School Begins Again...and other happenings

We started our official-school-schedule-life Monday. So far, so good. Of course, there are always the little bumps as we get going again. I've decided to take a no nonsense approach to complaining this year and I'm trying to nip it in the bud. The boys are usually the only ones who complain much and they are being met with zero toleration. Annalise makes up for the both of them though. She is always so enthusiastic. I always look forward to getting out of bed more when it's a school day. The last two weeks when we were completely off drove me crazy. I just miss it too much. What am I going to do with myself when Annalise graduates?

Life has been wonderfully busy. Not the kind of busy where you are running ragged and worn out, but a pleasant kind of busy. It seems every time I turn around we are forming new friendships. It's been great! A social life has not been a problem and I feel so blessed to have so many lovely people around us. Sunday we had the treat of having a family over who had a 20yo son and an 18yo daughter. It was fun for my older kids to have another family over with older kids - though they really weren't kids. An extra benefit is that it seems we are always getting ready to have company around here so we are staying on top of things more than usual. I'm really looking forward to the cooler temperatures to arrive so we can have bonfires again, and now that Kezzi is learning the guitar, we will have music with the singing.

We traded in our two minivans for an almost new Dodge Durango and I'm loving it. It's so roomy and drives so nicely. It's been many, many years since we've had something this nice and new. It seats eight instead of the nine that we could really use, but eight is ok. Most of the time one of the girls doesn't mind driving their own car anyway.

I'm just savoring this time of life while we are all still together every day but at the same time excited about the future (I know I've probably said that before). I know change is probably just around the corner. An extremely nice college that is not too far away called for Priscilla today. I didn't know colleges actually make personal phone calls to prospective students? I filled out some kind of information form on the internet a couple of weeks ago. I also know that marriages can happen in the blink of an eye, the fact brought home by the recent marriage of a friend of Candace's. Ford and I are always keenly aware of that fact since we only dated for 3 weeks and then married 3 months later. We did have family connections so we weren't really like total strangers. It's not that we would totally recommend that for everyone, but we've never regretted it for one minute.

Now, if we can just get rid of these upper 90 temperatures, I'll be even more happy.