All's well. Back at work. (have my camera.) We are very busy and I've realized I have to consciously schedule down time or it will get eaten up by all the fun places to go and people to see. I am writing down what to do and what we did in a notebook for now, hoping to get a bit more organized. Current house status: very tidy, 3 loads of dishes to finish, 7 loads of laundry to fold, 1 guitar to practice. The girls and I have plans to jog at 7:30, as we haven't logged mileage for our "race" in a while. We'll see how that goes. Eleanor made really cute paper dolls for her history club book report this week. I didn't help her at all. Will post pictures when the dishes are done. Charlotte made a ferris wheel car out of recycled boxes, etc. We are house hunting pretty seriously. We've been out twice and are on our second agent, who we're happy with now. We've seen some maybes. I'm really hoping for some studio space where I can have students, especially with the more precarious nature of my job lately.

I was really dragging my feet about going back to work because it's hard to homeschool and keep house and work, but I LOVE it. I love teenagers. They intimidated me the first year a little bit, but I feel like we're good now. And I like teaching art. I've taught the same courses now for 10 semesters, so I've got it pretty down. That's a relief - no more late night lesson planning. Of course I still tweak it every time.

We visited some new friends in Hyde Park this weekend. They were really cool and I can't believe how cool Hyde Park was. If we moved to the city, that is completely where we'd head. I love me some lake.

I had to cancel Eleanor's theatre class. It was too much. House-hunting is a lot. Next semester, Eleanor. I also regret sending Charlotte to the fancier ballet school. I should have saved our money and gone to the park district at this age. I might do that for the spring. I don't know what got into me. Keep It Simple, Stupid.