Oh, my!

I knew it had been too long, but a month?
Holy moly.

Well, as usual, there has been a lot going on around here.
There has been lots of fun stuff, like camping, an Irish Festival, Idlewild Park, a whirlwind trip to the DC area to visit friends... all things I'm sure you'd love to see pictures of and hear details about. I'll try. Really, I will, as this is my only journaling mechanism. And because I've started getting those snide comments thrown into casual conversation ("well, have fun at the amusement park! Maybe you can take some pictures AND POST THEM ON YOUR BLOG!")

There has been a fair amount of stress. Work, for me, has been super-busy, which means less time with my kids and more craziness all around. No time for laundry, no time for grocery shopping, etc. The real time-sucker has been getting ready for school. At the end of July we found out that the principal of the school we attended last year (and loved!) had resigned. We then found out that her replacement was someone that we felt was totally inappropriate. I won't detail here, due to the sensitive nature of the topic, and so as not to be sued for defamation, but suffice it to say that we had to find another school. This was a really hard decision for me. I agonized for weeks over how to balance all of our needs, which school could come closest to meeting them, etc. We thought public vs. private, the pluses of diversity vs. religion (melanin vs. Jesus, I like to call it), toured 3 schools, called about 10 others.... it was rough. Public school system gave us a hard time about having Abigi and Eliana in separate grades (A's BD is 11 days past the cut-off to start the 4 yr old Pre-K this year). Anyway, We finally decided on another catholic school in town and Eldana started today! (There's another pic you'd like to see, no doubt.) Next week Eliana and Abigia start preschool. I cannot believe I will have three kids in school!
See how much I've had to blog about, with no time to do it? I may revisit some of these school issues. It really was hard to decide what would be the best choice, and I fear that I will always be wondering if we chose the right. I know - that's parenthood.

Starting the new school brings new challenges: Our schedule is different at this school than at the other, so my work schedule is affected. Also, 3 kids in catholic school= my work load must increase. So, we've had some childcare quandries recently resolved and finally (finally!?) a normal schedule seems to be on the horizon.

I hope.
I pray.
I dream.

If so, that means more regular blogging, better eating, more exercise, a cleaner environment, world peace... you get the idea.

I almost made a last-minute switch (as in, last night at 10 pm) and declared that we were switching to public school when I realized that these new uniform shirts will have to be ironed. Ugh. What was I thinking? Our old uniforms were polo shirts - how nice was that? Now we're plaid w/ white blouses... classic catholic schoolgirl. great. I would have hated my mom for that. My kids don't know any better. Yet.