Hello second grade -- at least now she's in second grade. Apparently they goofed and put her back in to the first grade. Poor Romy told me later she cried a little because she thought she'd be in first grade forever. BUT everything's been straightened out and we're leaving in a few minutes to go to Back-To-School night. Polly can barely sit still she's so excited because she's heard there will be free ice cream there. :)

So things here are good and FAR too busy. I'm working every second I get and the girls are getting used to the new schedule (a little extra grouchiness and fighting here and there but nothing we haven't been through before.

On my way out the door here, but I'll try to write again soon -- even though I'm crossing my fingers for a pretty uneventful next few days!

So the kids are with Dane for the night. Way too quiet around here, but I'm hoping to get a lot of work done. This morning I performed some major surgery on my vacuum cleaner and Polly and I gave it a whirl around the house, so it's nice to be working from a pretty clean environment for a change. She's so funny. She's been bugging me for days to fix it up so she could vacuum, and she's just discovered the wonders of the DustBuster. I may not let her go to Kindergarten next year after all...

Actually, what's weirder than that is she's on this new kick about napkin rings. She saw on TV how to make a napkin ring out of a cut-up roll of toilet paper and some wrapping paper. Now she wants to be able to make some nice bowls and things so she can use the napkin ring and throw a fancy party. When Dane's grandmother passed away it was bizarre to me that for all the fascinating things a person could say about her they mentioned how much she loved setting the table. To me that would be like being complimented on how I fold laundry or something, but apparently Polly gets it. She's so much like Dane's family it's eerie.

As for Romy, she's so excited about school starting on Tuesday. She keeps asking me what day it is like she thinks I'm going to forget to take her or something. Also she's been spending a lot of time on her new website. It's all about pets and can be found at romy'spetzoo.com. Not much there yet, but she's been gathering pictures and jokes, and drawing pictures (like the one above) to post for the world to see. Should be a fun thing to distract her from Pokemons and video games for a few minutes a day.

And me, I'm going to try to get some work done and try to not notice the overwhelming silence around me. Yuck. It's funny how I wish for a few minutes to myself but feel so uncomfortable when I finally get it. So ironical. :)

Cutest school ever, don't you think? The people are friendly, the hallways are bright and colorful, but there's always a catch. Uniforms. Yeah, school uniforms. So, with dresser drawers stuffed full I thought we were in really good shape for the schoolyear and I find out we're going clothes shopping. >:(

It's actually a pretty relaxed uniform -- just having to be solid-colored white, navy, dark red, tan or dark green. I sorted through all of her clothes and ended up with like 3 shirts and 2 pairs of pants. Wouldn't be impossible if my washing machine worked... Grrrrrrr. But my mom came to the rescue and bought her a bunch of school-approved clothes -- not easy to find. Kind of cute, though, and so we're all ready to go. She's sooooo excited and already made a picture for her new teacher. A dolphin. :) They're the dolphins and we joke that they're the "Nibbly" Dolphins, and she's very glad that the mascot is so cute.

So that's been exciting. Polly's glad not to be starting Kindergarten yet, and it'll be a challenge to keep her busy long enough to get some work done. My mom hooked her up with some new Play-Doh and that kept both the girls busy last night for like two whole hours! And even though she whined (they were awful yesterday!) about just getting that, about an hour into it she asked me how I knew that new Play-Doh would be SO MUCH FUN! grumble grumble grumble...kids...grumble..grumble.

As for me I've gotten a lot done lately -- mostly late at night with the kids in bed, but until school starts we don't need to be up early anyway. Still crossing my fingers, though, that the work keeps rolling in, but for now there's no end in sight. A good and a bad thing at the same time, but the people writing the checks are still happy so far. It's a real juggling act, but it's so great not to have the kids in daycare so much. That was always so hard.

OK, so now you're overly caught up. More than you wanted to read maybe, but it's the best way I have of keeping in touch anymore. It's been great, though, to see my parents for the past week, and Spencer and Donna came by, too. The girls were so happy to see them (and not just because of the snacks -- haha). And Diana and Ryan came by, too, which was really nice. I haven't seen them since Romy was a teeny baby, so do the math there.

As for the rest of you, take care and I miss you. Oh, and sorry for the gi-mungous blog entry; guess I had a lot to say today!