Picking up from my last post, we still do not have anything new with the adoption. Everyone has now had a birthday. Colton has achieved another belt in taekwondo. He is now a blue belt.
CURVES: I'm still going to Curves, but I haven't been able to make my 3 visits per week for the last couple of weeks. I just had a "weigh-in". Since February I've lost almost 20 inches and a whopping 1.6 pounds. Okay, not earth shattering, but I'm still trying. I know I need to do a better job with my eating, for one thing, and get back to definitely doing 3 days a week.
COUPONING: I was SOOOO excited about this, but apparently I am a little...um...OCD about it. (Not sure that's the right label.) I have been putting WAY too much time into it. In my last post, I had hit February pretty close to average on spending. March was $100 more!! I was in shock. Toward the end of April, I was putting blogging on hold hoping to report a huge savings. Nope! I still went over--not as badly as in March, but still over. I'm feeling quite discouraged on this. Don't know exactly where I'm going from here.
APRIL 27: This was quite a day. I went to bed about 1:00AM because I had been monitoring the weather and letting Tim sleep since he had to get up early. By 5:30 or so, I was awake again watching the morning run of storms. I'm not sure what time we decided to get the kids up, but as we were getting in the closet at about 5:55AM, the noise made me think our house was about to start coming apart. When we came out we found two trees on our house and three down in the back yard. We later learned that we had been hit by an EF0 tornado. As you'll see in the pictures, the damage is not as bad as two trees could have done. And we fared WAY better than the folks in Alabama that day. We are still waiting to be visited by the insurance adjuster (on Monday), and then we should be ready to give the green light to our contractor to start fixing everything.
Finally, this wasn't technically in April, but we now have a new kindergarten graduate in our house! Eli and 6 others had their graduation ceremony last Friday night. It was very sweet. The moms and kids filed in to "Pomp and Circumstance". After a welcome, we showed the slide show I had put together of each of the kids. With only 7 grads, we could afford the time to have several pics of each one. Next, the performances. Eli was one of only 3 who did something. He recited the three pledges we have been working on: to the flag, to the Christian flag, and to the Bible. After this, the kids were seated on the stage, and each mom came up and presented their child with their diploma. Finally, we all filed back out and began to make our way to the pavillion for a pizza picnic. As we left, Eli said it was the "funnest picnic EVER!" He made some new friends, which was an answer to prayer. I'm convinced that each year should begin with a special get-together (or 2) for just the kindergarteners. They need a chance to get to know other kids early on so they can look for their friends at field trips and other such gatherings. Here are a few pics of our celebraton...
