Happy New Year

So other than the traditional get in better shape, (I joined a special 6 week workout class at the Y to really kick it off ) and the Get the house & myself organized resolutions, I have not really sat down to write my big long list yet. (Those three will probably keep me busy all year though.) Things seem to be going so fast that it has been hard to find a moment of quiet. On the other hand I spent about two hours on Friday cleaning my office area. It had gone beyond bad and cluttered! Now it is just a little cluttered but a work in progress. So that is a step closer to the get organized goal, oh and then there is also the go to be at a decent hour, and watch less tv this year. hmm, I forgot about those.

I am really enjoying my work right now-I am working on a new website for a local business, and one of my favorite things has been going down to the place-it is a children's entertainment area-aka bounce house and taking pictures of the kids at play. I just love my camera! I have also signed up for another photograph class online. My mom and I will be taking it together this session. Fun Fun Fun! We will be working with my favorite adobe program, Photoshop, to make our images better in a "digital darkroom"




The girls are back in school and loving life. Sydney is going to be going on another field trip with her class and the two special ed classes on Friday, so fun pictures will be coming up. This trip, unlike the others, is a "Real field trip" We are going to a marine science museum. Emily absolutely adores her teacher and makes a card for her teacher almost everyday. She is working hard on reading now and we are doing sight words with her. I expected phonics, but they use memorization instead. I think it is a good things. She is proud of the words she knows and can spell & write them, but I have not been successful at teaching phonics yet.

They are continuing with their swim lessons at the YMCA. I am so impressed by Emily's strength in the pool. They did a little race in their last class-the teacher carefully chose the race pairs so they were at matching levels, and Emily won her little race. She hasn't mastered swimming without the belt, she can do a few strokes, but starts to sink after that, but with a belt lifting her waist and hips, she does so well. This week we tried goggles for both girls to help get them over the wet face fear. Sydney likes to quickly bob her face in and out. Goggles seem to work with Emily, but she dislikes the fact that they fog up. When she has her belt on she is not afraid to stick her face in the water and plow through it. Sydney is still so tiny that without a belt she sinks after the first stroke. Both girls are also doing well with the back T stroke tough. I bought some float belts just like the ones they use in class so we can go during the week and practice.

Karl is still trying to get over his sinus infection/cold and get healthy. In the past few months he has not had to travel much, but will be taking more trips this month and next. On a positive side, he has been earning lots of air miles, and even got a bumped ticket on one flight so we hope to be able to go out to our nieces wedding this spring. Work has been keeping him busy, as has my list of projects. Now that the holiday season is over, I want to push through the last few big projects to get the house looking lovely. I have some painting projects, and more organizing ones. I will of course post pictures as I take them.

Karl is going to build a desk for the girls so I can have my drafting table back, and that will give me some room to paint again as well as work off the floor on my other hobbies of stamping & scrapbooking-oh another goal for this year is to make a greater effort to get family pictures arranged attractively either simply in those slide in photo albums, or scrapbooked more formally. One of my favorite projects I made this year was a year in review album for 2007. I used an online photo center that had templates ready to go and I just uploaded my images, arranged them into the book, added text, although I would have liked to add more, and printed it out and picked it up at the store. I felt like such a hero for at least having that 24 page book to show for the year!