Wow, where have we been?

Geeze, another month has passed and you haven't heard hide nor hair from us.

Well, Andrea has been working (as previously mentioned) and since she does most of the typing in the house, that makes for fewer posts. :)

We've done a few things in the last month. Andrea's best friend, Stephanie did indeed move out into her own, spacious 1 bedroom apartment. Her puppy, Koopa now gleefully runs throughout all the space that is hers. Our house seems a little empty with Steph gone, but we're dealing. We plan to put to use the bedroom that she vacated, that'll happen...sometime.

Andrea has been hating her job for the most part, though it got a little better last week when she talked to one of the higher-ups and found out that they hate the place as much as she does and are working to make it better. The only question that remains is, "Can they make it better before it sinks?"

The other thing about the job, even if it becomes the best place to work ever, Andrea will still be away from everyone else for 45 or more hours per week. That part sucks. Is there enough money to ever really make that worth it?

Everyone else is pretty much same, same. It's an adjustment for everyone to have Andrea gone so many hours and everyone's been dealing with that in their own way. Mostly, they've been spending a lot of time together, which is good.

Karma has a "boyfriend" now. I say "boyfriend" because she's 13 and he's 15, not a whole lot of "boyfriendly" stuff going on there. One really good thing about that though is that our family gets along really well with his family. We spent his birthday hanging out together, where he mostly talked to Sam and tried to not ignore Karma. He didn't do so well on the trying part. But that's okay, that's why he's her "boyfriend."

Let's see, over the past month, we've been to a Social Club dance, been to Alex's (Karma's boyfriend) birthday party, been to a tour of the Austin Museum of Art, and been to the first ever Austin Green City Festival. At the latter was where we spent the day with Alex's family.

Caedmon is starting structured homeschooling again. We're not sure he'll ever be able to really unschool. We're going to try to leave him with the ability to explore and find knowledge on his own, but because of his past, he may never be able to "break free of the system."

Aurora has asked for more structure in her unschooling. She's always kind of liked some structure but we also think this is because of what she's been through. Being jerked back and forth in custody is a little unstable and makes it difficult to be a structured person. We have confidence though, that she'll eventually be able to structure herself.

Karma is just as unstructured as ever, but that works for Karma. That is her structure. She actively seeks knowledge wherever she can find it and she's better for it. We're contemplating giving her some structure in some specific areas, or at least giving her some tools to accomplish certain kinds of learning, in Grammar, for example. :)

Sam and Karma have acquired Guild Wars Nightfall which Sam plays constantly (or pretty constantly) because that's what Sam does. On the bright side, Karma's Alex also has the game, so they stay up late online together some nights, playing in game with Sam.

Ah yes, Karma's birthday is coming up. We're working on sorting out what to do for her birthday. Mom has some ideas, but Karma is reading the screen, so we won't post them here. :)

All the kitties are mostly the same. One very positive thing to note is that Axl has started gaining weight and getting bigger, ever since we had him dewormed for tapeworms specifically. When he was treated before, he was too little for tapeworm dewormer, so it was never done. Also, on positive notes, Cyrano seems to be getting sick less. He still really needs to see the vet, but it's kinda like the car, we know the estimate for repair is going to be high, so we hesitate taking him/it in for a check-up.

That's about it for now.

To close, we'd like to give a shout-out to our BareNaked friends, who will be coming home to Austin next week. Hi guys! We miss you lots and are sorry we haven't taken the time to respond on MySpace. We can't wait to see you and think it would be great if we could throw you a coming home party...

Lots of love,

The Dharma Family6

Safe and Sound

We arrived home at about 11:30 p.m tonight, safe and sound, well maybe not so sound. We saw some lovely thunderstorms while crossing Dallas, several points where we had to drive 20 mph and even one point where we had to pull completely off the road and go hide in a truck stop with about 20 other people. Had it not been for the weather, we'd have been home around 10pm. C'est la vie!

We're of course exhausted, but not quite ready for bed. We sent the kids off to bed, they were passed out in the car anyway. We're just chillin' out on the couch now thinkin' about everything and nothing all at once. We got some crap to do tomorrow, gotta go pick up our mail, clean out the rental, maybe get it returned (has to be done in 12 hours), get Sam's license, and go to the bank.

The cats are very happy to have us home. At first, they looked at us like, "Who the hell are you people, and where is that nice calm couple that's been coming over?" Then, when they recognized us, they got some preliminary pets and proceeded to ignore us for about a half hour in protest of our 3 week absence. Now, only Cyrano is really cuddly, cuddled up to Momma, of course. Everyone else has had a bit more love, though.

The rats are happy to have us home also...Poor Demi, Karma's rat, needs a one-way trip to the vet. She has a mammary tumor that in the 3 weeks we've been gone is now about half of her pre-tumor size. Foxie rang her bell for some attention, got some, then proceeded to ring her bell again because she wanted more. The girls told her she will just need to wait until morning.

Well, there's a lot more to talk about, but that can be another post.