Hello? Hello? Anyone still out there?

So I've been absent from the blog for uh, I don't know, like months. Where the heck have I been? Why the stone cold silence? Is anyone even still checking this thing? Just in case I do still have a few loyal readers out there, I am sorry for my lack of inspiration. Call it summer break. Call it computer crashing and dying a terrible sad death. Call it only having Jon's work laptop at night because we're too cheap right now to buy a new computer. Call it whatever you will. I know it all equals out to one thing: a very boring blog.

So if you are still checking in on us, thank you. And here's an update to what is going on around here.

KIDS: Well, we're down to the 2 week mark until school starts. The summer has been fun and filled with a new trampoline, sport's camps, speech, playing with friends and cousins, travelling to see family and friends, and fighting with each other because we're spending 24/7 together. It's always fun, exhausting, and never dull to have all 3 kiddos home all summer, and despite the brotherly brawls, it has been pretty good. Jonah can't wait until school starts, and he keeps wistfully saying that he misses school. Not sure what that says about me and my entertainment value, but I'm glad he's excited for 1st grade. Jack will start 3rd grade, and Maddie Rae will be going to Early Start preschool every morning for speech.

HOUSE: Still working on finishing the basement and my list of home improvement dreams grows by a couple items every week...thus bringing me to my next point...

WORK: After an 8 year stint as a stay-at-home mom, I'm goin' back to work. Yep, you heard that one right. Honestly, if you would have told me a couple years ago that I'd be going back to work and happy about it, I would have thought you were crazy. But the Lord has really led me to this point and dropped this seemingly perfect job right in my lap. I will be teaching 7th and 8th grade language arts and math at a local middle school where I have previously taught. (I can just hear all the cringes out there...7th and 8th grade?! EEK! But I really do love teaching those crazy middle schoolers.) The school is right next to the boy's school, so I will drop them off next door and then head on over. At the end of the day, they will finish 45 min. before me, so they will walk over and sit quietly in the classroom while I finish teaching (again with the cringing. I know, I'm actually cringing myself at the thought of them sitting quietly doing their homework in the back of a classroom of 8th graders...yeah, right. But we're going to try it out at least.) My sister, who was looking for another job and who lives a block from the school Maddie Rae will attend, is going to watch her after her school for me. So my mommy guilt is minimum because my sister is really the closest thing to me there is, and Maddie Rae and Mallaney think and wish they were sisters already anyway. Win Win. I vacillate between excitement and sheer panic at the thought of balancing all of this, and I still have some certification details to work out since I've been out of it for so long. But I'm gonna give it a go and see how it all shakes out.

So if I'm absent for another few months, at least you'll know where I am. Sorry no pictures. The computer crashing thing was really not good for them...