Here I am again with more apologies for the lack of pictures. Part of this is due to our computer issues, but most of it is due to my lack of time for uploading and posting. We bought ourselves a fancy Dell laptop last Christmas and have had nothing but trouble with it. We have taken it to the geeks at Best Buy *twice* and just got it back for the second time. Yes, Dell provides customer support, but expects the customer to have unlimited time to sit on the phone to receive said support. Right. So, we have it back now, but haven't even turned it on because.......Travis got me a new MacBook for my birthday! :rah: :rah: :rah: What a guy. I absolutely love it! He and my mom worked together to surprise me also.....I knew that my mom was coming to take me out to lunch and shopping for the afternoon on the Saturday prior to my bday. I was excited about it, but very surprised when my mom showed up with my two sisters, who live in Nashville and Cincinnati. I screamed when I saw them and even got a little teary. We had a great afternoon. Then we all (including Travis and the boys) went to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, and the second surprise was that our best friends (and their kids) were waiting there to have dinner with us. They live about an hour away and we really struggle to get together now that our kids are older. We had a private room at the restaurant, which was really nice. All in all, it made 40 much easier to wrap my head around, although I missed having a dinner out with just DH (which is our normal birthday celebration). We'll have to get back to normal for #41! On the actual day of my birthday, my work friends snuck in my room and decorated it with bday banners and black crepe paper. The students enjoyed seeing that and told me how young I looked and that they couldn't believe I was 40. True or not, it was nice to hear.

About the house.....it is completely framed and shingled and the ductwork/wiring/plumbing is in place. The fireplace housing is also in, as well as all of the bathtubs. Drywalling is supposed to start next week. DH noticed that some of the detail work in the brick was wrong, and emailed the builder about it last night. I drove by today and noticed that the bricklayers were re-doing the area in question. I have to say that the entire process of working with this builder has been a pleasure. We met with a decorator last week (I think? or the week before) to get help with picking our paint colors and finalizing our carpet/tile choices. We had all of our samples there (cabinets, countertops, tile, hardwood, and carpet) and we managed to get it all picked out. Our wall colors are a range of beige to chocolate brown (on accent walls) with some light/medium blues incorporated in our master as well. I know you paint junkies will want to know the exact shades, and I do have them written down, but not memorized. Sorry! Our master carpet is going to be a chocolate brown frise....I can't wait to see it all. We are really getting excited about it, although selling our current home nags at us. There is a realtor here that does guaranteed sales, and I think we are just going to do that, even though we most likely won't end up making anything on this house, and may have to bring cash to closing. The stress level of having it on the market and the potential of two mortgage payments will just be too high, for DH especially. We don't have that much in this house and never expected to make much on it anyway. C'est la vie.

We have been a house full of sickness for the past couple of weeks. The boys and DH have had this horrible respiratory virus and I had been mentally congratulating myself that I hadn't caught it. Yesterday, as I left work, I had a little sore throat and thought maybe I was finally getting what they had, or a cold of some kind. By about 9:30, I wanted to die and knew it was strep. DH looked in my throat and saw white everywhere. He had some Levaquin at home, so I took one of those, slept *very* poorly and then got up and went to school. By the time I knew I was sick, there was NO WAY I was driving out to school to make a sub plan.....it was easier to just go myself today, even though I felt like crap, couldn't sing at all, and honestly, could hardly talk. I told my students what the deal was, and they really rose to the challenge. Our holiday concert is only 3 weeks away, so we really needed to get some things accomplished today. I hope I feel more like myself tomorrow, though.

DH's youngest brother and his family (three little kids) are coming for Thanksgiving next week. I am excited to see them and to get my baby/toddler fix. I need to figure out what the menu will be, though. My mom and one of my sisters may be joining us, too. It will be fun. Hopefully I will have enough downtime over the break from school that I can get some updated house pictures posted....at least now I have a reliable computer![/QUOTE]