Well it has been a while…again!

I know I said I would get better with keeping this updated, but the truth is that I am busy and lazy. Yes, it is a combination of both. Yes, I just admitted that. Maybe if I could overcome one, I’d have less of the other? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe time management lessons should be in my future? Or perhaps, anti-procrastination lessons.

We are all still alive and well. Yep, that’s the update for today. I never said that I wasn’t truthful. Brutal honesty in some things is the only way to be. In other things, softening the blow is probably better. In this case? Well, I’ll be nice and give you the quick run down as I see fit. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just what I feel like saying RIGHT NOW!

We survived Hurricane Ike! We had some minor leaks. Well any leak is NOT minor, but really we’re OK compared to so many. Mom and dad’s house was virtually unscathed. Their street looked like a war zone! There lots and lots of trees down. They all fell around them. Even the tree that fell between their garage and the neighbor’s garage only hit the neighbor’s garage. The back neighbor’s fence fell over and took out their banana tree. My sister’s house survived the storm just fine. We were without power 33 hours, 12 days, and 14 days respectively.

I am still wanting to go to SCAD. I have been scouring scholarship websites like crazy. I have jotted down about 4-5 pages (sloppy handwriting) of various scholarships that I “might” qualify for. Notice the “might” in that statement? Yeah, I am actually branching out and pushing the limits a little here. I have applied to all the quick and easy ones that are “no essay required” or that are “250 words or less” and have not heard back anything about those…yet. We’ll see. Some of the others I found actually require some thought so we’ll come full circle to the previous paragraph. OK, maybe not so lazy, but I am busy enough that I don’t have time to think about things as much as I would like so then I just get lazy. I saw that they raised tuition again when I was looking a couple of days ago. That bites! I don’t care if I am supposed to be nice, tuition increases SUCK any way you look at it and quite frankly there is nothing nice to say about them. So while my estimate of roughly $3000 per class before was a little high, but it was a nice round number to shoot for, now it is now less than what it costs per class. They are saying that it is $3085 per class. You hear that? Yeah, that’s me screaming and ripping all my hair out! As if $3000 for 1 class every 10 weeks was not enough to blow anyone’s mind, now you can add the cost of an haircut (need one of those), manicure, and pedicure to the top of it. Needless to say that I have started posting my miserly resume on job sites as well. Not a great thing mind you as now I feel completely inadequate to be doing even those jobs. I have started creating a list of items that I need to work on improving or flat out learn how to do. Well start next week.

Ben is still working for the bank. This is good. Work is good. The economy makes it even more interesting. He’s traveling still. Not a lot mind, you, just enough. I hope he enjoyed watching the new Ironman DVD this week…I know he bought it. He mentioned something about getting it while he was gone. Lance will be happy when he gets home.

Andrew is supposed to be taking his 2nd degree black belt test in 2 weekends. I found out last night when I asked about it that he has declared himself not completely ready. Fine by me. It just means that all the hard work to get a date that works on the calendar at the karate studio was wasted and we get to do it all over again. He started junior high this year. He’s going to the same school that Ben attended. He’s loving every minute of it.

Kyle is struggling with his grades again. I thought the start of the new school year would be refreshing…a fresh start. We’ve had F’s come home already. See that? That’s my angry face. It makes me MAD! I am very proud of him this week though. He’s handling being grounded (again) rather well considering. He actually picked up a book and read it this week. He read The Invention of Hugo Cabret in 2 days and says that he loved it. You do not even know how happy this makes me that he is actually READING! Now the challenge becomes finding something that is similar and getting him to read those.

Lance will be 4 in less than 2 weeks. Where did the time go? He’s fully potty trained! That’s a new thing. I thought he’d at least be in junior high before it happened. I just told him one day that I was “done” changing his pants and he needed to go sit on the potty. He took it upon himself to go get some underwear on. Usually he would fight the whole adventure. I did resort to bribery. I had bought a Wall-E cake pan for his birthday cake and I told him I’d make it for him if he could go potty all the time for 1 week. We started over 3 days in a row. Then it just clicked. He got that Wall-E cake much faster than I thought he would. Yes, I paid up! The best part? He’s staying dry at night too!!! You see that? That’s me doing the happy happy happy dance.

So there you have it, exactly what I will tell you. Nothing more. Nothing less.