Early April

Almost impossible to believe it's been 2 months since I posted last. Time flies!

Alex still loves his job. I love that he gets off work when he is supposed to, 99% of the time. And I love that he cooks dinner for us, most of the time.

I have been working Mon/Tue evenings (and a few Thursdays) for a local tax place. One more Mon/Tues then tax season is over for me. I have been trying to perfect my sandwich bread recipe - am loving the shaped-pan we bought for it (pullman pan). I make bread usually at least once a week. I tried my hand at homemade pitas over spring break - they turned out pretty good. I'd like to try the regular recipe one more time, then I want to try making smaller ones - easier for the girls to hold and would fit better in Jeremy's lunchbox. We continue to make lots of things from scratch.

We close on our new-to-us house on May 2. We plan to move in over Memorial Day weekend with some help from church friends, but we won't be officially out of our rental until at least the first full week of June. We plan to move small things every-other-day or so, and have much of it done, with just big stuff left to do that last weekend. I will probably end up taking Jeremy to school May 31 & June 1 (or Alex if he takes several days off to help unpack) since we don't want him to have to ride a new bus for the last 2 days of elementary school.

Speaking of which, he is probably back at the elementary by now, but the first half of today, he spent at the middle school, with his classroom (one of 5 fifth grade classrooms), learning what middle school is like, getting the feel of things. He has been quite excited for this day for a few weeks/months. Last summer he was pretty much dreading middle school, his mind completely bypassing 5th grade. But he's done well this year. Honor roll every quarter so far, with one to go. He elected not to play baseball this year, but is looking forward to swimming probably the end of May/early June. He'll have football camp in July, then start 56ers football (5th & 6th grades) when school starts. I think that is 8-10 weeks, then he'll be done with sports until spring track starts.

Joanna is anxious for preschool to start. She is 99% day-trained with potty-training. Night/nap time doesn't seem to be going anywhere yet, but not much "training" we can do there - it'll just happen when it does. We got a hand-me-down bike trailer for the girls this past fall, and just tried it out last weekend - I hope to ride her to preschool (and pick her up), from our new house. It is too far to walk. Trying to save gas $ and get my exercise in whenever I can. I also hope to ride bikes to swim team practice daily, although we'll plan to drive to the meets.

Jessica seems to be our "runt" in the health department at least. She is wearing mostly 2T clothes now (isn't quite 20 months yet) and is tall. She is mostly quiet - doesn't talk much. I have an appt for her to have her hearing tested in early September - some of her words are quite garbled, so we want to make sure, after her 2nd birthday, that she is hearing as well as she should. As far as I know, her ear tubes are still in place. I do think she has allergies and am doing some experimenting with some medicine that the dr prescribed for her. She sure wouldn't be the first in our household to have allergies.

I guess that's it for now. I had a lot to update!