Today

Well, it's been forever since I've visited here or had the time to visit my blog and do an update. I guess since the last couple of weeks have just been about routine, family, school, kids b.s. I didn't feel like anybody would think THAT was very interesting. Not to mention, finding time to do anything not scheduled on my fridge calendar is about as easy as hitting the lottery. The world is spinning, my friends.

So what is new? Well, the girls both hit First Honor Roll at the Co-Op. That's Sydney's first experience with REAL grades, not just an E or an S+, so she's feeling pretty puffed up about it all. Really she's doing much, much better than I anticipated. Being the social butterfly, creative eccentric she is, I just knew that any sort of structured environment was not going to work. Up to now, she has not shown a great strength in math, so I just knew the twice-weekly speed drills in that subject were going to be cause for great heartache this year. I was wrong -- Yep, write it on your calendars, I'm admitting an error in judgment on my part. She's soaring. Her speed drills, tests and pretty much all of her papers are consistently error-free and I'm thrilled.

She and Kelsey are so different in personality. Kelsey is a very Type A student, frustrated with a 98, always pushing, pushing for extra credit, higher, higher until there is no higher to obtain. Sydney is the opposite. If an 80 came home on a test, she would shrug her shoulders and say, "Oh, well, Mom. I'll do better next time," and be off to ride her bike or draw pictures or dance in her room, never giving it a second thought. So in my traditional way of thinking, Kelsey was going to be the stronger student of the two. Not so. Guess there is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak.

So what else? Umm, Fall Break next week. We are travelling to Ohio to spend a short visit with my in-laws. I emphasize short. They won't be able to make it in for Christmas this year and my mother-in-law is in poor health. So Joe wants to make sure to give her as much opportunity as he can to spend time with the kiddos. Understandable. But they live in a pre-fab home in the middle of nowhere, so we are staying in a hotel 30 minutes away -- because they're both lifelong smokers and the option of staying with them is just not available. Not to mention my brother-in-law is living there *at the moment*. That, my friends, is another issue all together...

I hope everybody checking in is doing well. Today is a strange day for me. Both of my grandmothers are ill, but not in the traditional sense. One is spending this day in a *geriatric unit* for not unexpected mental/health issues. One is completing a chemical EKG for shortness of breath, etc. My heart is heavy because I know the years are passing so quickly and all that will be left one day soon are the memories I have with them, so many memories, and the few photographs I have saved in my big messy box of keepsakes. So I am teary and worried and regretful for being too busy with my ever-active life. I am thankful that my children know them, actually are old enough that when it ends they will REMEMBER them, not just from pictures, but from growing up around them. And I am wishing, wishing for 25 more years to be the granddaughter I always want to be in my heart.

But time is flying and in 25 years I will be the grandmother -- hopefully. Like I said, friends, the world is spinning.