Ups and Downs and All Arounds

The Spaz is back!

I'm alive and well and so is the rest of the Spaz clan. Life is busy around here and when life gets busy I don't seem to have any blog worthy thoughts. I guess when I'm trying to keep up with the day to day, I don't spend a lot of time pondering the life, universe, and everything so the blog suffers.

In the past couple of months we've taken a trip to North Carolina, kicked around the idea of moving there and then decided to shelve the idea for the foreseeable future. It's beautiful up there and the idea of raising the kids in a small town environment is definitely appealing, but for right now we think it's best to stay put.

Though, when we returned home to find that we needed to drill a new well, fix our air conditioner, and replace our stove, I almost got back into the minivan, pointed it north, and refused to come back. A nice, new house in the gorgeous Great Smokey Mountains sure beats a messy, hot, and humid one with no running water in the middle of hurricane season in South Florida.

But responsibility won out and we got to work fixing the home owners nightmare we had returned home to. At this point, the biggest issue has been repaired (we dug the new well), the AC is in the process of being fixed, and the stove has been put on the back burner. Literally... that's the only burner I can use. The back one. But it's so hot I don't want to cook anyway. See how things work out?

This is the time of year I start obsessively checking weather.com and wondering when we'll get our first cold front. I do it every year, knowing full well that we'll be sweating while we trick-or-treat at the end of next month and I need to just give it up. In January I'll be complaining that my feet are cold and that my winter coat (aka ratty old hoodie) isn't warm enough.

The kids all went back to school in August and it's Bug's first year of middle school. He started making farting noises playing the clarinet with the beginning band and seems to be adjusting relatively well to the new, HUGE, middle school. Aside from his ridiculous new schedule that doesn't get him home from school until around 4:30, he seems to like school. We're having a bit of a hard time with homework since he doesn't appear to have enough time to complete it all before any reasonable hour, especially with karate three days a week, but we're working on getting it all organized. I have hope.

Munchkin is currently enjoying her "top of the school" fifth grade status and has found her passions lie with horses, skinny jeans, and this glam-goth style that would have been the height of cool when I was in high school if only we'd had the foresight to figure it out ourselves. She brought home a poster of Taylor Lautner from school today so I fear that she may have discovered boys.  Is it too early to start crushing birth control pills into her oatmeal?

Goober has started second grade and has joined the chorus. He's having a bit of a rough time because his best friend moved away last week and he's feeling a bit alone and sad at school. I'm really hoping he finds a new niche to settle into soon. His best friend has been in his class since kindergarten and to say they were tight is an understatement. He just celebrated his 8th birthday and the main focus of the day was, again, on LEGOs. He has amassed a LEGO collection worth several thousands of dollars I imagine and could probably build us a new house out of them if he put his mind to it. So we'll always have that to fall back on.

Two weeks ago we were mourned the loss of our beloved cat, Felix. His death was sudden and heartbreaking to our family and the kids were truly crushed. You might remember reading about him when our dog, Sudo, found him outside in a nest of kittens with his brothers and sisters causing him to be abandoned by his mother and then adopted by us. He will always hold a special place in our hearts as we bottle fed him and raised him from a little ball of fur with barely an eye open.

Without missing a beat, we decided to adopt two new kittens from the animal shelter to help heal our broken hearts. It's been a little over a week since we welcomed our new babies into our family and they've provided a great healing joy in our house. The kids have named them Mordecai and Rigby, but I call them Buddha and General Tso. The Man has decided to call them Sneezy and The Free One (kittens were buy one get one at the animal shelter... I kid you not).

So we're all getting back into the swing of the day to day here at the Spaz house. It's go-go-go around here with an activity every day. Between school, the barn, karate, eBay, girl scouts, and chorus, the minivan is getting a work out and so are we. I'll try to get back into a regular posting schedule soon. :)