davejenbarnes
I’m exhausted and my brain is beyond functioning. David is working SO STINKIN’ MUCH these days. It’s almost sad no. it is sad. He works and works and works and works and works at the end of the school year all the way through the end of June, then he’s home ALL. THE. TIME. driving me nuts because we all get lazy when he’s home 24/7, staying up way too late and wanting desperately to sleep in until 10 am despite the boys staying on their “normal” schedule… Sometimes I do wish he had a 9-5 job with weekends off. That would give us five extra hours of him every single day and GOBS of extra hours of him on the weekends. He wouldn’t get the summer off, but really, what is the summer but a few weeks for him anyhow. I bet a normal 9-5er ends up taking that much time off over the course of a full year and probably not on “school holidays” to boot (so they can afford the off-season stuff if they choose). A normal 9-5 job would allow us to see him 25 extra hours of David a week! And it’s not like teaching is paying extraordinarily well, just enough to keep us above the State poverty levels, actually. He does have a job, though (for that we are thankful), and one that involves playing his trombone, even if it is only for eleven, twelve, and thirteen year olds. About the summer? Well, we’ll just have to figure something out so we don’t all get grumpy with each other (or stay holed away and glued to the life-sucking computer all the live-long day)… I’m thinking geocaching (which, with our young boys, will probably end up being more of a “treasure hunt” since they won’t understand why/what we’re doing at first) and hiking will become our new family activities. I’m looking forward to it, actually.
The house stuff. Well. We’re thinking it is going to take a long time to get the lawn luscious and lovely (not to mention: re-doing a yard from scratch with sod is expensive) so we’re not doing much in the way of grass other than watering what we’ve got and praying for the best. Our focus this year is primarily just getting more comfortable in our home, enjoying the back yard more, watching the trees grow, attempting a vegetable garden, dreaming of what we should do by way of a deck/patio. All the possibilities are wide open and we love being able to plant what we want to where we want to when we want to.
Speaking of which, I noticed a baby oak tree growing a few yards away from one of the sorry excuses of trees the builder planted so I dug it up. It started from an acorn (it was still attached!) so I dug another hole and planted the teeny-tiny tree out of the way of the mower (it’s the green thing in the very center of the photo above). Yes. It is close to the house. Yes. It is in the flowerless flowerbed. Yes. There are probably water lines under there somewhere. Yes. Yes. I know. It’s probably the worst possible place for a tree to grow up in, but it was Earth Day and I couldn’t dig a hole where I wanted it to go because the crispy dry ground was like concrete. Hopefully, seventeen years from now, I will be able to say the same things with a big ole’ grin on my face and a big ole tree to show for it. The day I saved the baby tree from the lawnmower.
Have I mentioned our printer has been out of ink for about a month now? It has. I’m unable to print off James’ “worksheets” that he gets so excited about – so I started drawing dot-to-dots. The boys is now completely obsessed with dot-to-dots (also called connect-the-dots). And numbers. He can count to 100 and get ALL of the numbers EXCEPT fifteen. He skips that one. Doesn’t even bat an eye and it’s gone. “…Sirteen, fourteen, sisteen, sebenteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty!” Mostly, though, he has been painting and playing in pans of flour and … making messes!
I’ve started baking our bread and loving it, though by the end of the week, it starts to dry out (and get denser at the same time, what’s up with that?!) so I am still going to be experimenting with the recipe here and there until I get it just so. I’m totally hooked. The whole process is amazing and smells so delicious!
Baking bread has inevitably led to baking more cookies. I mean. Cookies are lightweight compared to baking with yeast! It was a welcomed treat for all of us.
The boys have rediscovered their “wooden tracks” again and the skills involved in building the tracks and keeping the tracks up are frustrating to everyone after having played with the geotrax for so long. Thomas tracks are more delicate and they’re used to being able to walk all over those geotrax without them coming apart. It was fun, but didn’t last long for all the tantrums they had with them yesterday. I still managed to get some fun pictures of them though.
Dontcha think he needs a nap? See the face I get to look at more often than I want? I had to laugh at the same time as disciplining him which I knows makes the discipline ineffective which is why I ended up taking the picture. To cover my face with the camera. So he wouldn’t see my smile.
That’s much better.
And because no post would be complete without baby pictures, here are a few. He’s becoming quite observant these days. I forgot to schedule his four month check-up last week so that will have to be done soon. We’re also behind on his shots. I’m becoming quite the bad mommy these days.
Hopefully next week will go smoother than this week. I have lots to do on my list and some exciting things coming up which I will probably begin to work on this summer (so don’t bug me about it right now, it’s just in the conceptual stage right now and might still not work out)…
