september!
my dear out of town friend that is by far the busiest person i know emailed me today to make sure i was okay since i hadn't blogged in weeks. here's a snippet of her email:
Now, I know you have 3000 things to do everyday and blogging can't be the top of the list, but usually you make time for it anyway. ARE YOU OKAY?
i was so encouraged by her email. really, i was. but i also had to chuckle at the "but usually you make time for it anyway" part. let me translate: "you will let your laundry pile up and you will abandon your floors, but by golly, those pictures make it to your blog! so what in tarnation has gotten in the way of your ten little fingers updating tenlittletoes!?" that's really what she meant.
well, september surely was a busy month. not really so much running here and there with the kids everyday... we spend the majority of our week at home. i have had a couple of projects that have demanded much of my evenings for the past month or so. project number one: the books.
these are just some of the books that i have been organizing and selling for my church's school. the school has changed all of its curriculum this year, and they had hundreds and hundreds of books that were no longer needed. when i saw the stacks and stacks of books in early august, i knew that they would sell on ebay or amazon. i also knew that the window of opportunity was narrowing. once homeschool families and private schools settled on their curriculum choices, there would be less of a need for these books until next year. so i began organizing and inventorying this room of books. whew! i won't lie. it was a lot of work. but i got most of them listed, and they began selling like hotcakes! i couldn't believe it! the week before labor day, i had about 30 orders a day on amazon. it got kind of nuts for a while. it started to slow down in mid-september, and then last week, it picked up again for a few days. lately, i've just had a few orders a week, and i am fine with that. it's manageable, and the hard work is over. now the books just need to keep selling! i will admit that i enjoyed the inventory process. i know, i'm a dork. and i have a really great spreadsheet to prove it!! :) i felt a serious sense of accomplishment when i turned the mess that you see above into a wanna-be bookstore stockroom. i should take an "after" picture of my organized stacks! (and if you're looking for bob jones or a beka curriculum...or glencoe math books, let me know! i may have something that you need!)
my other project for august/september was organizing kids' quest, the wednesday night kids' program at our church. i have had a lot of fun getting all of this ready, and last week was the big beginning! now that the major planning and preparation is behind me, i am really enjoying being a part of this ministry! for the last two weeks, i've been filling in for an out-of-town teacher, so i have yet to take a single picture of kids' quest. i know. it's killing me. so stay tuned for pictures of these kids in action. they are having a ton of fun while they're learning the basic truths of God's Word!
so my plate was pretty full in september. i probably should not have taken on both of those projects at the same time, but i did. and the craziness is over. and i am so thankful for my super patient husband. and i'm only slightly sleep-deprived.
here's a (sort of) quick recap of our family's september:
caroline is officially potty-trained! woohoo! we actually worked on this in july and august, and she caught on really quickly. i've been wanting to blog about this for over a month. i hope to write more about my big girl soon.
ethan was promoted from his very first sunday school class this fall... here he is with mrs. deb and his 4 year old buddies after their last sunday school class together. ethan loves his new class, too, but i think he'll always have a special place in his heart for mrs. deb. 
we've started our homeschooling journey this year, and we are blessed to be a part of a fantastic co-op group, classical conversations. we have so much fun meeting with other families once a week, and ethan and caroline are learning so much. (and honestly, so am i!) the moms are incredibly encouraging, and the older kids are so sweet to my little ones. i plan on writing more about this later. i've taken tons of pictures over the last 6 weeks!
september began with a relaxing reunion of brian's high school friends. most of his classmates are still local, but it was nice for us all to get together for lunch. here i am with rachel, her sweet boy daniel, and mara!
then came brian's birthday! the kids never give up a chance to blow out the candles... we had a wonderful family get-together to celebrate my sweet husband's day....
the next weekend, brian was still humming "happy birthday to me" as he came home with an acoustic guitar! he practices almost every night, and he's getting better every day! i told him i expected a love ballad written for me by christmas. :) 
we made a quick trip over to see brian's grandparents in september. as always, it was wonderful to see them. they couldn't believe how big amelia had gotten!
ethan has been loving writing these days... either on his magna doodle, dry erase board, or whatever he can find. usually, he will copy something that i've written down, but lately he has so much fun figuring out how to independently spell simple words. a few weeks ago, he came to me with his very first word that he spelled out and wrote all on his own. so of course i had to take a picture of it. (think of it as a baseline for his handwriting!)
and we couldn't resist just one more trip to the beach... it was a picture perfect day! i have several favorites from this day, too.... can i hope to get caught up on here one of these days!?
this was amelia's first time to get wet at the beach. she loved it! (don't worry, i put her hat back on her after a minute.) did you notice her "farkly" glasses to match caroline's?!?! 
and this week, we had ten more little toes wandering aound our house... those big brown eyes are gorgeous, aren't they!? georgia will be two at the end of october, and we loved babysitting her while her mommy was out of town. 
and i cannot forget that amelia turned 8 months old on the 22nd! pictures of that coming soon! as soon as i take them!
so there's september in a nutshell. the book orders are proving to slow down and kids' quest is off and running. i am hoping things will "get back to normal"-- whatever that means! but then again, amelia is now crawling, and my family sees the need to eat and have clean clothes every day. so i'm thinking that october will fly by at breakneck speeds as well! this afternoon was my first chance in several days to just breathe and enjoy some time at home. ethan and i got face to face with a lizard in the window, and that made my little boy's day. i cuddled up with the kids this afternoon and read book after book. and i finally folded the clothes on the love seat. so there's hope after all. :)
i have missed blogging... i look forward to getting back on here soon to talk potty training. :) have a great weekend!
(i actually wrote this on thursday, but i fell asleep while adding pictures both thursday and friday nights. i think i need some sleep!)
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