Life and Loves

I currently read about ten or more blogs. Mamablogs I guess you could say. I then read other types of inspirational/informational blogs etc. and enjoy most of them immensely. I didn’t used to read any, but then more friends started blogging and it was so interesting and I got this great Google Reader that lets me know when someone has updated theirs. I imagine my blog is on someone’s list too. (Well…Jason’s at least).

I was recently pondering whether or not my reading of other people’s blogs had affected my writing of my own personal blog. I want my blog to be an outlet for my writing, but it needs to be interesting too. I would just write this all out for myself in a notebook or file if I didn’t enjoy some aspect of sharing it with the world. It goes back to how when I talk out loud to someone I figure stuff out, am I the only one who does this?? When I write I do the same thing, so this bloggity is a bit of both.

I am looking back over some of my posts and I realize that it is mostly highlights, which I’m sure some enjoy. I’m sure it’s great to see that the kids are growing and we went to NC for the umpteenth time and got engaged. :-D I didn’t used to write like that, did I? Is life too good? It would annoy me to read a blog that was just, life is so grand-la-di-da, smiles all the time. YET. Life is good and smiles all the time and the train is a movin’ like it’s supposed to. I’m sure that speed bumps are on their way, but I guess they aren’t so harsh anymore (although I do live in fear of catastrophe).

I think maybe it is just Summer. I looked at Summer like a huge pool to swim across. Yes it would be nice, but it would be vast and lazy. We have swum to the other side and things are starting to move and shake again. Throw in a wedding and I’m sure I’ll be wishing for a nice pool to lazily swim across.

I forgot. I forgot what it is like to be in school full-time. Summer term tricked me. I haven’t had to study or do homework in 3 months! I just showed up to class and listened.

I knew I would have to do homework for Math. That is a given. I also have, Office Administration, Intro to Business, Management Info Systems and Microcomputer concepts. The last three are online classes.

I was a bit nervous about the online classes because I haven’t done them before, but after orientation last night I feel much better. I am still a little worried because online courses depend on me taking time out to do them on my own time and I am not so good at that, but the reading and the writing I am, so hopefully all will go well.

As I was looking over the four syllabus I have so far, I was remembering my first semester and the fact that I didn’t see Jason much, or clean often and I didn’t have much time for anything else. I don’t think it is going to be that bad, but school will definitely be taking up a lot of my time. I look forward to it though, I love me some learnin’!

Nora woke up this morning with a high fever. I guess it is her turn to be sick. She is no fun when she is sick, holy whininess! “mommmyyy” *whine* I don’t feel good” *whine* x200. Sounds like someone I know (me). Isn’t it fun when the things that annoy you about your kids are things you do? I heard this crazy song on Spectrum yesterday about how we are all just taller children. Yep.

I have driven to Dale Mabry last night, this morning and I will be going back this afternoon. Why? Because I signed up for two online classes in Dale Mabry and the first class is required orientation. I also needed to get my books but the bookstore is closed way before class begins both yesterday and today. Sigh. This morning we loaded up (all four of us) sickness and all and drove to Dale Mabry and I noticed that Whole Foods is almost right next to the school. Now I know the Portlanders are like, “woopy doo!”, but us Lakelanders don’t see an entirely organic store very often. Jason humored me and we wandered around this glorious store with it’s yummy good-for-you-ness. I was in total heaven! They actually had some pretty good sales on stuff we normally eat, so it wasn’t too bad. Jason made a comment a few minutes in that I remember making to Misty…”I don’t recognize anything in here”. They had a bunch of Seventh Generation items which is one of my favorite brands. I have multi-surface cleaner that Jason calls “water”. It isn’t harmful though, and it works! I would have loved to eat lunch there, but at $7.99 lb it would have been expensive, so we headed to Sweet Tomatoes where the kids eat free practically. Those two treats made it worth the drive. Now I am off for the third and final 45 minute drive there and back. I might stop back in to Whole Foods childless and get a few more groceries. :-D

I seems to be customary to take a pic of your kids on the first day of school. Here is Noah on his first day of Kindergarten:

It was the second day of school that happened to be his first because he got sick Sunday night. I missed the Boo Hoo breakfast and I think I would have needed the kleenex!

Doesn’t he look cute? He is still a little sick, but not sick enough to stay home. The bell rang just as we were getting to his classroom and his teacher wouldn’t let me in the classroom to say bye! This is definitely big school now…all business! Jason picked him up from his first day of school because I had the hearing in Bartow at 330p. He came home and promptly fell asleep! No naps in Kindergarten anymore. He told us all about his music teacher and there is another kid named Noah in his class. He says he hasn’t made any friends yet which surprises me, but I think he will be okay. He loves that he has a card and gets to pay for his own lunch! Do you remember that? The lunchroom card you had to swipe to deduct from your account?

He is signed up for Kidcare after school. They will watch him until we can pick him up after work. I wish I could pick him up straight from school, but it just ain’t gonna happen this semester. I have had my first class at Plant City and boy has the campus tripled in size! I could not believe how many students were there! I love my math class and look forward to actually having to do homework and work my brain. I have Office administration tonight in Ybor and go for Orientation in Dale Mabry for my online classes Friday and Saturday late afternoon.

I think I forgot a little about what busy looks like. We are definitely…busy. It’s good though. We had a restful Summer and are ready to get back into the swing of things. I’m still looking for a venue for the ceremony and reception! Everything is booked on our date! lol We should have a wedding website up soon for more details about the planning process in case you are interested. :-)

I think it is going to be crazy every year having a little girl’s birthday around labor day and the start of school! We decided to just do a family thing this year and invited Grandma, Aunt Carrie and Uncle Edd over for a pool party. Nora got her first Barbie complete with accessories, blue’s clues and Hello kitty dolls and a book with flaps to open (her fave). I also took her to get her ears pierced!

She is such an accessories girl. It is all about the shoes and the ponytail holders, so in two months I look forward to introducing her to the world of earrings. :-)

Sadly, in my ignorance, I waited until yesterday to start registering my child for school. I missed some work and waited patiently for forms to be filled out and went to the school at about 230pm this afternoon. Orientation started at 4pm.

It was so strange to even pull into the parking lot. I was freaking out because this is BIG school. He’s been learning at Pre-K, but that’s almost like playing which I am sure he will be doing in Kindergarten too.

Jason and I took the kids to Orientation about 5pm this evening. No biggie a million other kids and parents pulled up just as we did. The first thing I noticed was that there were a LOT of Spanish speaking families. The term “migrant worker” was mentioned several times in the paperwork. I don’t think there was but maybe one Spanish student at his daycare, so I am thinking he will get to see a lot of kids who are different than him. Neat. His teacher is Mrs. O’Grady and no she is not a leprechaun! She is very nice and young and seems authoritative. I was so excited the moment we were about to walk into his classroom! Kindergarten! I can’t believe it. I am so excited for him!

We then went to the lunch room and had to buy some school shirts and get a car tag and found out that Noah could ride the bus to school. He realllly wants to. I also had to put some money in his lunch account! $8.50 a week and we don’t qualify for free or reduced lunches. There is also Kidcare to think about. I will be venturing to Arbor to see what they can do for me.

There is also the PTA to think about. I would like to join, but am not sure what the commitment really looks like. I was also thinking of joining the Junior League. I like the things they do in the community too and both places would be a good networking tool.

Noah is excited. Nora says she wants to stay at Happy Days. I did find out that the cutoff is August 31st for school which means because her Bday is Sept 1st she has to wait another year to go to school. I am hoping this will change before she goes because she will definitely be ready.

School starts Monday! Are you ready?

Noah and Nora both need new shoes. Noah wears size 13! I can’t believe it! We have now graduated to shopping in the youth section for clothes and shoes. He is growing up so quickly as is Nora.

I wanted to get some good quality shoes, so I went to an actual shoe store instead of Target. My kids blow through shoes like crazy. We were in the shoe store browsing and I was happy that it was still doing the BOGO like every other shoe store, but noticed that the prices had jumped about $20. Hmm… The fact that it is what I’m thinking of as shoe season made me head right back over to target. I’ll pay $20 for a pair of good-enough shoes over $50-$60 for a better quality pair. Their feet are still growing for goodness sakes!

We picked out our shoes and got things like PJ’s for Nora and boxer briefs for Noah…isn’t that funny?? Boxer briefs. With Robots on them- so cool. :-P We have orientation for Noah tomorrow night. That is if I can get all the paperwork together and get him enrolled first. Thankfully I just have to bring every document a kid might have and don’t have to travel to the school board or anything. I went to the lovely SS administration today. It wasn’t a bad wait and they were in a new building, but geez! I felt like I was in line for food stamps or at Wal-Mart.

I woke up at 5am this morning. I pretty much stayed up and realized that it is dark when I “should” be getting up! I should wake up at 630a, but Jason lets me sleep in until 8am usually when the sun is out and it’s the beginning of a beautiful day. Oh how I love that man! He really wants to make breakfast for me, but it is so hard to eat straight away. Anyway. I’m still trying to get my act together before school starts and Noah has to be there at 8am. I have a feeling it will be Jason taking him to school most mornings. :-P I start school the same day as Noah, but NOT as early!

When we went to NC I told myself that Jason was NOT going to propose in order to keep from getting my hopes up. I would tell myself to stop it! He is not going to so, forget about it and enjoy yourself! So I did. We had a great time hiking and spending time with the kids and his family.

I went off with Sheena Friday morning to go to the knit shop and wander around downtown. We went into this cute shop that just happened to have a row of Bridal gowns. I have been talking to Sheena a bit about getting married and such, so we went looking at the gowns. There was a scary rack of 1980’s rejects on sale for $99! lol Afterwards Jason met up with us and we all went to the Highlands to see a waterfall. This road was windy and Sheena and I were half sick when we got there. It was Jason, Sheena, me and the kids on another adventure.

We wandered down a million steps to the waterfall area.

I then asked Sheena to take our picture.

After we had taken our picture he turned to me and said, “wait one more thing…” “Danielle Lynn Carpenter…” and I freaked. I am pretty sure he asked me to marry him, but I was so shocked and happy and excited! The ring is beautiful.

I am so incredibly lucky to have such a wonderful man ask me to marry him.

We have talked about a date and have settled on March 27, 2010. I am a happy girl.

We started out this morning at Wal-Mart getting the few items that we forgot; we always forget at least one thing. We then headed to this certain trail we have ventured to before which has a bridge and a waterfall. It is actually pretty short, but Jason kept taking us on these side trails.

I remember the last time we were here with the kids. They didn’t know Jason too well and it was the first time we all met his parents and sister. I had met them once before, but this was the first time they met the kids and the kids met them. It was nice, but this time was better.

This time the kids were older and we’ve been hangin’ out with Jason for almost a year and a half. Noah and Jason threw rocks in the water excitedly and Nora held tight to Jason’s hand to keep from falling as we walked the trail.

At first Nora would barely walk saying she wanted Jason to hold her, but Jason and I just kept encouraging her to keep walking. You can tell she doesn’t get out much. lol By the end of the trail she was walking over huge sticks and saying how well she was doing. We told them about the turkeys we saw at the campground (but not this time) and Nora was telling us to be careful because the chickens were gonna get us! The WHOLE time we were walking she kept going on and on about these chickens and how Jason would cut them and she would throw them in the garbage, so they wouldn’t get us. It’s so funny to hear them talk about things they don’t really know anything about. The stuff that comes out of their mouths!

I just loved finding sprouts of new life in hidden places and mushrooms that look like Mario’s Toadstools! There were flowers that littered the ground like a flower girl had thrown them from her basket, which had my mind buzzing with ideas! You can tell what I’ve got on my mind…

One of the last side trips that Jason had us take was to a couple of wires that stretch across the river. Here are a few pics.

This sexy man…

This curious little girl…

This adventurous little boy…

and one happy mommy

all went on a hike today at this trail…

and had a blast. :-)

North Carolina has been a bit of a sanctuary for Jason and I the past year. We have been able to come and spend time with his family and recharge in the beautiful smoky mountains. We decided to bring the kids up for a few days this trip.

It has been different…

The kids watching TV :-o with Corky. They watched about 20 min worth and were bored…with TV…

Horses! They were so excited to see horses next door. :-)

We are getting ready to go for a hike! These kids have energy to burn!