Available at 
Tweet
The older two boys had their last soccer game last night, and we have one magical week before basketball starts.
Their Fall Break is Thursday and Friday (of course, mine is NEXT Thursday and Friday....how convenient 
) and then Monday there is a parent meeting and practices start on Tuesday. So here we go again!I had conferences with each of my childrens' teachers this afternoon and they all went pretty well. My middle son has struggled a bit in school since we moved here and finally this year I feel like he is back where he was, confidence-wise, in first grade, the last "good" year I feel like he has had. Too bad it took him until fourth grade to get his groove back!
Ironically, I think that playing on the soccer team has helped him a lot. He went toe-to-toe with the big kids all season, and got lots of kudos for that and for his quickness. The practices and games certainly impacted his study time, but I think the confidence he regained has made up for that lack.We are planning our first trip to Disney World (as a family) for the week following New Years. I am so excited about it! I have wanted to take the kids for years, but when we were in TX, it was too far to contemplate driving, and we didn't have the money to fly. I had started to think we would never make it while ds#1 was young enough to care, but he is 12....I think he will still have a good time. They don't know yet.
I have a link to some pictures of "the house" we are thinking about building. There was a home show here locally and we saw this house (by the builder we are going to use) and really, really liked it. It isn't *exactly* how we want it..... we are going to tweak it some to make it fit our family better. The house in the pictures has a walk-out basement, which I don't think will work on our lot (although the builder thinks *maybe* we could make a walkout on one corner) so the back of our house won't look like the pictures, but it gives a basic idea of at least some of it. We will have a full basement with a kitchenette, family area, bedroom, bath, and exercise room. The kitchen is going to have to be redesigned to have a little more storage than the one in the pictures, and we are going to move one complete exterior wall out about 10 feet to make the garage deeper, expand the laundry/mud room area, add a tub in the master bath, (although the shower in there is awesome....but sometimes I just want a bubble bath, you know?) and give us a little more square footage in the master bedroom. We are so grateful that all of the rooms we wanted to enlarge were along the same wall! I am really NOT a spatial person, so seeing this house already built is a huge help to me. I can't believe we will be building for real a year from now.
Anyway, here is the link. http://public.propertylinx.com/templ...MlsNum=2734825Life is pretty good right now. I am busier than I would like, but I think it is just part of having school-aged kids.
Sally[/QUOTE]