A little bit of this, and a little bit of that!!!!

In true fashion with my scattered life lately, I have a few things to update on!!!! Sorry if your head has been spinning reading along lately. Its what happens when you mix a busy life with a busy family of 6!!!!


Dallas and Gabe's first couple of days of school are now over. We still officially have today and tomorrow left of the week, but the first two days are done, and we've gotten a taste of how the year will go for the boys. Dallas came home his first day with a folder FULL of things. It looks like they really got a great fun kick off to the year. They had one of the traditional class mixers, where you have to go around asking people what they did during the summer, and you had to get them to sign their name. Dallas is such a family guy though, that for the "did something crazy" he wrote in his brothers name, and told them all the story of Gabriel swimming to the platform a few weeks ago at the camper. And how Gabriel wouldn't get off the platform until "Mr. Bee" scared him back into the water. He makes me so proud with how much his siblings mean to him. So many teachers tell us all about how much he shares about his siblings! Hopefully that's all good things he's sharing!!! And Gabriel came home TALKING. He talked NON STOP about how his day was! I think that what the teacher did on the orientation night may have shocked us, but it REALLY seems to have worked! He said he really likes his teacher, which is AWESOME! She even came up to me yesterday after school and told me that she thinks its going to be a lot of fun to have Gabriel in class. That he's talking, sharing his opinions, and seems to be a real joy. That was AMAZING for me to hear. Gabriel has been shy since the day he was born! Hearing that he's made such strides in just a couple of days is music to my ears! I think Gabriel may be in place to have an awesome year!!!! I'm very hopeful for both of the boys!!!


We got more news on the new house yesterday too. It turns out that the city is going to let us pull the plumbing permit after all, and not require us to have a licensed plumber do all the work. This is wonderful news! Its going to save us SO much money!!! The only thing the guy said was that in the state of Minnesota you're not required to be a licensed plumber to be an inspector, and that's why the law is in place. But that he IS a licensed plumber, as well as the inspector, so as long as Todd would meet with him for an hour at the house so he could go over everything he needed to see, he would issue the permit!!! That meeting will be taking place Friday at 3:00 pm. WOO HOO!!!! I'm so happy! One more step in the process of getting things done, and one more weight lifted off of Todd's shoulders! he was really stressing about having to hire a plumber. He called in all of his contacts at work, but no one was able to do it for him. And he didn't want to hire just some random plumber. Todd KNOWS what he's doing, and WANTS to do it himself. Heck, this is the kind of thing he does as part of his job. I'd trust him more than some stranger off the street. Either way, we're good to go! YAY!!!

In other Todd news, Todd came home last night saying that there may be a prospective new job out there for him. Its with the same company, and is something they've been trying to career path him towards for awhile. It would be making the jump from Maintenance to Manager. Right now he's doing the same job he's been doing for the last 6 years, and he's ok with that. His manager is VERY accommodating with family things, and time he may need, and just in general its a good set up. He loves where he works, and how its allowed him to help out others in the company, and make a name for himself. But in doing so, its now come to a point where his name is the one coming up for these promotions. And it sounds like he'll be trying for this one. It would be for a property a little closer to home, but with much DIFFERENT clientele. Right now he's got professionals, such as grad students, and professors at the U of M, as well as families. Going to this other property it would be a little more. ...thuggy. This is the property that my brother in law and sister in law used to live at. We've seen the people who live here, and it would be a total change for him. This worries me. He's dealt with this level of living in the past, where there's a lot of government aide, and it goes one of two ways. You get awesome people who have the help because they really need it, and appreciate it, and you get those who abuse the system and expect everything handed to them on a silver platter. This level of things stressed him out before. It isn't a laid back, I understand you have a life too, type of environment that he's used to now. So we'll see. He's said that he'd only do this if there was a written guarantee that if something didn't work out, or he didn't like it, that they'd have a maintenance opening for him somewhere. That way he has an out. A safety net if you will. I'm nervous and excited for him. If this is what he wants to do, I'll support him 100%. And after talking about it last night, it sounds like this is the step in heading towards the job he REALLY wants in the end. The overall maintenance supervisor at the corporate office. On the plus side, this would mean more money. And really, who couldn't use more money??? It would also mean getting rid of on call. Which would lift a HUGE weight from our family. We're restricted to doing things out of town to only 2 weekends of the month right now because he's on call. But on the down side, its a manager job. And the first one to go if there's a problem is usually the top person, and they work down. It would also be a salary job. Which would mean no matter the over time (and there's a lot in this job!) he wouldn't get paid for it. It's exciting, and nerve wracking all at the same time. I guess we'll just have to see where things go once he turns in his resume!!!!

And on that note, off I go to continue packing, cleaning, and wrangling kids!!!

(please pardon the spelling errors. For some reason spell check isn't working for me right now!)