Why, Hello There!

I am totally embarrassed by my lack of blogging. Let's dust off the cobwebs shall we and catch up!

The biggest news is that my job went from part-time to full-time in January. Hello, good insurance benefits and retirement plan! Many, many thanks to my parents and in-laws who graciously (crazily?) agreed to watch Kangaroo Girl and Monkey Boy after school. I love working full-time and I can get so much done at work instead of having to leave projects unfinished when I worked part-time and left at 2 pm.  Granted, it was an adjustment on the home front with meal planning, laundry, cleaning, etc. but it all worked out and I'm in the swing of things with planning the next day's meals the day before and not at 2:45 pm the same day!

I'm still sewing and monogramming anything and everything. I love this quote by Reese Witherspoon:

So therefore I whipped up this zippered pouch made from some vintage Lilly fabric I upcycled from a skirt I found at Goodwill and I put my initial on it. So cute and it was easy! The pouch is from the wonderful blog So Sew Something .

I'm gearing up for the next round of beach bags to make. I picked up some fabulous purple fabric to use as a lining and I am hunting up the outside fabric and trim. I have lots of projects in mind and I hope to get some sewing done this weekend. It is supposed to be cloudy and rainy here, perfect for sewing!

Monkey Boy got an iPad for his birthday/Christmas and we are working with him on using it as a communication device. They really use the iPad at school and we are doing the same with him at home. The hardest part was to get him from being so "tap happy" and impulsively tapping the icons to choosing the icons to meaningfully communicate. We'll get there! The Autism Society of NC had an iPads and Autism seminar last weekend in Asheville but it was not a good weekend for us to go. I'm banking on them hosting a similar seminar in Charlotte or somewhere closer than Asheville.

Kangaroo Girl will be in middle school (!) next year. The 5th graders toured the middle school recently and she loved it! She is so excited about going to a new school. The big news is that band and chorus will now start in 6th grade instead of 7th and she chose chorus instead of band. She was the only one in her class that chose chorus! That surprised me and I'm glad she stuck to her decision to be in chorus though literally everyone else in her class chose band. We're also getting ready for her dance recital in one month, she is dancing a solo this year to "I Hope You Dance" by Lee Ann Womack. Dance photos were last night and I can't wait to see her dance at the recital!

We made it  through another tax season, hooray! To celebrate, we let Anna pick out where she wanted to go on our first day trip the weekend after April 15th. She chose IKEA! Great choice Anna! They were having a free shredding event too so Tim had a box full of papers to shred and I cleaned out random paperwork at home to have shredded. IKEA was wonderful, as always, and we of course hit up multiple Goodwill stores. It was a great day all around and I'm excited to start taking day trips again now that Tim isn't chained to a computer, cranking out tax returns and extensions.

That's about the size of it! Writing this piece has made me think of other topics worth blogging about. Stay tuned for my indecisiveness about a duvet vs. comforter vs. quilt vs. throwing a blanket over the whole bed and being DONE with trying to redo the bedding ensemble. I tend to slightly overthink things.

Until next time,
Melissa