saw was a drizzly, grey, Dallas day. Sigh.

Do you want to know the end result of ice in Dallas? A day off from school for the kids for "inclement weather." Welcome to planet Texas! (Then again, do you really want your children out on the roads with a bunch of drivers who only see ice a few times a year and don't know how to drive on it? Hmmm...)

My heart is still in the Rockies, my friends...

Just A Year...

I miss London! The year went too darned fast...

Re-learning Life's Little "Charming" Lessons...

If you've ever been to our house in the morning, you know that everyone in our family is a serious cereal connoisseur. A few years ago I started buying only healthy cereal--no more of that unhealthy, sugary stuff! The cry of mourning was probably heard in outer Zimbabwe.

BUT, we missed American cereal so much when we were in London that I'm allowing my family a brief stay of execution, and we're enjoying a delightful walk down cereal lane, one delicious, often-sugary box at a time.

Do you want to know what I re-learned this morning? Lucky Charms aren't very exciting once one of your children eats all of the charms and leaves an entire box of "luckies." (Or is it the other way around? I've never been quite sure.) I should have just eaten the box; it probably would have tasted better!

On the upside, though, it's a great cure for ever craving them again!

Confession...

I have a bad habit that hides itself well in the rush of everyday life, but the older I get, the more it creeps into my set of personally-acceptable behaviors. What is my habit, you ask? I am a perpetual procrastinator of unpleasant tasks; and by "unpleasant" I mean anything that involves confrontation or long-term decision making, even if it is about something good. I'm also great at rationalization.

Now before you think I'm a bon-bon eating, soap-opera watching, lazy person, I do have to say that I find other, also "important" things to do in place of said unpleasantness...like write a blog entry, for example, instead of going through that (picture me pointing) pile of paperwork on the kitchen counter screaming for my attention. (I don't know, maybe if I leave it there next to the sink long enough, the water spots will make it illegible, and I won't have to deal with it at all. Tee hee! Oops, doing it again...)

So today's short list of things I'm procrastinating is as follows:

1) finding a dentist and making appointments,
2) finding an orthodontist and making appointments,
3) making final decisions on upgrades for our house, and
4) dealing with that pile of papers.

Yep, they're all positives (except for the papers) but fall into the "quick, procrastinate" category because of the long-term factor. Why does it seem so much less daunting when it's little black letters on a computer screen?

The weird thing is that I'm really very good at making sure my children get everything done that they need to (homework, gospel study, chores, music, etc.), just not myself. I think I need to work on this.

So, for a quick update on our new life adventure...

We enrolled the children in the schools they will be attending after our house is completed, and since we don't yet live in the district, I am the Scott family school bus driver. Given that the four schools the children are attending all start and end at different times, the daily time investment in my bus driving venture is 5 hours--two in the morning and three in the afternoon; AND the only reason it's not also three hours in the morning is that Jess goes over to a friend's house after seminary each day and then rides the bus to school from there.

Our current busing schedule goes something like this:

5:30 Kyle and Jess leave for seminary and work
7:00 the remaining children and I leave for school
7:30 Eryn's school starts
8:15 Laurel' and Aubrey's school starts, and so does Derik's
2:00 be in line at the elementary school
2:30 pick up Eryn
3:15 pick up Derik,and then pick up Aubrey and Laurel
4:15 pick up Jess
5:00 go back and pick up whichever kid had an after school activity (today it's Derik with try-outs for the school play)

Though I'm sure this sounds like a lot of fun (wow, think of all the time you'll have to read!), it's not quite as exciting as you might think. The up side is that in about three weeks we are going to move into the district and rent the house of our dear friends who have moved but their house has yet to sell. Hello school buses! I can't wait! We're very grateful to have a place to live until our house is finished. We joked with the kids about buying another camping trailer and living on the side of the highway for a few months, but for some reason they didn't find the suggestion very humorous. Go figure!

Things are settling down on the home front, too. We're back into a relatively-normal routine of school, church activities, etc. (well, as normal as it can be living out of suitcases in a corporate apartment). Kyle and I even already have callings--he's the Cub Scout Master again and I'm serving in nursery. The children seem happy and well-adjusted, are reestablishing old friendships and making new ones, and are doing well scholastically. The district put Jess, Derik, Aubrey, and Laurel back into the gifted and talented program without even retesting them, and they're enjoying their classes. After going through the "this child is in the wrong grade for her age according to Texas law" saga again, they finally sat with and tested Eryn and are allowing her to remain in second grade instead of moving her back down to first. Yeah! We're also done buying school supplies and finally have the children outfitted for school (the school has a dress code) and for daily life. We avoided buying clothing in London because it was very expensive, so every one of our orphans were in dire need of clothes when we got back.

The near future holds a move around the middle of February and then again when our house is done in April/May. Hopefully our shipment from London will come soon so that we have dishes and things we'll need, without having to dig through our storage unit, until we move the second time. One can only hope!

We're still adjusting to daily early-morning seminary (class starts at 5:45) instead of three-times a week like it was in London, but I'm sure Kyle and I will soon have the self discipline to actually go to bed at 9:00 when the kids do so that we're not so dog tired all of the time. Oh wait, I'll add that to the procrastination list...

5) develop self discipline.

There. Now it's on the "to do" list. That will make it much easier to ignore and also take away the negative consequences. BIG GRIN!!!

A Kid In A Candy Store...

This week's great accomplishment was getting the kids registered at their schools--all FOUR schools--and getting back into a semblance of a routine. Just for the record, I now know that it takes exactly seven hours (including drive time) to register five children for school. I know you were wondering... So we now have one child in elementary school, two in "intermediate school" (grades 5 & 6), one in junior high, and one at the high school "freshman center." Whew! When did these kids get so big?!!?

Today I register our van for over $2300! I'm finding it a little hard to breathe deeply over that one. Welcome back to the states--ouch!

Things on the home front are also interesting. For all the talk of how great the real estate market is and what a great "buyer's market" we are in, I say, "Where have all the 'good deals' gone?" Everything that we looked at with a screamin' good price had a weird floor plan, nice view of the radar tower, or some other feature that made it, well, "undesirable;" and the homes that fit our list of house requirements left a lot to be desired in both condition and price. What's a girl to do? Well........the end result of the long process is that we, through a very interesting turn of events, are yet again building. You think we'd learn...big grin. Actually, we're both more than a little bit surprised but also both happy with the decision. The good thing about it is that we are going to have a great lot with a phenomenal floor plan in the neighborhood we want and be very close to the elementary school, all for $70 a square foot. I feel like a kid in a candy store (well, a candy store that takes four to five months to give you your order...).