so much to say...

so little time.

I've been wanting to blog about how much I've missed having my mom here this week, and how wonderful it was while she wase here. She kept up on dishes, laundry, did my mending (which was mostly all the knees on Noodle's pants...I guess that's what happens when you buy clothes for a six year old secondhand from Savers...), brought me glasses of water to keep me sufficiently hydrated, baked LOTS of cookies, held Sprout so I could shower/eat/homeschool/whatever, listened to me ramble about whatever, made me feel loved, and other fabulous things. My mom had a hip replaced last October (or maybe the very end of September) and so my dad was worried about her coming here. She still has to be careful about bending and lifting things. She brought her "grabber," which Spud thought was fabulous. He enthusiastically picked up toys with it on several occasions.

I've also wanted to blog that David's not very great job ended. They kept upping the requirements to make sales, and he wasn't able to meet the requirements (and neither were a lot of other folks) so that gig is over. He's working on a few other things and looking for other opportunities.

I've worked 30 hours each of the past two weeks. I'm grateful to have a job that I can do while nursing a baby. A lot of the time, one hand is sufficient. It would have been nice to take a break, but we can definitely use the money and I think keeping busy (while still being able to sit and "rest") is helpful to me to not get too down.

This week has been hard. Physically, I'm feeling pretty good, but have had some back and neck issues. Trying to balance everything is tough. Spud has had a bit of a rough adjustment to no longer being the baby of the family and we've had to deal with quite a lot of attitude, though I think he's done better this week than he did the previous few. Noodle has been a great help, though she is struggling with a challenge of her own right now (which I may or may not blog about in more detail later.) Anyways, we are in the process of getting some help with that.

We had our homeschool Valentine exchange/party on Monday, which was fun. The kids painted their boxes and wrote out their Valentines that morning. Next year I have aspirations of making homemade ones, but I think I had those aspirations for this year until Sprout arrived. :o)

Yesterday we went to the Harley-Davidson shop for a homeschool field trip. It was pretty awesome. The guy who gave us the tour was really cool and accommodating of our group of youngsters. (The bulk of our group is in the 4-8 range, which can be a bit daunting for tour givers.) I thought the kids were pretty attentive and well-behaved overall, so that was nice, too.

Oh, Noodle lost her bottom front incisors last weekend. They started wiggling back in December, I think, but she wasn't an avid wiggler so they hung on until recently. She was happy to be able to use my cute Tooth Pillow (made by my mom years ago for me) to put under her pillow. She made out like a bandit with $1/tooth! Whoo hoo! (It might not have been so much, except that she lost one Friday and the next one Saturday. I don't think the tooth fairy was aware the second was quite that loose!)

Well, I guess that's condensed version of Mindy's life lately. Just add water. Or milk, if you prefer a thicker consistency.