Happy New Year!

I am starting out 2011 rather sleep deprived, which is nothing new, but I had been hopeful of changing that for at least this first weekend of the year since I have two days in a row off from waking at 3:15 a.m. to do the paper route. Ah well. I went to bed around 2 a.m., and Tylan woke up screaming at 4:45 a.m. and refused to go back to bed. I eventually calmed her down and we slept for a bit on the couch. Hoping tonight will be a much more peaceful night.

Hmm, I've quite nearly forgotten about this blog thanks to Facebook taking over my online social life. Debating whether I should start it up again...

Happy spring! Oh, and brr! I'm hoping we make it above freezing today. At least we had two days this week where it definitely felt like spring. On Wednesday and Thursday, the kids ran around outside without jackets. In short sleeves. They were ecstatic.

Let's see what's happened since St. Paddy's Day.

On Thursday the kids and I went to the 4-H building to help sort the fruit fundraising orders and pick up our own box of apples, oranges and pears. It took about an hour, which went much faster than I had thought. There were young kids running around, so it wasn't out of place for Ella and Tylan to be there helping as well. Tylan didn't do much more than try to avoid getting run over by people carrying heavy boxes, but Ella wanted to help carry every box that I carried. After that, Cole had tumbling, and that took care of the rest of the afternoon.

The cold weather returned on Friday, so we spent yesterday hanging out inside. Tylan is very fascinated by baby dolls right now and always needs one in her arms. So we usually have half a dozen lying around the house for Tylan when she needs one to hold and has thrown her previous one somewhere on the floor.

Ella, meanwhile, can't get enough of new-to-her spring/summer clothes. I've been dragging totes up from the basement and going through Accalia's old clothes for Ella and Accalia's/Ella's old clothes for Tylan. I haven't even gotten to the bags of clothes handed down to us from my brother Jeremy. We're overflowing with girl clothes! Poor Cole - it's hard not getting hand me downs.

Looking forward to the weekend. Accalia dances with her ballet class at a nursing home this afternoon. Cory won't be able to come along since he'll be getting ready for work, so I'm hoping that Tylan won't be worn out and ready to nap. Of course, with the way she's been napping lately, that would be highly unusual. Tylan is either taking late naps (3 p.m. or later), or forgoing naps completely. Nineteen months seems a bit early to start giving up naps, but my kids seem to give up naps earlier and earlier with each one. It amazes me to hear parents talk about their 3-4-5 year olds still taking regular naps. I think three is as old as mine have gone with regular or semi-regular naps. How does that work? Is nap time required or do the kids just naturally go down for a rest? We've never required naps (hated that as a child), so maybe that's part of the reason they disappear relatively soon.

Looks like I'll have to stop for now. Ella is awake and requesting computer time. Have a good weekend everyone!

I'm loving all of the signs of spring, which is just a few days away! We're almost constantly hearing and seeing the geese overhead as they migrate back up north. Today the kids and I are going to drive out to the lake area to do a couple things, and we'll have to be sure to see if large flocks of ducks and geese are resting on any of the lakes as they make their journey.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm looking forward to having a Guinness tonight. That's about as much of a tradition as I have for this holiday. The kids love dressing up in green, and at least the girls like painting their nails green, too, but otherwise it's a pretty quiet time. I think everyone is more excited to put up some Easter decorations and plan ahead for that and for our lovely spring weather. Unfortunately, Friday and Saturday are supposed to be cooler and have some rain or snow. Hopefully we can make it through the next month without any major spring blizzards. That rarely happens, but I can always dream.

Today Accalia will finish up her standardized testing, which is one of the few requirements South Dakota has for homeschooling. Basically there are the standardized tests (CAT tests) in the same grades that the public schools require and the yearly exemption form sent in to the school board. I can definitely handle that as what is necessary to keep the public school system from trying to regulate our lives.

There isn't a whole lot new and exciting happening so far this week. Tomorrow Accalia is going to help sort fruit for the 4-H fundraiser, and Cole has decided he'll go along to help. Parents are asked to help, too, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to since it's going on before Cory's home from work, and it'll be right at the time that Tylan usually needs a nap. We'll play it by ear, though.

On Saturday, Accalia and her ballet class will be performing their recital routine, "Nature's Grace", at a local nursing home. I'm excited to see it since I haven't had a chance to do that yet. There are 15 girls in Accalia's class, so it's a bigger routine and involves more complicated techniques. I caught the very end of ballet class yesterday and just loved watching Accalia as she followed the teacher's commands in French. I'm sure that's partly because I always wanted to take ballet but never did except for one free sample class.

I'm not getting nearly as much done as I hoped to this morning. Tylan has been having a very difficult time doing much in the way of napping and long stretches of sleep, so that's wreaked a bit of havoc on life around here. I'm going off of less than three hours of sleep today, too, so we'll see how the day goes.

You know, sleep really isn't overrated. At all. It's really too bad that I don't get more of it. With the paper route, I'm up at 3:15 a.m. (3:45 a.m. on Saturdays) and usually back home in less than two hours. That means I can crawl back in bed for two or three hours since Tylan will *usually* fall back to sleep and the other kids don't wake up until 8:30 or 9 or later. That definitely helps. But there are days where I don't go back to sleep and I really feel it by the end of the day since I don't function the best on four hours or less of sleep. I stay up, though, because otherwise I won't have any time to myself, time that I usually spend catching up on email. Any time in this house where it's completely quiet is so rare, too, and I need to have that every once in a while.

I think we'll all be glad for this week to end. It's been a rough one in a lot of ways. Cole and Accalia finished swimming lessons on Thursday, and both will stay at the same level. Cole was extremely upset about that, but he's come to terms with it now. By the time swimming lessons are offered again in the summer, I think both will have lots more time to be in the pool or lake.

I really need to update with pictures. I've neglected that for way too long. The kids will grow up thinking they stopped being photographed after Tylan hit the one year mark! Poor Tylan - my dirty little secret with her is that I have yet to do her baby book. I have a box with a bunch of things to add to it, but it just sits underneath a pile of too small clothes that needs to be stored away.

Now I think I'll brew some coffee and get back to playing catch up.

Thought I'd be gone again so quickly, eh? Not quite. It's actually the stomach flu that took out all six of us for a few days. It started Thursday evening with Ella, and by Saturday the rest of us were completely miserable. By Sunday, we were over the worst of it, although Cole and Cory (last to get it) slept most of the day. We're still experiencing a few residual effects (such as Tylan's nasty diapers), but for the most part we're ready, once again, to catch up with life and move along.

So there really hasn't been much of anything going on that doesn't involve illness. Well, I guess one thing related to illness - that would be my short-lived career as an Apple chat professional. The Statement of Work (SOW) I signed was for 20 hours per week (5 of those on the weekend), and due to the flu, I missed out on my first three days of work. Unfortunately, they don't give exceptions for missing work, and in order to meet my hours I would have to work nearly 20 hours on Thursday and Friday. I could probably have managed to do that if I had no children at home to care for, but that wouldn't have been realistic with my life. So there it is. Pretty disappointing, I know, so I'm once again searching for something to help bring in a few dollars.

Yesterday Cole, Tylan and I brought supper to our neighbor Ruby, who lost her husband a week ago. We stayed a bit to visit, and I was just amazed by how calm and collected she was. She was baking banana bread (gave us a loaf to take home), working on thank you notes and insurance business, and so on. I'm sure it's quite different to lose your husband at nearly 90 years of ago than, say, if your husband isn't yet 40, but I just don't know how I could carry on, let along have a conversation without dissolving into tears constantly. I definitely hope never to find out!

There's not a whole lot on the agenda for today. Lots to catch up on around the house. Accalia has ballet tonight, and she and Cole are both in their final week of swimming lessons. That, and hoping to not become completely confused watching Lost tonight should suffice.

Wow, I didn't know if my blog would actually still be here! LOL! Can't believe it's been about 3 1/2 months since I last posted. It seems that I ended with a post about my grandpa's funeral, and now I'm starting out with a post that includes another funeral. Our 87-year-old neighbor, Julius, passed away the day after Valentine's Day. He had been going downhill for quite some time and didn't really have the strength to walk far or do much of anything. It's nice to think he won't be suffering anymore and also a little sad to know he's not sitting in front of his window staring across the street to make sure he doesn't miss anything. We've known him and his wife since we moved to this house in 1998, so he also has been a part of our kids' lives for as long as they can remember. We're going to the visitation tonight and the funeral tomorrow.

Life continues to be busy and stressful and including too little sleep! I'm still doing the paper route each morning (except Sunday), and it's been a horrible winter for having to get outside and spend a couple hours walking around. It's either snow or ice or wind or bitter cold temperatures - or a combination. I told Cory this morning that February is starting to feel really, really long. I know the kids are very ready for spring to arrive. Me too!

This Saturday I will start working from home as a live chat professional on the Apple website. So, if you happen to click on the "live chat" button, you could very well start chatting with me (Amy N). We'll see how that goes. I spent all of January and much of February so far doing certification training, which amounted to a 3-hour class five nights a week and additional hours of homework. I'm not feeling overly confident in my abilities, but I think just getting in there and doing it will help. I'm hoping the hours will be enough and I'll be able to keep this job so that I can quit the paper route - just as the nice weather is approaching again, I know!

Cory is still working hard with the prison, pizza delivery and private counseling. I've been able to act as the receptionist/secretary for the private counseling, but that hasn't been time intensive in the least. With my certification training, Cory also had more to do in the way of shuttling the kids to various activities and more solo childcare.

Accalia has discovered Farmville and is loving the games. So now I'm playing a couple of the games with her, and that can really drain your time! The spring dance recital is less than three months away already, and Accalia is busy learning her entire routine. She and Cole are also in the midst of taking swimming lessons. They usually just do that in the summer (they always want to take lessons - I remember hating it), but they asked if they could do it in the winter, too. Go figure! It's also fundraising time for 4H, and we've really done no fundraising. Does anyone want to buy mixed fruit boxes? LOL! Accalia's looking ahead now to different things she can do with 4H for competitions/demonstrations and so on.

Cole is going strong with tumbling and swimming, too. One of the worst parts of having the certification training is that I missed out on going to visiting days for their classes at the dance studio. I haven't seen their routines or what their recital costumes will look like, so I'm very eager for that! Legos continue to be one of his biggest interests, and now Cole has added some Ben 10 legos to his collection.

Ella, my little spitfire, is slowly becoming a little more patient and understanding and willing to cooperate. It's slow going, though, and I know will improve as she continues to mature. She has had a big leap with her verbal skills recently and has finally made progress with the toilet. Hurray! She's got the whole peeing in the toilet thing down but is refusing to poop in the toilet. One thing at a time, I guess.

Tylan is making so many moves for increased independence. At nearly 18 months, she now insists on walking everywhere by herself, which makes it an even longer process to go to the store. It's also a little tricky to walk outside with snow and ice covered sidewalks. She is so much fun to be around, though, and fits right in with her brother and sisters. She and Ella are also becoming more buddy-buddy, and Ella will often try to include her in play.

Well, that's a good start for getting back to blogging. Hoping to keep up with it now...