Introduction

With so much going on now in our lives, I thought it would be nice to have a way to share it. First things first and I guess that would be the cast of characters:

• Mark, my wonderful husband
• Christi, that's me!
• Emily, our almost 8 year old daughter
• Garrett, our 3 year old son
• Austin, our 20 month old son
• No name yet, our daughter due sometime in the next 10-11 weeks

Emily had her last day of school on the 19th. She is not just out for Christmas break, she is out of the public school system for the "foreseeable future". After many months of thinking on it and many, many issues with her elementary school, Mark and I have decided she should be homeschooled. This is taking a very serious leap into the somewhat unknown. I am confident I can teach her what she needs to know. I am less confident in my ability to do so while caring for 2 (soon to be 3) other children, the house and everything that goes with it.

These next two weeks, save for Christmas, will be spent getting the house organized and purged of excess. We need to do this before the baby comes anyway. Our house is a nice size for a family of 5, but adding one more member to it will stretch it at the seams. Hopefully, with the purging and organization, the house will hold us all for another year or two. I also have this deep desire to paint all the rooms. The previous owner thought it would be genius to paint all the walls this crappy khaki color--and he used FLAT paint. I don't know about you, but this is the worst kind of paint for a family home with toddlers. I wouldn't mind the color so much if it wasn't in every freaking room. Feels too industrious to me. A while back I did make a little progress in that department though. I painted Emily's room a periwinkle, the playroom a sunny yellow and one wall in our bedroom a dark burgundy/red. Ok, I confess my mom greatly helped with Emily's room and the playroom when she and my dad were visiting after Austin was born (Thanks mom!).