The First Official Post!

Welcome to our blog! We hope that this will help keep our family and friends in the know as to what's going on with our family. Much simpler than trying to tell the same stories over and over to everyone individually.

Everyone is fine and healthy. The older children are doing very well in school. Anthony is the only one home now and he's soooo lonely. The first day of school he woke up and ran from room to room before coming up to me in desperation. "I can't find my brother or sister anywhere!" he exclaimed in panic. He was so worried that they were gone for good. It took a whole week before he realized that they were safe and were coming home every day. He was so excited when they had a day off at school two weeks ago and declared that they would be home to play with him all day long! It will be two years before he can go to kindergarten so Christopher and Cally have put together a school for him where they are the teachers and I am the principle. He has homework to do and he "reads" along side them when they do their 20 minutes of reading for school. They told him that he could go to preschool next year and he was deeply offended. "I don't want to go to PRE-school," he cried, making it sound like a swear word. "Chrisopher and Cally don't go to PRE-school."

Wade only has two more classes left before graduating. It's very exciting--it's been a long, long road. The class he's in now is very challenging and keeping him busy. Plus he works a day job and a night job so he's too busy to get into trouble. After this, a regular day job will seem like a vacation!

I opted to not go to school this year, even though I was registered and all. Wade will be doing his thesis in six weeks and I didn't think it would be a good time to be competing for study time. We'll see next year or in the summer. I've been busy building up my photography clientele and getting the studio set up right. We've decided to turn the front room into the studio/living area since the downstairs just doesn't have enough room unless I knock out a wall. Been fun planning things out and considering dual purpose furniture. I bought another photographer's props last week and will hopefully have a bunch of stuff to make fun photographs. Already have a Christmas picture booking so I get to look forward to setting up for Christmas early!

Probably the biggest news so far--as far as the children are concerned--is that we finally entered the modern age of entertainment and got a PlayStation 2 (used) and a couple of games for the kids. Now I can't decide if it's a blessing or a curse. It's great for motivating the kids to get their chores done but then it's annoying to keep hearing, "Can we play the video games? Can we play the video games?" We only have two games and I intend to keep it that way for awhile. One day, I'll maybe get the wii. Just so they can get off the chair and do some of the games and not just sit there and tap tap tap with their fingers. Better yet, I think I'll throw them outside in the yard and make them find something to do. That used to work this summer until I bought the darned thing!

Cool picture of the week: A spider in his Halloween costume. The story behind the spider is that my kids are absolutely terrified of spiders--comes by it honestly since their mother is the same way. So we have two house spiders of the harmless jumping variety that we see and don't smash--Jumpy and Slidey. I hope this helps the kids realize that we can be OK and have no reason to freak every time we see a spider. So far it's been helping. When I saw this guy I thought he was so cool and to keep the kids from freaking out, I told them that it was Slidey in his Halloween costume. It worked and there was no hysterics. He made it safely outside but he was really, really cool. Never saw a spider like this.