Excuses, Excuses

Forgive me, blog readers, it has been four days since my last post. For penance, I will summarize what has been occupying my time and/or thoughts these days. And by summarize I mean type much to much about much too little. This is why I have listed each section by topic, so you can skip over “weather” and get right down to “Ryan”.

Show Choir:  As some of you know, I do choreography for my Alma Mater’s high school show choir. Thursday night was the first concert and then Saturday was state contest. E’burg was a long trip to make for a 10 minute performance, but I’m glad I went because they were much improved since Thursday and sounded good! Unfortunately, judging in 2A was a little harsh as only 5 choirs in the entire state earned a Division I rating, including the choir who performed right before us (Emmetsburg Varsity). They were the only ones to receive a Division I at our location all day—we missed a I by 1 point. It is the first time we have gotten a II in as long as I can remember, but this is also the only year we’ve had to perform in 2A instead of 1A. I am finishing up my last song and met with the two young ladies who teach the choreography to the choir on Monday night. It is hard to squeeze in time to choreograph this year, but I still have fun doing it, so in the words of Styx’s Come Sail Away, I “caaaaaaaaarry on!” (Any better ideas on how to do a possessive form of Styx?”

Weather: as in I wonder “whether” we will ever go more than a few days without some kind of adverse winter weather? Monday night after show choir my drive home was treacherous as the road was completely snow covered and the snow was coming down thick. Last night it was super-icy coming home and there were several cars in the process of being pulled out of the ditch. This morning I did a little fishtail on an on-ramp (yes we have on-ramps in NW Iowa…we are so urban) and saw 1 van getting pushed out of the ditch and 1 car on it’s roof in a field.  Adam’s school was canceled today. Dave Winslow said it would just be a “nuisance” today but apparently our school was annoyed enough to cancel classes.

Ryan: He is probably the easiest baby you could ask for, but still he occupies a lot of my time (and almost all of my thoughts). A new thing he learned this week is that not only can he kick and splash with his feet in his little bathtub, but he has also started splashing the water with his arms! It really surprised him the first time he did it (while reaching for the rubber duck) and he looked up at me like “Mommy, why did you splash all this water on my face?” It’s funny to watch him learn new things when he doesn’t quite have the cause and effect down yet. Ryan has also been at daycare all this week instead of at grandma’s. I do miss seeing him at lunch but know he is well taken care of.  It must really tire him out to watch all the other kids because he usually spends a lot of his time there sleeping! On Wednesday he took 3 naps in a 9-hour time span, totaling 5 hours and 45 minutes, but still sleeps fine at night (usually 9pm-6am). Today he spent the day hanging out with Adam since school was canceled, but unfortunately only napped about 20 minutes, so Dad didn't get as much school work done as he wanted to.

Financial Peace University: Adam and I went through this 13-week class by Dave Ramsey last year at our church and are helping lead another class this year at the church near our house. This past Sunday was the first week and we are excited about the great turnout once again! I highly recommend this class to EVERYONE—whether you’ve been living on a budget since 3^rd grade and totally nerdy about tracking expenses (like me), you have debt you want to dump, or find you have too much month at the end of your money, there is a lot you can learn here and it gives you the motivation to take ACTION now!  We are doing the homework each week as we lead the class, so this week we had to fill out our “quicky budget” form. Since I meticulously track all of our expenses in Microsoft Money, this wasn’t too hard, but I did find one VERY interesting fact as we added up each category.  When I compared what we spent in our grocery category (food, household supplies, diapers, dog food, etc.), the difference between what we spent in 2008 and 2009 was different by FORTY CENTS. I am not kidding—in a several-thousand dollar category, we only spent $0.40 more this year than last year, even with new baby expenses. If this is not nerdy, I don’t know what is.

Winkflash: I am uploading all my pictures to www.winkflash.com and then creating photo albums online. If you have a winkflash account and want me to share my folders with you, just let me know your username and email and I can add you. Anyway, they have a flat rate book sale going on until Feb. 10 which means you can make a book up to 100 pages for one low rate instead of paying extra for every page after 20 pages. Since I am currently on page 62 of Ryan’s book and am only on pictures from the third week of his life, it is imperative that I order my 100-page book before this sale is over! I wish I had time to make 2 or 3! The templates and backgrounds aren’t as flashy as some other sites and this doesn’t compare to the wonderful Creative Memories albums my MIL does, but I took my sister’s advice in just finding something that is cheap, relatively fast, and can actually GET DONE. I’d rather have something finished than fancy and not finished (referencing my half-finished candid wedding album that is now almost 6 years old and collecting dust).