Same old, same old.....

Life is pretty uneventful, and sometimes that can be a good thing. At the same time, it seems to be flying by at lightening speed.
Meghan is already more than halfway through her first year of middle school. She's been on the honor roll both quarters and we are very proud of the effort she puts in to getting good grades. She is getting ready for a busy spring with a piano recital, dance competitions, and orchestra performances.
Derek has battled several illnesses since the beginning of the year. Hopefully he'll be healthier from here on out. He was named Student of the Month in January for Citizenship. He does very well in school, although he doesn't always do everything in a timely manner. He has his first piano recital coming up this week.
Janie is still Janie. She has done very well with reading, and she loves making friends. She is actually quite funny, and we enjoy her constant chatter--most of the time. We had a couple of fairly nice days weather-wise this week, so she has been able to take some time off of the Wii and go outside to play.
We (me, especially) are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Spring. For being the shortest month of the year, February sure does drag.
Sorry, no pictures this time. Derek and Janie are off-track now, maybe we'll do something interesting that warrants bringing a camera with us.

Making Progress?

So now, apparently, I've managed to move my pic back up, but everything's in one long, skinny column. I am so done, we are all just going to have to deal with it.

I hate computers

I am old. I can't figure out this blog thing without it taking up a good 2 hours of my time each time I post. I'm trying to create a history of sorts of my family, but is it worth all the aggravation?! I don't know why my family picture and all the stuff that's supposed to be on the right side of this page suddenly shrunk and moved to the very bottom. I want my blog to look nice. It doesn't. I want my picture and profile stuff to come back up where it belongs. It won't. I need to return to the eighties when a VCR was the most complicated piece of technology I had to master. I was good at the VCR. Sigh.

Derek's 10, Tooth Fairies, and Confessions of an Addict's Mother

Well, my "little" boy turned 10 this week. Where has the time gone? Derek got to invite some of his friends to go to the gym yesterday. They had a lot of fun on the rock wall and then spent some time swimming. I was having serious reservations about taking nine 10-year-old boys anywhere, but they were so well behaved and they seemed to have a lot of fun. Of course, Mark had to deal with keeping track of all of their stuff by himself when they were changing into and out of swim suits. We did lose one belt, but the potential to have lost so much more was so high that I feel we did a good job!

Derek's grandparents and some cousins came over for cake and presents on his actual birthday. He finally got his new bike.

His Aunt LeAnn made Derek the perfect cake.

And his cousins Randee and Christian gave him the real thing. The ketchup companies can thank Derek and Janie for keeping their profits strong during this tough economy.

In other news, Janie has just lost her second tooth. I feel that neither one of us is old enough for this to happen, but I'm dealing with this loss much better emotionally than the loss of the first tooth. At least I can talk about this one!

Finally, I think we have created a monster. This child, the one who couldn't play the Wii for the first few days we had it because she got so frustrated, is now addicted to it. More specifically, she is addicted to Mario Kart. We've never had video games in our home for this very reason. But I've been blind-sided because I never thought the Wii-aholic would be Janie. It's a good thing she goes to school every day or else she would drive me crazy asking me to play it all day, instead of half the day like she does now. I may have to develop my own 12 step program. Let's all just pray for an early end to winter so we can get back outside!!