First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my wonderful husband!!  I can’t believe we just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary.  I’m not sure where those 10 years went, or how it’s possible that Christian is 8 and a “tween”.

Ok, here’s the update you’ve been waiting 24 days for…

CHRISTIAN – Christian is having a great school year so far.  He doesn’t really have close friends in his class, but it seems like a great mix of kids (28 kids in his class!).  I saw his teacher last night and she said that if I hadn’t told her about his ADHD before school started she wouldn’t have known he had it!  Although did I mention she’s in charge of 28 3rd graders?  He’s feeling good about how he’s doing and it’s wonderful!  She assigns light homework, too, which helps a lot.  Christian’s happy to be in Chess again, and was excited to be categorized as ‘Advanced’ 🙂  The soccer season is off to a good start.  I think they’re 1-1 so far, and they play on the BIG soccer fields this year.

BRANDON – Brandon is loving Kindergarten.  He loves library and PE and music and lunch and recess.  Christian took him to go buy Breakfast one morning and he thought that was really cool too.  It’s been fun to see him open up this year.  He’s been making friends and just really seems to enjoy himself.  He started chess last week also, and seemed to enjoy it.  I think Christian liked going over to sign him out of his classroom and take him to chess.  The biggest surprise to me is just how much Brandon is loving soccer!  This is the kid that has NEVER shown an interest in team sports, aside from the trophies at the end.  He’s having a BLAST!  Now I just can’t wait until they publish a game schedule for him so I can get it circulated!

ALYSON – Alyson is thrilled to be starting her music classes again next week.  She’s set that Daddy’s going to take her, and that’s just that.  She’s potty training herself… at least once a day I hear “Don’t need PullUps any more!”.  Of course, she does, but she does make it several hours without an accident now.  She’s been very whiny and demanding lately… I hope that phase passes quickly.  She’s still having fun at daycare twice a week (once this week, she was sick on Tuesday).  She’s having an easier time letting me leave.  She can almost write her name, which is really cool 🙂  Swimming has been… ummm… a challenge for her since she moved up to the preschool class.  For the first 2 weeks, she did absolutely nothing but sit on the step and whimper Mommy occasionally.  Now, she’s opened up and spends her time splashing her class and hitting her teacher on the head with her noodle.  Still not doing what he asks them to do.  I’m not sure which is worse.  I’m really on the fence about whether to sign her up for next session.  She’s enjoying it, but now that she’s getting disruptive I’m not sure.

ME – Busy, busy, as usual.  It’s funny… last month I was lamenting that the phone wasn’t ringing.   I should know better.  August is supposed to be a slow month.  Now I’m swamped with… let’s see…

• a new client who is has no bookkeeping records for 2006 and needs to file a tax return by 10/15
• incorporating my business effective 1/1/08, and all the paperwork that brings
• more tax returns on extension
• bookkeeping clients that have to file 3rd quarter returns next month
• getting clients moved over to new remote access and paperless systems (so I can delegate work more easily to staff!)
• marketing, marketing, marketing
  • I joined the Chamber of Commerce and have been meeting lots of business owners
  • I licensed a QuickBooks seminar program and will be giving 2 seminars a month for a while – the work to get this set up was enormous, finding vendors and establishing a location, printing workbooks, setting up the invitation mailings… the list goes on and on
  • I’ll have an ad in the Lynnwood Business Directory that will go out to 11,000+ households January 8.
  • I considered signing up for a Welcome to the Neighborhood program that markets to new homeowners, but it was more expensive than I’m ready to commit.
  • And keeping my eyes and ears open for other opportunities

  Oh yeah, and I’m co-team-mom for Brandon’s soccer team.

BILL – Bill had the opportunity to record a demo for a voice actress recently.  It was a very interesting project, and she was a really cool person.  His web hosting business is growing, too.  I’m not sure how he manages to do the church podcast every week, special DVDs for the special events at church (baptisms, etc), his web hosting work, helping with soccer practice, AND everything else!

Whew!  I’ll try to get some pictures added later, but no guarantees 🙂

Boy was I ever wrong when I was worried we’d be bored this summer! We’ve been running around like crazy people all summer long!

Just for posterity’s sake (and so everyone reading knows why we have such a hard time keeping in touch), here is our week…

Saturday

10:15 – 11:15, Shoreline, Brandon’s reading class

12:30 – 2:45, Lynnwood, Christian has Youth Hockey Day

3:00, Mill Creek, Brandon needs to be dropped off for his special Kindergarten overnighter with Uncle Andrew.

Somewhere in here Brandon needs a haircut, and Christian needs to buy a birthday gift.

Sunday

10 – 11, Church! Hopefully Brandon will be dropped off just before the service

1:30 – 3:30, Ice skating (note here that now all three kids are hooked on skating – thankfully Christian and I have our own skates now, so that’s two rentals we don’t need to pay for anymore)

5:00, Dropping off Christian for an overnight birthday party

7:00 – 9:00, Choir concert at Trinity

Monday

10, need to pick up Christian

3:00 – 3:25, Christian’s swimming lesson

4:00 – 5:00, Christian’s soccer practice

4:00 – 4:25, Brandon and Alyson’s swimming lessons

Tuesday

8:00, Drop off kids at daycare (the boys will go to a movie in the morning, and a park in the afternoon)
9:00 – 9:30, hopefully brief stop at client’s in Redmond

Hopefully will finish painting kids’ room!

3:30, Pick kids up from daycare

4:30 – 6:00, Kenmore, work for a client

Wednesday

3:00 – 3:25, Christian’s swimming lesson

4:00 – 5:00, Christian’s soccer practice

4:00 – 4:25, Brandon and Alyson’s swimming lessons

Thursday

10:00 – 11:00, Brandon to speech therapy

3:15 – 5:15, Shoreline, Christian’s reading class

Friday

8:00, Kids to daycare (no movie today, just the park)

9:00 – 1:00, Redmond bookkeeping

2:00 – 3:00, Bothell bookkeeping

3:30, pick up kids

Whew, what a week! And guess what? The following week looks much the same. Add in Kindergarten Orientation and drop the Kenmore bookkeeping, and that’s what the last week of August looks like. Oh, and add in the Fair somewhere in there too. Thankfully, when school starts, swimming will be over, and so will the twice a week trips to Shoreline for the kids’ reading classes.

Personally, here’s how I spent the summer… I got a lot done on the kids’ room this summer.  Hopefully I’ll be able to post ‘completion’ pictures in the next month.  Unfortunately I don’t think I have any ‘before’ pictures of just what an enormous job it has been.  Bill and I also have been enjoying Netflix.  We rented all of seasons 1 and 2 of Veronica Mars, and I’m SO upset that it was cancelled.  Now we’ve moved on to renting Alias.  The downside is that we end up staying up really late to watch ‘just one more episode’, but it’s been fun 🙂  I hired a bookkeeper to take on any new clients, which I’m really excited about.  Surprisingly, I haven’t been reading much or scrapbooking at all.  I hope to return to those hobbies at some point… maybe when the kids are in school all day.

We almost didn’t get to go on the annual family vacation to Fort Flagler this year. Well, it’s not annual for us. I haven’t been since Christian was 1. That would be 7 years ago, for those counting. We made it, though!

Saturday, Bill had a sprained ankle, but he took Brandon to reading class anyway, and Alyson and I went to my Thrivent chapter meeting, and when we all converged back at home we decided we should go. By the time we threw the bikes and a ton of snacks and water bottles and blankets and sweaters and, well, you get the idea, it was 1:00. The next ferry from Edmonds was 1:30 and we knew we were cutting it close, but we were hopeful. Unfortunately, we had to wait for the 2:30 ferry, which left a grumpy Brandon, who had never been on a ferry, in the backseat asking continually why we couldn’t go, and could we just go home!

2:30 arrived, though, and we were on the ferry and ready to go. Brandon conceded that maybe it was worth the wait. We picked up a lunch of popcorn and nachos on the ferry and enjoyed the beautiful weather! We couldn’t have picked a better day for this trip. It’s a short ferry ride, and 30 minutes later we were in Kingston and on our way again. The drive was an unremarkable hour, exactly as Google Maps had said it would be.

We arrived around 4, got a restroom stop out of the way, said hi to all of the family, unloaded the bikes, and immediately went for a walk down to the beach. Alyson wasn’t too sure of the waves coming in on the rocky side of the beach. We watched Keina’s puppy Dakota run into the water just to get surprised back out by a wave nearly crashing over her. I think Alyson was as surprised as Dakota, and both of them decided they loved the water on the muddy side of the beach. The boys enjoyed the water too. Christian perfected skipping rocks, and Brandon got soaked!

The kids had some fun at the playground too. Alyson built a volcano (although it looks pretty flat in the picture).

Christian and Bill tried to get his kite to fly (it needed bigger sails and/or more wind).

We had a wonderful dinner cooked by the kids (not MY kids… the big kids), and went down to the docks to see if Josh and Trek caught any crab.

Alyson loved this part of the adventure. She loved sitting at the side of the dock, watching a too-small crab float back down into the depths, while waving and saying “Bye crab!”.

The boys liked helping pull the rope up, and Christian even picked up a crab or two.

They even liked it when they were told the rule. Can’t pull the crab pots up again until you go run up and back down that MASSIVE hill over there! They took it on with gusto, including Danielle’s boyfriend Curtis who was fantastic with the boys. Brandon was proud he always came in second behind Christian and that Curtis was last LOL.

No trip to Flagler would be complete without a walk through the bunker. We were watching our watches and the ferry schedule pretty closely by this time. We did NOT want to get stuck on the last ferry of the night and chance missing that one as well.

We went through the bunkers, and although the camera took bright pictures of the inside, it was pitch black to our eyes… Angie probably remembers it well! (Alyson found the LOUD banging by the older kids really scary but enjoyed exploring anyway. The boys LOVED all of it.) and we headed home in time to catch the 11:20 ferry home!

On the ferry, Brandon fell asleep on the floor of the van. It wasn’t fun to try to move him, but it had to be done. Alyson had fallen asleep shortly after leaving Flagler, but woke a little on the ferry and was upset to be stuck in her carseat. They all did great, though, and had a wonderful day!