Minion Monday!

Hey, everybodeeeee! It's ME, your friendly (hopefully helpful) Minion! (OK, well, Cherie's Minion, actually, but I think you all know what I mean...)

So Minion Monday is going to happen every...we haven't really decided how often. It's going to be when I'm going to talk about all the fun stuff that's happening in my life & how I manage all that along side wrangling Cherie from a distance (it's really mostly just a lot of emailing and messaging and blogging and reading, and LBR I'd be doing a fair bit of it ANYWAY; this is just slightly more formalized.)

So, since it's right here, we're just going to talk kids and school and loooong school breaks right now, shall we?

Quick background for those of us who are new here, and a catch-up for everybody else because, yeah, it's been a while -- I've also been really bad lately about keeping up with my personal blog, so...

Hubby was military from the time I got pregnant with VelcroBoy (my youngest, who is currently 8) until this past summer (he also had several years in from straight-outta-high-school, which was  LONG time ago -- he's 11 years older than I am, the Dirty Old Man/Cradle-Robber! ;) ) and now that he's no longer military, he's back in his fall-back career as a trucker.* Theoretically, he's supposed to be staying primarily in the southeast, but he's pretty much been all over the place since he started this job. It's kinda ridiculous, actually.

Ours is not gonna be this awesome.

The kids this year are in 8th grade (Girl-child), 4th grade (DinoBoy), and 3rd grade (VelcroBoy), and DinoBoy is in the gifted program finally this year -- I've gotten permission notes for testing for him since Kindergarten, but either he didn't test in before & I just wasn't informed, or they didn't bother testing him until last year. VelcroBoy's teacher has had him started on testing, also, and I have to be honest, I'm having mixed feelings about this because of the experiences I'm having with the Gifted program this year with DinoBoy. Apparently the Gifted curriculum doesn't change from year to year, and because it's a one-day-a-week thing, it's very homework-intesive. By which I mean, the homework tends to be big projects, due the next week. We've done a diorama (It has to have a boat! and a lighthouse! and a dock! and a building! I mean two buildings!), a papier mache figurehead, a couple of knotting/macrame projects (for which I had to learn how to do it then teach DinoBoy because apparently he doesn't learn well from videos/written instructions), and, over Thanksgiving, a boat-in-a-bottle. Yes, I have spent the last week(ish) stressing about getting a boat in a bottle.

My kids get a whole week off for Thanksgiving, which, if we could have managed to go visit family, would have been awesome. My dad SO NEEDS the joy of helping his grandson put a boat in a bottle! We're just lucky DH was able to be home; he helped with the wood and sharp knives portion of the event; I'll figure out the rest of it over the next couple of days. Woohoo?

Also, because of the New Job-ness of the DH's new job, we have managed to completely deplete our savings, just in time to be completely broke for Christmas, with my car (minivan) with two (count them, TWO) flat tires that we can't afford to replace and DH's car (a slightly elderly Jeep) having issues that he believes are the carburetor (which, again, we can't afford to actually do anything about, even IF he were enough of a backyard mechanic to feel confident that he wouldn't leave it more broken than it already is... *sigh*

this is how crocheting makes me feel...

Part of my "Ugh we're SO BROKE for Christmas" thing is that this year, I am Making Things for my kids. & maybe for other people if I don't get all frustrated & burnt out before I can get to them. For VelcroBoy, I am crocheting a blanket. I'm going granny-square, and it's just going to be one giant one and it just keeps going and going and going and I'm starting to feel like it's never going to be done... It's a multicolor-y yarn in beachy shades ranging from nearly-white to a rich, deep blue. For DinoBoy, I'm going to (try to) crochet a scarf from Pittsburgh colors (black & gold -- well, yellow), the simplest pattern I can find. For Girl-child, I don't know. I might have a cut-&-sew apron lying around; I can either go ahead & do it myself, or just give it to her to do herself. We'll see how the crocheting goes. But the crocheting is problematic for me, primarily because I can't really read while I do it, and I'm not really a fan of TV-ing. But I have to. I've found that something light but long-ish works best for me. Sitcoms are great, but the half-hour (which is really about 20 min or so once commercials are out) is just too short. & I'm watching on Netflix or Amazon, or DVD, so... I've found that the BBC's Jeeves and Wooster (starring Hugh Laurie & Steven Fry) is absolutely PERFECT for my purposes.

I need my very own Jeeves, please, Santa.

Anyway, compared to all that? Cherie's EASY. I just have to remember to check our mutual calender regularly to see if she's juggled deadlines on me, make sure she's working on the right stuff, occasionally beta something (which reminds me -- I have some things I haven't had time to look at what with kids and hubby), and remind her to send me whatever info she has that's actually newsworthy for Tuesdays.

There's other stuff, of course -- I had a couple of random epiphanies over the last couple of days -- but I think I'll save that rambling for my personal blog. Now, I think I need some pictures. :D

*Just FTR, yes, I have read Heidi Cullinan's Special Delivery. I love it. And, yeah, it's kinda weird to think about too hard. Especially when DH suggests we leave the kids with my parents for a couple of weeks in the summer so I can drive around with him.