Hey Howdy and Hello

Hey, hope you're having a good day. After all, two more days until the weekend, right?

Life continues to be busy on my end, but hey, I keep thinking it should be different five years from now. :)

The kids got off the school without a hitch. So, that's a big sigh of relief.

Last night the coaches cut short Jo's practice due to the heat. That was also a sigh of relief. I got home at 7:30 last night! Woo-hoo! I didn't know what to do with myself! I've been getting home around 9 p.m. every night. Then I usually have the animals to feed and water and usually at least one load of laundry to do. Last night, Jess fed and watered the animals right after school, which was a blessing! I actually woke up once in the middle of the night and thought, "Oh my gosh! The animals!" and then realized she'd taken care of them. :)

Robert came home after work yesterday, rearranged the house, cooked, cleaned and was just full of energy. He even gave me a back rub, since I'd had a tough day. I thought I'd suddenly entered a parallel universe...one I would prefer to stay in!

What was a bad work day ended up being not such a bad evening. That's a great feeling. To actually come home and feel a sense of peace and tranquility at home instead of strife is amazing. Usually I look forward to going to work to get away from the stress of home. I sure could use more evenings like yesterday!

One good thing that's going on is at the first of August we rented a storage unit. We'd had so much stuff piled around...and the house is way too small in the first place. After we shut down the toy shop, we put all of that inventory in our house. No way was that working!

Then, we moved the remainder of our boxes from our "city" house (finally) to our "country" house when Robert's sister started moving in. That stuff sat around, unpacked, because we didn't have time to mess with it. Or even room to move it around. Some might say, "well, if you haven't used it in so long, throw it away." Easier said than done. Most of the stuff was framed portraits and collages and family mementos.

So, we have a lot more room now that we have the storage unit. We can now take our time and go through it and get rid of what we don't need, sell some, give away some, toss some, keep what we want. It's great to be able to move about a little....and see our walls! Boxes packed to the ceiling do not make for very nice decor.

Sigh. The perils of the working parents with two teenagers, two houses, too many pets and zero time.

Okay, duty calls. Bipsy and I will be making another trip to Tennessee next month to do safety training. Plus I'm doing a personnel newsletter for our sister company there. In conclusion, I have a lot to do and very little time.

If you don't see me as often visiting your blog or if I don't post, it's not that I don't love you or care about you. It's simply that I'm overwhelmed and doing what I can to get caught up. What goes up must come down, so this trend can't last forever! I am eager to get some time to visit with you soon! Until then, many hugs and much love!