Busy Slacking

I know, I know, you wish I would talk less and post more pictures, right? I do have excuses, although I'm not sure they are good ones. First, I've been acting totally out of character and keep forgetting to take my camera to all recent significant events. For a psycho picture-taker like myself, this is a tough one to swallow. Second, my spare moments to blog lately have been few and far between, so when I DO get a chance to sit down and write something, I don't have a lot of extra time to go through the process of pulling the few pictures I have off the camera and loading them on to the blog. So you are probably now asking yourself, how can you be so busy all the time when you aren't even working these days?

Let's see, good question. I guess my first answer would be our recent run of visitors, which of course means that we get to do lots of fun stuff that we don't normally do, but also means that the other daily stuff gets put on hold for a little while, so now we are playing catch-up. Second, I'm trying very hard to make sure that I have the kids involved in as much stuff as possible so that we don't all go stir crazy sitting at home . . . play group, swim lessons, play dates, dance class, etc. Third, I try to be pretty diligent about keeping up with laundry, grocery shopping, and house cleaning on a weekly basis, because it always drives me nuts when I feel like there is stuff I need to do but I'm not doing it. Fourth, between Brian being out of town, then me being out of town, and now Brian heading out of town again in a few days, our tag team effort around the house has not been real fruitful. Fifth, I've officially vowed to change my ways and have been cooking a family dinner EVERY night (I know, amazing, don't have a heart attack Mom), and as most of you know, this takes a bit of time out of the day, unless it's a frozen pizza night of course. And last, let's face it, staying at home with the kids IS a busy job, which sometimes makes it tough to find extra time for other miscellaneous stuff like blogging. But I promise my friends, I promise to start putting up more pictures soon.

Okay, so now on to what's new in the Palm house. The kids finally recovered from their colds/ear infection stuff, but now Brian managed to catch the bug and poor little Charley has a staff infection on her tush. Thankfully Dr. Heather came to the rescue once more, so Charley is on her way to getting better. But for a couple days there, the poor thing couldn't even sit down because it hurt too much. On Saturday I got Charley registered for preschool next fall, which she is absolutely ecstatic about attending. I'm not sure she can stand to wait that long. On Saturday afternoon we went to our friend's son's birthday party, and the kids of course had a blast. On Sunday Brian had duty at work, so the kids and I spent the day cleaning the house, which was badly needed. We planned on spending Monday, Brian's day off, doing yard work, but we had to take our van in for a much needed brake replacement, and we also had to take Charley up to see Heather to check her infection . . . so by the time that was all said and done, most of the day was eaten up. Today the kids and I met several other Coast Guard moms and kids down at a beautiful beach with tons of tidepools, and the kids had a blast checking out this new spot. This afternoon I took Charley to her first-ever dance class, and overall I would say it went so-so. At first she was very excited, enthusiastic, and listened to the teacher. However, after the first drink break, Charley sort of lost interest, twiddled around, and quit paying attention to the teacher. But I'm not giving up yet. The teacher said that the biggest goal with three-year-olds is to simply teach them how to follow directions and pay attention, and that most struggle with this for awhile. So, we'll give it another shot next week. I think Charley's favorite part was the Starbucks run that we made afterwards and the turtle brownie that was involved. You know times have changed when kids cannot wait to go to Starbucks.

So that's it for now. Let's see, to sum it it up . . . busy as usual, with some fun stuff mixed in, need to put up more pictures . . . did I forget anything?