Familyversary

Familyversary-noun

1: The anniversary of the day our family was legally formed: April 3, 2006. 

Hmm, an update would be nice, wouldn't it?

Hello, sorry it's been so long. We've been a little sidetracked by life. Here's the rest of the vacation:

We very much enjoyed our week in North Carolina visiting with our good friends there. Everyone was pretty budget tight, so we spent a lot of time hanging out at their house. On Thursday of that week, we were going to their Museum of Natural Science when we had a bit of an emergency. The kids got to go to the museum, but Mom and Dad did not as we were taking care of business.

We are in San Antonio now, staying at Andrea's mom's house, but there is still business in North Carolina to take care of, so we'll be leaving here on the 31st to go back to North Carolina. We don't know everything yet and won't til we get there, so we may find ourselves needing to find housing in North Carolina.

If you're a reader in Austin, we'll be coming up this weekend for the Halloween Dance and some general socialization. We'll be in town Saturday-Monday, taking care of some Austin business on Monday (like checking a flooded PO Box!).

So, that's about it. Sorry it couldn't be a more exciting update. We'll come back after the Halloween Dance and update you again.

At least it wasn't a month

So, it's been two weeks since we last blogged. As the title suggests, it could have been worse.

So let's see, not much has happened since we last blogged. We had Shane's b-day, that went really well. Shane decided the day before that he wanted to go out to a movie with friends, so we e-mailed several and rounded up two: Daniel and Austin. Shane, Daniel, and Austin went to see StepBrothers while the moms (and Dad) buzzed around running errands and hunting down a birthday apple pie for Shane. Shane got a pair of noise canceling headphones and an Itunes giftcard from Mom and Dad, both of which he loves.

After the movie, we all went out to Red Lobster as a party of 9, which was tons of fun. We sat around telling dirty jokes, hoping we wouldn't get kicked out, when our waitress (who was in her sixties) came up and told us a few of her own. A great time was definitely had. Austin ended up staying the night and the girls went home with Daniel and his mom to hang out with Daniel's older sister, who is Karma's best friend. Austin and Shane enjoyed some little brother (read: Caedmon) torture at 3 am that had Mom get up and threaten to make them sleep in the street.

Shane declared it was his best birthday and Mom and Dad patted one another on the back.

We have two birthdays coming up this week, Caed's birthday is on Tuesday and he'll be 12. Andrea turns 29 on Thursday (no, for real) and is not feeling old in any way--unlike when Sam was turning 29 and panicked that he was getting old.

We're still on for our vacation starting September 9th. We're heading to the Mall of America first and then after that, we'll head East and hopefully see some family along the way. If we haven't called you yet, please call us if you can snag a minute, we tend to get voicemail alot!!

This year, we'll be spending a minimum of 1 week in New Hampshire as requested by Sam's family, who we only spent a day with last year. We're also planning an actual stop in NYC of at least 3 days and several days in NC with some friends of ours that moved there earlier this year.

If you're reading this and you live E of the Mississippi and would like us to visit, drop us a comment!!

Wow

Last time we posted, we committed to posting on a weekly basis. Here now it's been just over 3 weeks without a post. So, what's going on with us?

Well, our lease was up on July 31st, but we're hanging tight until we go on vacation. We moved all of our stuff into storage today, just to have it out of the way and in case we get told that the place has rented and we need to vacate. We've hung on to a few items necessary for survival, like food and a few dishes.

Let's see, what else has happened in the last 3 plus weeks? Sam and Andrea attended another workshop, which was just plain awesome. We'll have to give details about that in person, it just can't be done justice in a blog.

Oh yes, Aurora has a boyfriend now! His name is Dakota and he's a good kid. They're 1 year and one month apart, he being the older one. That's a little more of a thrill ride for Mom and Dad than Karma and her boyfriend, because those two are perfectly shy together. Aurora and hers are a little less so. We'll keep you posted.

More recently, we got Breaking Dawn, the fourth (and final?) book in the Twilight series. So far, Mom has read it and loved it. Karma and Aurora are both reading it, but Aurora was borrowing a copy that went home with our friend, so she's now impatiently interrupted. Karma is a little less than halfway through the book and thoroughly enjoying herself. If you haven't started the series yet, we highly recommend it! Everyone but Shane has read or is reading the series.

Other things that have happened recently...For the release party of Breaking Dawn, Karma and her friend Cameron were going to dye their hair black with temporary dye. They misread the package they bought and applied a not-so-temporary hair dye to their hair while Mom and Dad slept. Needless to say, both girls have black hair and will have for quite some time.

We may not have ever mentioned it, but we received a Wii for our Birthdays this year from Andrea's Mom. We now have five or six games for it and very much enjoy playing. So much so, that we are bringing it on our vacation this year.

Oh yes, for those that we haven't announced to yet, we are taking a vacation on Sept 9th, until no later than November 11th. We will be travelling first to MN to see the Mall of America before continuing on to see Sam's family in NH in late Sept and Karma's boyfriend's family in NC in mid-October. We have no other set or solid plans, but if you would like us to drop in and see you, please let us know! If you are a certain sister-in-law with a brand-new (nearly 1 year old) son that we haven't met yet, we would love to stop and see y'all for a day or two (or more if you're up for it).

So, that's about it! Shane's b-day is this week, so we'll come back and update y'all later in the week.

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.

Vacation Soon?

Well, Sam got ahold of the MAB today. Apparently, they had not yet gotten his paperwork to the actual boardmembers for review yet. He spoke with a boardmember today who told him that they meet tomorrow and will review his case if his paperwork arrived sometime later today or early tomorrow. If it does, they'll review it tomorrow (Thursday) and call him as well to let him know their verdict. If it does not, they don't meet for another 2 weeks. We guess we'll find out tomorrow.

Our departure date hinges on their meeting. Sam doesn't want to leave without his license. Andrea is mixed because of her desire to go to the Vallejo concert. One thing she's sure of, if they don't give him his license back within 2 weeks, she'll just do all the driving herself. We've been digging into our vacation money with all the lackadaisical spending we've been doing on eating out, etcetera. If we don't go soon, we won't be going at all because we won't have enough money.

Needless to say, everyone's antsy about the whole thing. We cleaned the house today in the event we do get to leave on time, we want it clean before we go. Also, we invited a friend to stay while we're gone and we don't want to leave her with a pigsty if she decides to stay.

That's about it tonight.

April Fool's Day...

Well, we forgot it was April Fool's Day today, much like we forgot about St. Paddy's day. We celebrated Easter a week early though. We took the family vote in regards to the trip and decided that if Sam gets his license back on time, we'll leave on time. Only two people wanted to delay the trip anyway, in honor of our friends and their concert. Everyone else is feeling desperate to take our first ever family vacation.

We got a desperate and anxious e-mail from the "invisible" member of our family, the biological mother of the children. It took some time, but we finally came up with reassuring words that relaxed her for now. We're waiting to hear back from a friend who can give us a hook-up for legal advice. We're looking forward to that, though it looks like we won't be able to do anything until we return from our vacation. Fortunately, we did some of our own legal research last week and found some laws that will help us get what we want in this situation.

We're sort of adrift as a family at the moment, not really socially involved at all. We've been sort of floating into a nocturnal lifestyle (it's natural for 4/5 of us), going to bed around 4 or 5 in the morning. We had some problems waking up early because of sunlight flooding into our rooms (or not sleeping well enough), so we put thick coverings over our windows. It's working for now. On the bright side, this much quality time is good for us, especially the kids in sibling bonding.

Karma's mohawk is getting long enough to be shaped out. Everyone else will be growing their hair out until after we return from vacation. We could be going to court late Spring/early Summer, so we're kind of holding off for that.

Not much else is going on as we haven't really done anything else, but just wanted to let you know we're still here.

Thinkin' of Delayin'

We forgot to mention our woohoo last week...our exchange student is finally gone! He begged his exchange program and his parents and left five days early, last Friday. Our entire family is relieved to have him gone, to finally have just us and be able to focus on us as a family. Friday night, we went out to see Bridge to Terabithia, which was a fantastic movie, definitely a tearjerker.

Then, as previously mentioned, we went to the Families Rock! concert on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. On Sunday, Aurora and Karma decided that we need a family newspaper which will keep our family updated on what is going with ourselves. We're going to try to include some of their content here on our site, to tell it from the children's perspectives. They published their first paper today and we will try to get it scanned in and posted on here as a picture. If it doesn't come through, we'll just type out some of the content.

As for the title of this post, this has to do with our vacation. We still haven't gotten Sam's license back yet and we'd really like to have two drivers before we hit the road. Also, our good friends at Families Rock! are producing a concert with the legendary Vallejo on April 14th and we would really like to attend. The subject has been broached to 4/5 of the family (Caed is always the last to know) and we will be taking a group vote sometime this week or weekend. So far though, we all feel torn in two because we love our friends, would love to be there to support them in their most awesome venture yet, plus catch a kick-butt concert, but on the flip-side, we're really feeling the need for the road trip. We think we're coming to the conclusion that putting off the road trip a week and a half won't really hurt and we'll also be able to make sure we get Sam's license.

Well, in the infamous words of Porky Pig, "That's all Folks!"

Out of this World...

It seems like we've been out of the world lately. Fortunately, it turns out Andrea is not broken, just sprained, but in pain nonetheless. Our exchange student is on Spring Break this week, so we've been getting to sleep in, which has been just plain nice. We got up early this morning to go to soccer, so we're all a little sleepy today.

Sam and Andrea saw 300 last night, we loved it!! Andrea thought there was some senseless nudity (not like she minded seeing that much of Gerard Butler, she just wished there was a reason) and was a little put off by the CGI blood spatters, but enjoyed the story and acting. Sam loved the story and the soundtrack, he wants to get ahold of the soundtrack for home listening. He also enthusiastically states, "We need to own it!"

Our vacation is definitely a go, unfortunately though, due to circumstances beyond our control, we've had time limits imposed, so we'll only be able to take 3 weeks. We might try to drag it by a day or two, but don't think we can get away with much. With those kinds of time constraints, we're going to be limiting our number of stops, just so we have enough time to enjoy the ones we will have. We've decided to take care of family obligations first so that we can take all of our leisurely time after.

We're trying to get Sam's license business taken care of so that he can share the driving on the trip. We've got an appointment for him on the 21st to be checked out by a doctor, given the okay to drive, etc. After that, we just have to wait for the MAB to approve his license and then we can pay the $124 to get it reinstated. We're leaving on 4/6, so we're just hoping that the license business can be taken care of in the 2 weeks between the appt. and our departure.

Broken!

We're not all broken, just Andrea. After scolding Caed and Brian (the exchange student) yesterday morning, she caught her foot on the corner wall outside their room and broke her toe. Actually, we're not 100% sure it's broken, because Andrea always thinks her toes have been broken, but this time, she swears the pain is much worse than usual and now more than 24 hours later, the swelling is worse, not better. She is using a boot given to her at the hospital last year when she did sprain her foot (it wasn't broken). She plans to go have it x-rayed tomorrow if it hasn't improved (definitely if it's still worse).

This last week has been pretty good for the family, though. We got to spend some good times at soccer and then at lunch afterwards with our friends: Jenn, Austin, Sunny, and Kesley. We also had new friends: Angela, Astra (sp?), May (sp?), Milo, Eric, and Eric's mom that joined us at lunch.

At work, Andrea received a new Friday student, a 4 year old boy who is a hard worker and joy to talk to. Also, Andrea requested to not work on Mondays and Wednesdays anymore and she looks forward to having more time with the family.

Sadly, we were not able to attend First Thursday this month, Karma was quite disappointed, but everyone was quite sleep deprived and we just couldn't stay up/out that late. Also, we missed the kite festival this morning, due to Andrea catching up on some much needed sleep.

Sam's back/neck are feeling better, he anticipates being able to function normally again beginning tomorrow.

Karma has come up with a kick-butt work of art that she is able to reproduce. It's a version of the UT symbol, so we're looking into copyrights/licenses to see if she can market her art on bumper stickers, etc.

The whole family is having further discussions on Andrea's business venture idea. Andrea got some good information from Jenn on Thursday, which sadly she can't remember all of, but she'll ask again when she gets the chance and we'll look more into it as a family.

We've also talked to some relatives over the weekend, letting them know we're planning our trip north in April, folks seem fairly jazzed, so we're getting (more) excited.

Well, I think you have the full dharma update now.

What a week!

We got a couple Families Rock! t-shirts from our Families Rock! friend Jenn. Sam got smashed on the head by several boxes and is currently laying in bed drugged. Karma feels ignored and so swore at us in her daily essay. Aurora and Caed are sleep-deprived (who isn't in this house these days?) and are having trouble conducting themselves. Of course, Drea is so sleep-deprived, she swears and yells every time someone looks at her funny. We're counting down the days (only 29 left!) to the departure of our exchange student, which will allow us to focus on our family again.

We're still hoping to depart on family vacation on April 7th, if we can manage to keep it together long enough to put it together. Of course, we're not all too sure we are still together. :(

I just got grunted at by a cat for my typing. :)