10 Things Tuesday

1. I am done Christmas shopping for Benjamin and Lilyanna and am very excited about their presents!  I will be done with the other kids next week.

2. The laundry in this house may devour us all.  Clean laundry, mind you.  The approaching storm made us get laundry clean just in case we lost power (something we do with alarming regularity in this neighborhood every time there is a healthy breeze).

3. Speaking of the approaching storm, I have been something of a nervous wreck for the last few days.  Watching all of my favorite Jersey shore boardwalks, beach towns and haunts get pummeled, not to mention the crazy things going on in North Jersey and NYC, has made me all edgy.  It has taken everything in me to not be in constant communication with friends and relatives in our home state to check in on them. Instead I frequently check in on facebook for updates and keep my phone at hand at all times to check for texts letting us know how everything is going there. I didn't know how to verbalize this anxiety to anyone, until I saw my friend today at preschool drop-off.  She is from NJ, too, and has friends and relatives all along the coast as well.  She totally got it. (Thanks, Val!)

4. Last week I read three books.  This may help explain the massive piles of bags of clean laundry.

5. I'm going to attempt to make gluten free homemade oreos or gluten free homemade twix.  If you clicked on either of those links, you'll see that they aren't actually gf.  I will make a gf sugar cookie mix and go from there.  If they work, I will shout from the rooftops...and possibly gain 5lbs because oreos and twix are two of my favorite things and I've gone without them for more than a year!

6. I do not like candy corn, but every year I find myself snitching a couple just to make sure that is still true.  It's been 36 years.  It seems like at this point I should just accept it.

7. This year I forced Caleb to take tap dance.  I am mean like that.  However, two of his favorite friends signed up as well, so it's become one of the things that he looks forward to each week.  And he practices all week long.  I'm very happy about his happiness.  However, I now have not one, but TWO children who tap dance in the shower!

8. Today it snowed.  Tomorrow we Trick-or-Treat.  I have plans to do cute Halloween dinner things like this and this.  We'll see if that all comes together.

9. I love my belly dancing class and am so glad Heather the Awesome suggested it to me all those years ago.  It's been fun to learn something new and learn a different type of dancing than I've ever been exposed to before.

10. I am obsessed with Private Selection Cherry Cordial Hot Chocolate Mix at Kroger right now.  (Smith's probably has it, too, western folk.)  It warms my tummy every night lately. Try it.

Mr. Smith Talks Like Washington

Today after getting stuck in traffic for what feels like the gazillionth time in this election season, I called my husband and we had this conversation:

Me: Your candidate or his running mate are in town and made my commute back from the orthodontist this afternoon TERRIBLE!

Him: It was Romney.  He was at Worthington Industries today.

Me: We just happened to be able to inch off the highway to get on the other highway and lucked out that it was only closed going the other direction. So we were only stuck an extra 20 minutes.

Him: I'd rather my commute time go up a few times a year because of my candidate than my taxes go up (which they already have) because of yours.

Me: [Much laughter] And there's your political slogan, my dear. You're ready for office!

For the record, this is the most politically charged conversation we have had maybe ever.  Early on in our marriage it was very clear that we did not lean in the same political directions.  We respect one another enough to not try to argue our positions.  If pressed, we can both calmly explain why we make the choices we make.  I know that Todd is very thoughtful in all of his decisions, so I don't feel the need to try to think for him.  I'm not sure if that's why he doesn't try to change me, or if it's just because he knows how stubborn I am. ;)

It always surprises me when others are surprised that we vote on things differently and that we are okay as a couple.  It never even occurred to me that politics might be a problem in a relationship.  Perhaps another one of the advantages of marrying young before you really know anything about the world.  Whatever the reason, our home is a calm port in the face of the political tempest that brews outside our door this time of year.  I'm grateful for the very large part Todd plays in making it so. 

10 Things Tuesday

I need a meme to get me to step back into blogging.  So this is it for now.

1. Homeschooling is going much better than I anticipated, thanks for asking.  A friend told me that the first couple of months should just be a throw away, but I don't feel like that at all.  We're in a routine.  A crazy and chaotic routine most of the time, but a routine nonetheless.  Nathaniel still goes over to the school for gym, art, music, advanced math, choir, and strings.  Which means that he runs back and forth between the school and home all day long, but is actually challenged this year. Caleb goes to the school still for art and music but goes to a local rec center for homeschool gym.  One of these days I'll do a whole post devoted to the curriculum and supplies we use, just because I found it so incredibly helpful to read what others were using.

2.  Lilyanna is doing a little ballet class and in a totally last minute thing a few weeks ago is also now in preschool!  A friend of ours has a little guy who is six weeks older than Lilyanna.  When I saw on her blog that he was doing preschool, I quickly emailed her looking for the details.  It turned out Lilyanna was too young for the class, BUT my friend mentioned it to the teacher who said that they weren't full so they would be willing to bend the rules a bit!!  Yay!  Anyway, my incredibly social child is thrilled to be hanging out with other kids a couple mornings each week instead of with boring me.

3.  Caleb was diagnosed with a visual processing disorder a few months ago.  This explained a lot of things, and helped us to understand some things about the way he learns better than anything else.  Because of this, we go to vision therapy for an hour every week.  Caleb loves it and I get an hour to read.  I always bring a book, but end up reading the office copy of People magazine cover to cover.  It's like a drug.  I pick it up to look on the front cover and then it's been an hour and the therapist needs to talk to me to give me homework for the week with Caleb.  I'm not proud of this problem.  But I suppose there are worse things to get sucked into.

4. I am exhausted by politics.  I have hit some kind of information/question overload and as a female Mormon Democrat who lives in Franklin County, Ohio the ENTIRE WORLD wants to speak with me!  I'm done.

5.  I hate cleaning.

6.  I love Pinterest.  It's fun and I've actually done a few of the projects and made a few of the recipes I pinned.  I feel this is key to actually spending time on Pinterest. ;)

7.  We saw a family of deer walking down our street this morning.  It was lovely with all the fallen leaves and sunshine and made me smile.

8.  I am awesome at road trips with kids.  I should write a post about that.  Seriously, people.  I know things.

9.  My carefully orchestrated piano teaching schedule has recently collided with my carefully orchestrated schedule for my kids' dance classes.  I feel like all scheduling hell has broken loose and I'm just trying to grab at wisps of former orderliness in the mess of it all.  It will all be fine, of course. This is not a real problem.

10.  I want to spend more time outside, but I always feel pressed by so many things inside.  You would think homeschooling would make it easier to be outside.  I have not found this to be the case.  When one is homeschooling a child with some pretty intense attention issues that whole "Squirrel!" type distraction is far more than an amusing catch phrase.

See you next Tuesday...or sooner...