December 7, 2008 Christmas trees/parties, midlife crises', more hiking

First off I'd like to comment on the comments made by anonymous'. One referring to whether or not Emily passed her GED, and the answer is we don't know yet. Good question though since I've had a profound lack of blogging motivation lately. The second questioning about whether I might be in the throws of a midlife crisis makes me laugh, aren't I too young for a midlife crisis? I will not blog about personal matters but if your truly concerned, please feel free to e-mail privately and I'd be happy to discuss it with you further.

Lots has happened. Mike celebrated his 41st Birthday on Thanksgiving day this year. Dan gave Daddy a Lion Webkin he named Max, and we gave him the World Tour game for Guitar Hero. Mike, Dan and I enjoyed a late fall letterboxing adventure at Crocker Neck Conservation area in Cotuit named Dr. Doolittle. http://www.atlasquest.com/ Then we started cooking and joined Mike, Laurie, Janni, Chris and Matt at their house for 5pm dinner.

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November 30th I drove down to Middletown to meet some old highschool friends at Holly's house for a mini reunion. It was good to catch up with Kristy, Selena, Sarah and Holly. Afterwards I met some former -Dunkin friends in Dartmouth for dinner. We had a terrific time catching up, we'll have to do it more often!

I went to see Dr. Mann again two or so weeks ago and since the no salt regime didn't seem to be making much of a difference he prescribed for me methozolamide (a diuretic) and after only the first few days noticed a significant improvement. School for me is going great, three tests down, 1 to go, and an extra credit paper passed in last week.

Mike and I have enjoyed two holiday parties so far this season, one for the woodturners, the other the annual Progeny party which was held in Warwick, RI on December 5th. Mom watched the kids while Mike and I spent the night at the hotel...very nice. Mike, the kids, and I drove down on Friday and since we were there decided to get our tree at Sweet Berry Farm. http://www.sweetberryfarmri.com/ We talked Mom into joining us, not as bad an experience as she remembered I don't think. Mike and I had a great time at the Progeny party, late night but we had a beautiful room this year and the food was terrific. Mike headed home @ 9am Saturday morning to Green Briar for a wood turning demonstration while I enjoyed a lazy morning at the hotel. Actually it wasn't particularly lazy considering I was in the fitness center at 5:30am, and in the Jacuzzi by 6:15 which is where I stayed enjoying the quiet morning with my book until I deemed it a reasonable hour to wake Mike up for breakfast. I went to RI to pick up the kids. Since Em, Taylor and Mom wanted to go see Twilight I thought it would be a perfect time to take Dan up to the Norman Bird Sanctuary to climb hanging rock. He'd never done it and I was excited for him to have the experience. http://www.normanbirdsanctuary.org/ He had a great time and was pretty excited to call Daddy from the top to tell him where he was! We made it home in time to unpack quickly, and for me to kiss everybody good bye for work. It was good spending some time in RI, I definitely miss it sometimes!

Emily is doing great, working, and driving. She's very responsible, and we've not once had to limit her adventures. She has become juggler along with Mike and I instead of a jugglee. She's such a big girl now.

Dan's doing well too. I think we've come to the realization he's just not getting enough interaction with me here during the day, and even though we try to stay busy, he's not spending enough time with kids his own age. He's outgrown many of the programs he used to enjoy and with the weather so cold we're just not getting out enough. Tomorrow morning we're going to talk to the intigrated preschool that's run out of the K-2 program at the KC Coombs school to see if they have any openings.

Even still, Dan and Daddy have a pretty cool crystal experiment they've been working on and is actually starting to produce. Dan's happy to see something finally happening.

Sunday morning found us all ready to get into the Christmas spirit, Mike brought our tree in just as the rain started to turn to snow, Mike the kids and brought up the Christmas decorations, turned on some Christmas music and quickly realized we couldn't find the tree lights. We did what we could and decided on a road trip to Hyannis to pick some up. Kmart had just what we needed and since it was lunch time we decided to go to our new favorite restaurant Sam Diegos. http://www.samdiegos.com/ I always thought it was a chain restaurant so wasn't

much interested, but after the woodturners party there Wednesday night I was hooked on their fish tacos. One of the woodturning members owns the restaurant and gave us a very impressive tour of the kitchen during the party. Mike and I were sure the kids would love it as well, and weren't disappointed. We came home with full bellies and quickly set to decorating the tree before the 4:15 Patriots game and 5pm work for me.

November 25, 2008 Hiking, Emily's GED

Already the end of November and as I browse through my blog that I haven't looked at in a week I notice that my SIL isn't updating hers as often either. I wonder if it's something about the time of year. Things here have been mostly quiet. The weather has been unseasonably cold and for a few days we were going through1 to 2 bags of pellets a day. Dan has lots of energy these days, is no longer napping on a regular basis and seems to have a never ending supply of energy. We've found that if we don't make a concerted effort to get him out running around for an extended period of time every day he's unbearable, so we've started hiking alot. Thankfully, we have lots of great hiking trails around. He can comfortably hike for about 2 miles without stopping. Mike, the dogs and I are all benefiting as well. I'm down to 148 lbs and still losing. My goal weight is 136 so I'm just 12lbs shy. Redoubling my efforts in light of the upcoming holidays.
Emily took her GED last week, which seemed to go well. She wasn't optimistic that math or writing went very well, but she seemed comfortable that she passed the other subjects. It'll be a couple of weeks before we find out her scores.

October 22, 2008 Walking and more grown up things for Emily

We awoke on Sunday morning to a beautiful cool fall day. We had breakfast and since nobody had to be anywhere until 2:30 I asked Mike and the kids to join me on a walk. They all agreed and we decided we'd check out the trail of tears off of Rt 149 in Barnstable, a 10 minute drive from our house. It was a nice path through the woods, Dan placed his arrows when we came to a new path. Marley found a ball and had Emily throw it for the duration of the walk. We were in the woods for nearly an hour before making our way back to the van. The ride home was filled with the sounds of "I found another tick" and we promptly frontlined Sampson who made it through the entire summer without needing it. In all we removed over 50 ticks between the 4 of us! Dan and I worked on wrapping his friend Justin's birthday present and making him a card for his 2:30 party, at which Dan had a great time. I went to work and enjoyed the quiet but efficient company of my Assistant Manager, as predicted we were done with hours to spare.
Monday morning we took Emily to work, then did some grocery shopping for the week, and came home and did laundry. It was a perfect fall day, with a brisk north wind. I dried our sheets on the line in 30 minutes and happily dried 4 loads in one day. I think that's a record! Dan, Marley and i took a walk down Cove Rd, to Shore Drive then through the woods home. It's a 40 minute walk and Dan really enjoys it. Monday night I worked as well, and again were done with only minor things left to do at 7:30. My Assitant Manager and I are now fighting for customers just to keep busy! My how the pendulum has swung!
Tuesday Dan and I took Em to work again and since it was another nice day and all the laundry was done we decided we'd spend some time at the playground. We pulled in and found the Harmon's there. Buzz and I had a chance to catch up while the kids played. We had lunch at the playground then since Dan's been nagging me to go we went over to the Cape Cod Children's museum http://www.capecodchildrensmuseum.org/to play for a little while before having to pick Emmy up at work at 2pm. I spoke to James at Citizen's bank when I was there on Monday about opening a checking account for Emily so she'll have a debit card. I've gone back and forth about whether I wanted her to have one and ultimately decided I'd rather help her navigate money management and banking under my supervision before she's old enough to do it on her own. So after work we went down to talk to James who set Emily up with her own Checking account under our account. The stipulations are that she will have $50 direct deposited into her checking account every week and all the rest will be direct deposited into her savings account. As it stands Mike and I are the only ones with access to online banking on all the accounts so I'm pretty confident it's a good way to start. She excitedly ordered In the Wild checks until she saw the price. Hey kid....this is real life now!
Wednesday was another busy day, Dan, Em and I all went to the Sandwich Library for Mr. Parson's storytime, then headed to Wareham to follow up with a recommendation from one of the Saturn dealership salesmen about Spirit Auto in Buzzards Bay. We pulled into the parking lot. The man Russ, who we were told to speak with, promptly met us in the parking lot. We told him what we were looking for and he directed us to a 1998 Ford Contour 84K miles, $2900. And somehow it felt right.....He said he hadn't looked at it yet, but was due to go in tomorrow and would give us a call. Em's calling it hers, hopefully we'll all go check it out Friday afternoon after she gets off work. On the way home, we decided we'd go take a ride to 4C's. I had to schedule another math assessment test to try and bring up my grade by 12 points to avoid a remedial math course, and since we were there I thought we'd check with the GED office about scheduling Emily's test. Everybody was very nice, and it was amazing how anti public, pro home school everybody was. Em will take the GED test next month and if she passes it could start college as early as this coming spring. I'm so excited for her, and wished that college had been an option for me at her age. I think I could have done well in the community college live at home setting.
I'm excited to report that I'm confident that I aced my Sociology test tonight. I was confident about the first test too, but completely studied the wrong information and came away with only a C+ (I cried) this time I'm confident I gave him what he was looking for....I'll find out in a week.