Wednesday, January 23, 2019

It's About Time

Well, it only took three years, but I finally updated the aesthetics of the dear neglected blog. For future reference, here are the before and after images, since they’re not that much different.



This time I got smart. I planned ahead for my problem of staying current. Now it’s the year dash question mark. That means the next time I get around to updating it, it might only be KC and me on there…but who knows…except the question mark makes it all okay! LOL!

Well, now that this is done, it’s time to get back to blogging again. I have so many thoughts running through my head, but most of them won’t make any sense without a little backstory since I’ve been so absent from the blog over the last few years.

I’m not sure how far to go back, since I don’t remember where we were when I lost track of blogging, but I guess I’ll just go with 2018.

We sold our NC house at the end of 2017 (it was like our favorite house ever…*sigh*), and moved to FL for KC’s job in January of 2018. We lived in a rental for 3 months (holy cow is it ever hard to transfer addresses twice in less than a year…I’m still trying to get all of the mail switched over). Anyway, we hated renting just like I knew we would, because we HAVE to be able to paint! LOL. All beige walls with patches showing from previous renters was totally KILLING us. Yeah, it’s a first world problem. I shouldn’t complain. But I was still really happy when we were able to move into our own place and start painting. Haha. I’m a professional at this point.

So that was March. Then we had a ton of visitors from back home (which was AWESOME, because living in a new town without all your old friends is pretty sad). Going to the beach and pool while all your old friends are still wearing hats and scarves is fun and all, but it sure doesn’t make up for all the missing them! =)

Summer was busy, the TDQ turned 14, the K-man turned 13, and just like that, we don’t have any kids in the house anymore. Just loads and loads of hormones. And also, they don’t want me talking about any of it anymore, because it’s so embarrassing, which is another reason it has gotten harder to blog. Teenage kids just don’t do the cute things little kids do, and even if they pull off something cute, they (or their friends at school) can pull it up on the internet and read it and be mad at you for ruining their life! So yeah, at least 60% of the things I like to talk, vent, brag about are gone…just like that.

Total rabbit trail, I did ponder for a few moments last week if I should delete all photos from my blog history, after finding out that the TDQ has someone with stalkerish behaviors that somehow found my blog and sent pictures from here to other kids at her school. Obviously, I’ve never posted anything bad, but I *THINK* I’ve addressed the problem and it shouldn’t happen again. Either way though, I decided to leave the pics alone and just hope that legal action doesn’t ever become necessary. Seriously, the things you never think would become necessary to think about!

Where was I? Oh yes, school! So the TDQ started at a private charter school which has been AWESOME for her! The K-man started back at Classical Conversations again, but about 3 weeks into it, I realized we had reached the end of the point where homeschool was beneficial for him, too. Sadly, we were too late to get him into the same private charter school as TDQ (well, the middle school version of it anyway), but we joined the waiting list and continued homeschooling.

October and November were total blurs on the calendar…I have it all written in my bullet journal (of which I am still totally HOOKED) but that would be the only way I could remember what all happened those months. We were just busy! Thanksgiving, KC and I took an early anniversary cruise while a friend from back in NC flew in to stay with the kids for Thanksgiving. That was awesome on so many levels. Our kids will want a friends-giving every year now. Haha.

December was another insane month! Our family was all over the place at all different times that month…that’s another unexpected side effect of having teenagers. They can sometimes travel without you now, so you have to manage four individual schedules instead of them always being part of yours. Anyway, we had Christmas Eve in Ohio with KC’s family, and Christmas Day in NC with my family. I wish we had had more time in both places so we could have seen ALL the peoples we miss, but time was too short to catch everyone. Hopefully we can catch more in the next trip north, but that will be awhile yet.

Anywho, so now, January! We finally got a call from the private charter middle school, and K-man is finishing out the year there! Hallelujah! I’ve already seen a huge difference! He just needed more of a challenge and something to occupy more of his time. And although he was incredibly nervous the first week, he is doing AWESOME. Hopefully he won’t kill me for saying this much. LOL. He is way more easily embarrassed than the TDQ. I try to be understanding although I’m not sure he appreciates my herculean efforts! LOL!

There it is. Update complete. I’ve now burned an entire morning and the laundry still isn’t finished.
Till next time! =)