September...is over?

While I am thrilled that the heat of summer is over, I just can't believe that this year is winding down already. Shell has begun making plans for Christmas gifts and I'm just sitting here shaking my head in disbelief. Since the kids and I went back to school it has just been one big whirlwind of activity. My boy started playing football, thanks to a generous gift from my best friend and his boyfriend. We were struggling to figure out a way to pay for his registration and they sent my boy a check for his birthday that covered the whole amount we needed. He plays in a league sponsored by the local rec center, but his team is comprised of boys from his school only. They are 12 and 13 year olds and my kid is the second tallest on his team. He's so tall. When we went for their annual checkups at the end of July, he measured 5'8 3/4" tall. The girl was 5'4 3/4". I was pretty tall for my age growing up, so while I'm not surprised at their heights, it still amazes me that my 13 year old son is now taller than me...and still growing. Anyway, he loves playing football, but his team is not so great. Only 3 of the boys on it have played before and it shows. They still have two games left to play, but so far they've only won one and it was a scrimmage. He wants to play on the high school team next year, which should have better outcomes. Other than the couple of games I've missed due to my classes, we've all gone to every game and cheered them on. Shell loves that he's in a sport that she already loved to begin with and my girl asks questions all the time so that she can understand what's going on. Even my parents have gone to a lot of the games, which has meant more to us than they know.

For their birthday, the kids got their first cell phones. We've held out on this for a long time, but so many times recently we've noticed how it would be an advantage for them and us. Shell and I were both overdue for updating our own phones, so we did a free upgrade on hers, got the kids the free-with-plan phones and I got an iPhone 3. Such a move up for me from my old flip phone and I am loving it. With four phones in our house that have unlimited texting, free mobile-to-any-mobile, and free nights and weekends, plus 700 shared minutes to landlines, it didn't make sense to keep the home phone any longer. Not only did we get rid of that, we switched from satellite to cable for our television and switched to a faster internet service. These changes would be saving us quite a bit if it wasn't for the extra phones plus the data plan on the iPhone...but it comes out to be almost a wash.

Shell and I didn't have unlimited texting on our phones before, but now that we do? So much texting going on! I text my sisters, I text the kids, and Shell and I text while we're at work. Texting has allowed me to reconnect with a friend that I had spotty contact with over the last few years, and we text almost daily now. It has been such a delightful addition to my days being able to catch up with her and have her in my life again. We had a lot in common when we were close as 13/14 year olds and we have even more in common now. Actually, I wrote about Judy a little back in this post and am truly thankful that we are picking up where we left off and jumping right in to being great friends.

My girl auditioned for and got the part she wanted in this year's school musical, "The Big Bad Musical". It is a super cute story about the trial of the Big Bad Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. My girl plays the newscaster, Sydney Grimm, and she even has a big solo at the end. Because of his practice schedule, the boy didn't audition so this is all for the girl this time. Even though he's not doing the musical, he is still in band and performs with the pep band. Their schedules along with my on-campus classes keep me very busy. Now that Shell is working days, she's not available to run them where they need to go, so it's made my days full. Luckily, she's been getting some overtime recently, so hopefully we'll be able to catch up on some bills and make Christmas a little less painful.

As for my classes, I'm enjoying them for the most part. My math buddy from last semester decided to move to the same class that I'm taking for math, so we have each other to work with again. This is helping a lot. Music Appreciation is not the light workload that I was expecting, so although I really enjoy it, it's a lot to stay on top of. For my English composition class, we are building up to our final research paper with weekly exercises to strengthen our paper. And Biology...well, it's certainly not my favorite class, by a long shot. Luckily, it is not the Biology that science majors have to take so it's a little less on the technical side, but it is still biology and I am still not a science-y person. It shows.

Before I wrap this up for now, I'm curious if anyone else is having trouble with blogger. I am finding it impossible to comment on other blogs with my google account and it is really frustrating. I don't really want to move my blog, but if Wordpress is more reliable I wonder if it would be worth it. Any thoughts?