It's safe to say that I won't win any frequent writing awards, given the overall dearth of news coming out of this blog in recent months. That's not to say that nothing has been happening. Au contraire, there have been lots of changes in the months since I last wrote - enough that to attempt to summarize them all in a single post would be somewhat ridiculous.
It is now creeping up on two years since we returned from England, and I suppose you can say we're as settled as we can be. We are in our house, with which my wife and I share a love/hate relationship. There is much to be done in the house, and we have once again begun some small steps towards the overall renovation, but to be honest I don't think I realized just how much work (and money) getting the house to look like we want would take. Nonetheless, we've begun to tackle small things around the house, and sometimes, even the small things can make a decent difference.
In other news, I changed jobs this past summer. The new job promises to allow more free time and a better work life balance, but time will tell. So far, it has been much less stressful than my previous job, which is definitely a good thing. It also has great promise for future development and so far, it's been a good change of pace from the world to which I had grown accustomed. This is my first non-busy "busy season" in some six years, and I am still trying to figure out what life is really supposed to be like on the other side.
The kids spent summer mostly at the pool and started school in their new grades this past fall. School is going much better this year than last, but I remain amazed that Dalton will be in middle school next year. He is also transitioning to Boy Scouts in a few weeks, both of which I suppose signify something about how quickly he is growing up. Mich and I were looking at pictures this past weekend, and noticed how little he (and Maggie) were when we first arrived in England. Time really does fly by.
Maggie still deeply loves her ballet dancing, and I for one, enjoy seeing her dance. It's one of those things where she dances because she loves it, and I think it comes through. The joy of the dance. She wants to take horse-riding lessons, and piano lessons, so we'll see what comes of it. I'm undecided at the moment, although having a piano player in the house would be nice, especially considering that at the moment, we simply have the piano, but nobody really knows how to play. We had decided to delay any sort of lessons for the time being, simply to make sure that she was giving the appropriate focus to her school work. As I mentioned above, school is going much better this year, so we may elect to allow her to take lessons of one kind or another in the near future.
For those of you not in Alabama, you may not realize that this year has been extremely unusual from a weather perspective. The kids have used all of their weather days already due to multiple snows, icy conditions, and other wintry weather, and any additional school cancellations will result in days being added to the school schedule. We actually got snow on Christmas Day, and the day after we had about an inch or so of accumulation. We built a fire and I ended up sitting inside reading and lazing about. It was quite nice and cozy.
That's enough of an update for now. I'll try to make sure it's not quite as long between updates next time.
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