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**mommax3** · 10-08-2006, 08:26 PM

Well, we had a great visit with my in-laws. My MIL actually stayed an extra day in order to watch Luke (my oldest....6th grade) play soccer. Because my in-laws raised three boys, they are really a valuable parenting resource for DH and I. I have my moments with both of them when they get on my nerves or whatever, but mostly, they are a huge encouragement to both of us, and my boys are *nuts* about them. We will be going to see them in KS over Christmas....it will be the first time we have been there since we have moved to Indiana. One of DH's brothers also lives in the same town with his wife and two little ones, so it will be a great visit.

After my MIL left, my Dad was here for one night. Cliff's Notes version of what is up with my Dad: He is a Depression baby and was a very spoiled only son, the only boy that lived (two others died) and the much younger brother of two sisters. He is a very charming man and an excellent musician. He is a retired high school band director and will play his trombone or sing anywhere, anytime he is given the opportunity. He has played with dance bands on weekends his entire adult life. He has been married three times. The first marriage did not last very long and produced no children. The second marriage, to my mother, (a high school student of his.....she is 13 years his junior) lasted 12 years and produced four daughters. They were divorced when my youngest (severely handicapped) sister (I am the oldest) was just over a year old, but there had been infidelity on my Dad's part going on for about two years before my youngest sister was even born. My Dad's third marriage was to the woman he fooled around with during his marriage to my mother.....this lady was also a former student of his. She is *23* years younger than my Dad. They were married about a year after my parents' divorce, and eventually had two children, a girl first, and then a boy. My step-mother asked my Dad (on his 74th b-day) for a divorce last February, after 27 years of marriage. The reasons why are complicated, but infidelity on her part is involved. She chose to make her move just four months before her daughter (my half-sister) was getting married. Nice timing.

My Dad chose to move to FL when it became clear that his marriage was over. He has worked off and on since he retired from teaching, but now he is pretty much totally retired and figured that there would be more opportunities to play in FL than there are here, which has turned out to be true. He drives up here (in a baby blue Mercury Grand Marquis.....Florida package

) whenever some of his old Indiana band cronies line up enough playing jobs to make it worth his while, and that was the case this past week. So he was here Friday night. I hadn't seen him since early July, so I was looking forward to his visit. Absence DOES make the heart grow fonder, because although I remember feeling as though I might have to strangle him towards the end of his TWO WEEK July visit,

I somehow had forgotten that having him around is like adding a fourth child to my household.

My Dad is one of the most shallow people I have ever known. He is so transparently self-involved that it is almost funny, but somehow he manages to work things so that you feel almost honored to be doing absolutely everything for him.....he doesn't even like to make his own toast! Friday night, after a very LOOOOONG week, I cooked dinner for all of us, including an apple pie. He was very appreciative, (he always is!) and I felt good about having gone to the trouble, even though I was dead tired. I was hoping to make it an early night......but Dad wasn't done with me yet! First, he had to explain to me, in *excruciating* detail, the intricacies of a "hot new game" he had discovered......Sudoku.

Then it was time to hear of his musical exploits. In Florida, he has been making the rounds and playing in every venue he can in order to make connections and get paid gigs. He has become a regular at a Thursday night "jam session" at a local Elks Lodge, where anyone who shows up can play along for the night. The jam session is run by a keyboard guy who goes by the name of (wait for it.....)
"Mr. Lucky".

My dad *just happened* to have a video tape of himself jamming with Mr. Lucky and assorted cohorts, so that is how I spent the rest of my Friday night. DH sensibly escaped and went to bed. The one good thing that came of it was that I was able to snag Mr. Lucky's business card (my Dad had an extra one). It features a color picture of Mr. Lucky in full regalia.....a ruffled shirt and baby blue tux!

Gotta love it. So anyway, my Dad is in hog heaven down in FL, he is completely over his marriage, and I enjoyed visiting with him, but was quite happy to send him off the next morning after feeding him his toast and coffee!

The rest of the weekend was fairly relaxing and uneventful. We had beautiful weather, and were able to get out and take a walk both yesterday and today. DH was on call but had no deliveries until tonight, and didn't even have to round this morning. The laundry is done, and I have signed all the papers I needed to sign for the kids and gotten them all back into the right backpacks. My first choir concert is next Tuesday night, the 17th. I am feeling the stress build a little bit, and am trying to fight it. I think everything will go fine, but it will be nice when it is over and I have the first one behind me.

Tomorrow after school, I am doing the gifted enrichment program I run every other week at the boys' school, and then my oldest has a home soccer game (last one!

) at 4:30. Joel (8 and in 3rd grade) has his final soccer game (he plays for a city league) at 6:00, so DH and I will likely be tag-teaming to get everyone where they need to be at the correct times. Having soccer over with will be such a relief......I hope we will have at least a couple weeks off before basketball begins! Thursday night, I have my first graduate workshop, (because I had let my teacher's license expire during my years at home.....mostly because I had no idea where we were going to end up....I am teaching on an emergency permit and have to earn six graduate hours to renew my license before August of 2007) which OF COURSE takes place on a day that I have to work all day (teacher in-service in the afternoon....my principal wants me there and they are paying me extra to be there all day). It is also the same day as "family night" for Luke's classroom and to top it all off, DH is on call. So I will dash out of my in-service, pick up a babysitter, pick up the boys from school, take them all home, drive like hell to my workshop, and hope that DH can handle the rest.

Oh, did I mention that it is supposed to be cold and rainy that whole day, and snow is even being mentioned for that evening?

If I make it through all of that, though, relief is in sight, because DH is off this coming weekend and we have NOTHING planned.....except for a babysitter on Friday night!

We haven't been out alone in a while.....it will be nice just to hang out together.

I was hoping DH would be home from his delivery by now.....but I guess not. Time for bed for me, though!

**mommax3** · 10-10-2006, 12:42 PM

I heard some bad news yesterday.

About a year and a half ago, I found out that a dear friend from DH's residency days had been diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. Her husband is a gyn-onc in the military. About six months after her diagnosis, Katrina hit their community (they were in Mississippi) and although their house was spared, the hospital was closed, and her husband was farmed out to an army post in Missouri, doing general OB. She and her children stayed with friends in St. Louis, while she went through chemo and radiation. Last Christmas, the Army sent them to Tripler Air Force Base in Hawaii. I haven't heard from her since last Christmas, but yesterday, I heard that the cancer is back and is in her lungs and liver.....she doesn't have much time left.

She and her husband actually made quite a bit of money (like 200K!) on their house in Mississippi when they sold it, because it was not damaged at all by Katrina.....one of the few! She has also cashed in her life insurance policy, and she and her husband have put a down payment on a house in Hawaii. Her husband has eight years left until he can retire from the military, and the Army has guaranteed that he can stay in Hawaii until then. My friend wants them to stay in Hawaii, and she is busy fixing up the house and making a home for her family while she still feels well enough.

She is only 36 years old. Her kids are 11 (a boy) and 9 (a girl). We were in Hawaii four years ago at a military medical meeting and spent TONS of time with this couple. We had SO MUCH fun and dreamed of doing it again in a few years.

Please send prayers and best wishes to my friend Mary.

**mommax3** · 10-18-2006, 06:52 PM

My choirs had their first concert last night, and it went well. I heard lots of compliments from people about my groups......some of them were even from people who knew what they were talking about!

All in all, it was a good night.....but getting there, especially the hour or so before the concert, was tough.

The middle school concerts are all held at the high school, because our middle school doesn't have an auditorium. I had been in the auditorium *once*, and had never been on the stage until last night.....so obviously, the kids hadn't been on the stage, either. If you have ever sung in a choir, you might know that a lot of stages give you the feeling that you are singing into a vacuum.......you can't hear anything, and it can feel very scary! That is how this stage felt, although I am told that the sound in the house was great. My kids, though, really rose to the challenge. I was very proud of them. The progress they have made in 7 weeks of school has been amazing.....I can't wait to see what they will be doing by May!

I did have one "seventh circle of hell" moment, though......I had the kids meet me in the high school choir room at 6:00 to warm up. (The concert began at 7:00.) I had high hopes of being able to walk each of the choirs on to the stage (we wouldn't be able to get onto the risers because the stage was already set up for the band portion of the concert) and then back off so they would get a sense of the logistics, but it was not to be. Facing 110 middle school kids pumped full of adrenaline is not for the faint of heart! I was able to get them warmed up, but after that, it was all I could do to get them lined up and seated in order at the back of the auditorium. They rose to the occasion after they calmed down a little bit, though, and things went fine.

I really have to say, though, that the highlight of the evening was when I was talking to the audience (500 people in attendance!

) and saw DH and the boys out in the house. I had a such a sense of "completeness" in my life at that moment......I was professionally doing my thing, but I was sharing it with my family, too. I felt very blessed! Most of the time, I feel like I am juggling so hard that I am not doing anything well, but for that few seconds, it seemed like it all fell into place.

**mommax3** · 10-21-2006, 01:23 PM

Remember a couple of posts back when I was posting about DH having an upcoming weekend off? I was really looking forward to it. Here is what really happened, now that my bitterness has subsided enough to write about it.

When DH has a weekend off, he also has Friday off as well, so every other week he has a three day weekend. Supposedly.

So last Friday, I had to work in the morning, and it so happened that DS#2 had a field trip at school, and DH decided to chaperone. I worked and then DH called me around 1:30 (I was still at school, getting ready for my concert) when the field trip was over. He was going to try and get his hair cut, and then would meet me at home before it was time to pick up the boys from school. So I headed for home.

I had been home about 10 minutes when the phone rang. It was DH's partner, and his voice was shaking. He asked where DH was, and I told him I thought he was getting a haircut. I asked him what was going on, and he said "I've got a dead baby." He sounded like he was going to cry. I said I would page DH 911, and did. DH was done with the haircut, so he went in to the office. The baby was delivered with no pulse due to a cord around the neck. The external monitor at some point had begun picking up the mom's pulse instead of the baby's, so no one in the room had any idea the baby was in trouble, and no one was expecting (obviously) a dead baby. DH has had an experience like this one time (slightly different circumstances) and tried to draw on that to help his partner. They coded the baby for 45 minutes, but they weren't ever able to get her back. The nurses were a mess, DH's partner was a mess, and of COURSE the parents were a mess. DH felt as though he needed to volunteer to cover call for the evening, which I agreed was the right thing to do, and his offer was accepted gratefully.

BUT I WAS SO MAD! I ended up paying a sitter (I wasn't going to renege on her just because DH did on me) for three hours while I walked around Target. If that had been my plan for the evening, that would have been fine, but I had really, really been looking forward to a nice evening with DH and some actual adult conversation. I didn't think DH was wrong to help his partner out, but I just was so disappointed that I couldn't see straight. It ended up being a pretty busy call, too, so although his partner took call starting Sat. at 7 a.m., DH was so tired that Saturday was shot as well, and Sunday was busy with church, etc.

The whole thing brought up all of the feelings that DH had 5.5 years ago when he had a horrible outcome. That case resulted in litigation (and this one may, also) and we have been dealing with it ever since. I am really tired of the emotional toll it has taken on DH, and I am angry about the attention that has been subtracted from our marriage and the kids because of his preoccupation with it. But I can't really blame him, you know? I finally said, in the midst of the thousandth conversation about what this does to him as a physician, that I was tired of our family having to pay the price for the things that happen in others' lives. I felt like such a bitch! But I really don't think we can afford another extended period of depression, second-guessing, and rumination. Being so shocked about a baby dying at delivery is a luxury of our age, and although I am happy for the medical advances that have allowed this to be so, I also think that it causes both families and physicians to have expectations that are not realistic.

DH, after he got over his shock, actually agreed with me, and has managed to maintain his emotional equilibrium as he helps his partner work through this horrible, horrible thing. They both went to the baby's funeral this week, along with their office nurses and the two L&D nurses that were involved. I think they all managed to find a sense of closure.

I have kept the family in my prayers and have found myself thinking about it quite a bit. There are some things about being a physician that there is just not enough $$$$ in the world to compensate for.

DH is on call this weekend, and leaves on a hunting trip with his Dad (a yearly event) next weekend. He will be on call the weekend after that.....so hopefully, I will get a date with my husband the weekend of my birthday, if I am lucky. It feels so shallow be concerned about time with him when he is off being a "dawkter", but in order for our marriage to remain strong, I feel like I have to fight for us, sometimes, or risk becoming very bitter.

**mommax3** · 11-04-2006, 07:32 AM

I've been feeling pretty good the past three or four days. All of my stressors are still around, but I have been working hard to think of them as things I "get" to do instead of things I "have" to do, and somehow it has made a difference......I hope it continues!

DH's practice has always had an annual retreat. They would go somewhere (usually to a state park) and families would enjoy time away, and the physicians would have a business meeting at some point. This all worked fine when it was a large family practice group, but now that they have become multi-specialty, it is difficult for all of the members to attend. Last year, they held the retreat at a water park in Indianapolis, which my kids LOVED, but it was a little weird to pack for a weekend, only to go 30 minutes away. So this year, there is no retreat, but there was a dessert get-together last night, and the docs are having their meeting this morning. Last night was supposed to start at 7:30......DH and I made it there by 8:20, because he was at work until then.

We got home around 10:00, and I know he went back to the hospital before midnight. Right now, I don't know if he is at the meeting or at the hospital......but I think it is going to be one of THOSE weekends.

DH told me last night that he and his partner have over 30 babies due this month......yikes! However, they have re-structured some things, are taking less Medicaid, and are lowering the percentage of OB patients they accept, so I think this may be the last really busy month. I hope!

On the home front, we have been having a nice respite because soccer is over, and although basketball practice has started, we haven't had any games yet......but DS has his first game on Monday, so our respite is about to end. I enjoy watching basketball anytime, anywhere (spoken like a true Hoosier!

) but the driving to/from games really gets old.

My job is going well. I had an all-day in-service this week, for teachers new to the school system, and once again I came away very impressed with the leadership of the schools in that community. I have made no secret of the fact that I want to move to that community by the time DS #1 is ready for high school (he is in 6th grade right now) because the private school he is in ends after 8th grade. We really wouldn't have to move far -- 6 or 7 miles west at most -- but it would make a big difference (negatively) in DH's commute to the hospital, which is right now about 7 minutes. Hopefully, they will add a third partner in the next couple of years, and we will be able to move into that community by the time DS #1 is ready for high school. I selfishly wish we could move this summer so that he could attend 7th and 8th grade at the school where I teach, but he has expressed a strong desire to remain where he is through 8th grade, and he has had to change schools so many times that I don't have the heart to override him. So the tuition costs and the driving will continue for a little longer.

My birthday is one week from today! I don't enjoy the getting older part, but what is not to like about a day where it is SUPPOSED to be all about you?

DH is off next weekend, and ON HIS OWN set up babysitting for the boys for the whole day! I don't think he has made plans beyond that, but having a whole day "off" with him and no agenda sounds like heaven to me. Can you tell I am looking forward to it?

Well, there are quite a few things I need to accomplish today (assignment for a class I am taking, project for a school fundraiser, lesson plans to make, a house to sort of clean, laundry to sort/do, and boys to keep alive) so I had better end this re-cap of my oh so exciting life!

Sally

**mommax3** · 11-05-2006, 01:56 PM

You've all waited so patiently......

so here he is, Mr. Lucky!

Was it worth the wait?

**mommax3** · 11-05-2006, 01:59 PM

And just for the heck of it, here is a recent picture of my boys......they are getting so big!

**mommax3** · 11-27-2006, 07:52 PM

Wow....long time, no update!

I guess I have been posting enough in other forums that I just *thought* I had written here, too.

Life is pretty good right now. My birthday was the 11th (along with several other people around here!) and DH surprised me with a stay in a downtown hotel followed by a day of shopping. It was heaven. He and I often wonder how long it would take us to get bored if neither of us had to work. We just have the best time together, even if we aren't doing anything in particular.

Thanksgiving was awesome! Very relaxing. DH was on call Thursday and Friday, but it was blessedly uneventful. My Dad was here from FL, and he and my 88 year old aunt came over late afternoon on T-Day. We watched "Elf" with them, and then my half-sis and her hubby came over in time to eat leftovers and help us christen our new fondue pot with yummy chocolate fondue.

DH and I went out with our best couple friends Friday night for Greek food and then Cold Stone creamery for ice cream. It was a great time......we have been friends with this couple since we were newlyweds and they were engaged! We sang at their wedding and have been friends ever since. Our kids are all around the same ages, too. It is so nice to spend time with people you have history with, especially when you have moved around a lot and don't have a very long history with too many people! We went up to my mom's (my 95 year old grandma lives there, too) Saturday and watched another movie and ate some pizza. (Have you noticed a theme? When dealing with both the elderly and young boys, movies are a good choice.

) I had to tell my mother that I would not be able to make it to Christmas with her extended family since we will still be at my in-laws when they are celebrating. To make up for that, I tried to get her to commit to celebrating Christmas with our immediate family on the 22nd, when my NYC sis is in town, before DH and I head to his parents' house. She got all pissy and said "Whenever you can fit me in will be fine." Nice.

But that was the only negative note in an otherwise enjoyable afternoon.

I think I got enough sleep over the weekend, because I woke up at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, and couldn't get back to sleep for a couple of hours. I was sort of struggling almost with an anxiety attack or something. I would try to fall asleep and then start worrying that I hadn't taught my students a song they *had* to know, which would wake me up enough that I would analyze that worry, dismiss it, but then realize that there were several *other* things that I could worry about. Blah! I finally got back to sleep, and slept great last night.

Getting back to school this morning was difficult, but not too bad once I got going. My actual time at school with the students flies by.......it is the prep work that seems to take forever, probably because I am stressing about Nathan spending too much time in daycare, which actually is stupid, because he loves it.

I am struggling with the fact that there will be no more babies/toddlers/preschoolers for me! It has been a very enjoyable era, despite all of the drawbacks that you know all too well if you are a parent. I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Nathan still instinctively reaches for my hand when we are walking together, and I find myself holding my breath now a little before he reaches up, because I know the day is coming quickly when he won't do that anymore. But, I have to admit that I don't miss waking up in the night or changing diapers......every stage has its advantages and disadvantages, I guess. If you have little ones, though.......give them an extra squeeze from me!

Sally

**mommax3** · 12-04-2006, 07:42 PM

Repair on the Suburban.......$832

quote for furnace repair (which our &%#^ home warranty won't cover)......$900+

It is a good thing I am working!

Merry Christmas!

**mommax3** · 12-05-2006, 06:37 PM

I am freaking out a little bit.....

DH and I decided it would be nice for us to host the office party this year. We decided to invite all physicians, staff, spouses, and children to a dessert/snacks open house this Friday night. DH thinks there will be about 40 people here. Everyone is bringing something to share, and we are providing drinks. I hired my regular babysitter to help out with the kids.....mine and everyone else's. No sweat, right?

I'm sweating.

Our tree isn't even decorated, what little decor I have around the house is all of the "fall" variety, the house, while picked up, is not what you would call clean, I haven't done *any* shopping for this, and (big surprise) I have a very busy week this week.

DH is off Friday, and he insists that he can shop, clean the house, and decorate the tree in one day.

While it is true that he can get more done in an hour than I can in four, I think he is a *bit* optimistic on this one. But I guess we'll see! I'll be home by noon to help. But I have to say, I am envisioning soft lighting, candles, and all of the other illusory tricks that can make a house seem clean when it isn't! Hopefully, everyone will have a good time.....that's the point, right?

**mommax3** · 12-19-2006, 06:29 PM

Well, the office party went fine......42 people in all, including 18 kids. It was nice to meet some of the people DH works with. I don't go to his office very often, so except for the other docs and DH's nurse, I don't know anyone else really. Now I can at least put faces with names.

Life has been so busy the past two weeks. My three choirs had their concert a week ago, and that was the day I started getting sick with a cold. I made it through the concert and the days following that, including my staff party last Thursday night. I had planned several weeks ago to take the day off Friday, in order to do Christmas shopping. I didn't feel well at all that day, but sleeping in and taking it easy just wasn't an option. I shopped all day and got lots done, but as I was waiting to pick up the boys from school, I started feeling really BAD. I drove them home in a fog, and then just collapsed onto my bed and fell asleep almost immediately. I have no idea what the boys did from 3:30 to 5:30, because I was out like a light.

When I woke up, the "cold" had moved to my chest, and thus began a weekend of coughing fits. I feel much better this week, but I still sound like I feel horrible.....I think my students have been cutting me some slack because they think I am sick.

I have been keeping them busy this week and they are not behaving too poorly.....three more days!

Friday morning, several of the male teachers at my school will be fixing omelets for the rest of the staff......I guess they do this every year. What a nice tradition!

I'm looking forward to that!

I am hosting two family get-togethers this week, one on Thursday night, and one on Friday night. We leave for KS early Saturday morning, and will be gone for a week. Both DH and I are really looking forward to the trip, especially the drive, strangely enough! There is something about being in the car that is relaxing for us. For me, it is because no one can really expect to much out of me when I am on a road trip, and I suspect it is the same for DH. He is enough of a control freak that he prefers to drive unless he gets a headache or something, so an additional benefit for me is that I get a TON of reading done while we are on the road.

Of course, being past the infant/toddler stage with our kids makes these trips a lot easier, as well.

DH and I are just trying to power through until he starts the 1/3 call schedule at the end of January. We are hoping that the new schedule will provide us with some more "margins" in our lives.....we'll see. I am resigned to feeling like a crazy woman this year, since it is my first year back at work, but I really hope that things will start to calm down soon, because I don't want to keep going at this pace.

Sally

**mommax3** · 01-06-2007, 02:35 PM

Well, Christmas Break is sadly at an end. DH has been on call since Sunday, and the kids and I go back to school on Monday. We have thoroughly enjoyed our time off....I hope we are refreshed enough to make it through the rest of the year!

All of our family Christmas gatherings (and our trip to KS) went smoothly. Some highlights:

The boys, LOVING their (fake) animal fur rugs that my aunt got them for Christmas. This is the aunt in failing health that I visit every other week. In early November, she insisted that the boys needed these rugs (she got them at Wal-Mart) to keep them warm while they played video games. I wasn't sure what kind of reception the rugs would get, but as you can see, the boys were very grateful. (That is my aunt in the background.)

DH and I attended our very last preschool Christmas program last month.

Here is our preschooler on his way to the stage.

Luke got the latest world record book from my Dad and immediately began memorizing it.....

Joel, enjoying the rare feeling of having bows in his hair....

The reason we have a Suburban.....here it is, packed for a week in KS:

and from the front

Don't forget about the crazy people we had to take with us!

While we were in KS, Luke went hunting for the very first time.

I am really not a fan of killing anything for "fun", but FIL birdhunts quite a bit and loves to watch his dogs retrieve. Luke has been asking to go for quite a while. I finally agreed that he could walk along, and DH went, too. The look on Luke's face says it all.....I had hoped he would be put off somehow by the experience, but apparently not.

The boys had a great time in KS with their cousins (except for one, who wasn't there) and I got a sweet picture of all of them together.

There you have it.....the highlights of our Christmas!

**mommax3** · 01-09-2007, 04:13 PM

Well, day 2 of back to school, and.....things are going remarkably well! There was no major drama gettting out the door by 7 yesterday morning, even though we had all (well, not DH) been sleeping until about 8 each morning during break. The boys were a little reluctant to go back to school, but when I picked them up after school, they had had good days and seemed happy to be back in a routine.

My school is on trimesters, and we are in the middle of the second one. I have always liked the feeling of a new semester after the holiday break, so it feels weird to me to not be starting fresh with grades and so on, but I made new seating charts for each of my choirs and put new music in all of their folders, so it still feels like starting out fresh. I am realizing now, as I come back after two weeks off, how stressed I was at the beginning of the year and what a HUGE learning curve I had the first few weeks of school.....procedures, all the different computer programs for attendance and grades that I had to learn, and just basic stuff, like where the bathrooms were, how the copiers worked, and the names of the rest of the staff!

It was almost overwhelming, especially because I was dealing with classes full of adolescents at the same time, and the LAST thing you want is for them to sense that you are unsure about ANYTHING, at least at the beginning of the year. I feel so much more relaxed now, and am hoping that the worst is behind me. I got a really good evaluation from my principal right before Christmas, which was very encouraging. He and I were able to talk about some changes that I would like to make in the choral program at the middle school, and he gave me the go-ahead to implement some changes that I think will be beneficial.

On a sad note, one of my favorite 7th graders withdrew from my school today because she is moving. She is hispanic and her parents spoke only Spanish. Apparently the family moved from our rural area into Indianapolis for work reasons. She is the sweetest girl, always quick to smile or make a joke, with a great personality. I will miss seeing her every day.

And on a completely different front.....DH and I are meeting with a realtor on Friday. We want to live in the school district I work in by the time DS #1 is ready for high school (just two more years!

) so we are going to pick our realtors' brain on timing issues. Right now, DH and I are thinking we would like to buy a lot, and eventually build on it in time to move in about 2.5 years. There is a newly developed neighborhood in the town where I teach that we are interested in, with plenty of lots available. It is adjacent to the city park and pool, both of which are very nice, and also on a city walking trail that goes through a wooded area that has been set aside within the city. We'll see what the realtor says.

At the end of the month, DH starts his *new and improved* weekend call schedule! His weekends will be 1/3 instead of 1/2, which is going to improve our lives immensely. I can't wait! Also DS #1 will be done with b-ball at the end of the month, which will improve MY life immensely!

So far, 2007 is off to a great start!

**mommax3** · 01-14-2007, 04:16 PM

Good news! Guess who walked back into my classroom Thursday? The student I was so sad about losing on Tuesday! Apparently, her mother thought the kids at the new school looked too rough, so they are moving back. I almost cried when I saw her come in, and the other girls in the class all applauded, so the girl almost cried, too. It was really a happy time.

Our meeting with the realtor went well. He had done some market analysis on homes that have sold in our neighborhood since we bought ours, and the news was better than we were thinking. We must have really gotten a good price on our house, because according to what has been going on, even in this s-l-o-w market, we would be likely to make a little money if we put in on the market today, even after we paid the realtor, and we have only been here 18 months.

But DH and I agree that we are NOT ready to move yet. We discussed lots and builders with the realtor, and may try to buy a lot we are interested in sometime this spring. It is pretty exciting!

We took the kids to the Indianapolis Symphony this afternoon, for a Disney Pops concert. They had three soloists and the Symphonic Choir, as well as the orchestra. It was a great concert for kids. Taking them to a concert has always been a dream of ours, so today was special. It was NOT cheap (and we sat on the second mezzanine) but it was a great family day.

No school tomorrow......woo-hoo!

Sally

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