It's November?!

How in the world did that happen? I remember starting Christopher's birthday post (which is still in progress *sigh*) and realizing that it had been a couple of weeks since I had posted and then laughed that my last post had been about how many activities the kids have. I told myself I needed to get the birthday post done and get back on track with my posting. Well, you can see how well that worked out...

yeah, not at all.

I'm really not sure what happened to the month of October except that Mark was gone for a good chunk of it and I was busy running kids to everything under the sun and usually ended up falling asleep on the couch while trying to get my little cling-on (aka Nico) to go to sleep. Things would happen during the day, kids would say cute stuff, we'd learn something fun, whatever it was but by the time I would get near a computer my brain would be in total brain-fried, core dumped mode and I would have forgotten it and just stare mindlessly at some Facebook game while my brain finished shutting down before I went and dealt with yet more kid stuff.

The highlights of October as I remember them:

• Pan Moin wrapped with Matthew's team in 5th place, Christopher's team in 3rd, and Jonathan's team in 1st. I'm very proud of all them for going every week and trying their hardest, especially Jonathan who would have to go right after soccer and would be tired but still worked hard.
• Pumpkin Festival: All three big boys marched for KSW in the parade and then Christopher and I spent most of the rest of the weekend at the YAW Haunted House talking like pirates.
• New computer for me. Well, still used but newer than the last couple. For those counting, this is computer #4 for the year. I'm heartily sick of reinstalling my software and finding all my favorite websites. (This may also have a lot to do with why my blogging has fallen off)
• We now have 3 Dahn Boh Nimhs in the house. DBN is the first full rank in KSW. It means that the boys have earned their 2nd black stripe on their brown belts and get the black-brown belt (a brown belt with a black stripe running the length of it). We filled out the paperwork to have them in the black belt program now which means that they will test for a new black stripe every 3mos automatically. It takes a minimum of 8 stripes on the black-brown belt to get their black belt so we are looking at 2 more years of KSW at least. It's good for them tho and I'm glad to see how well they are doing.
• First KSW Tournament! This was a big event for them, especially taking place the day after they became DBN. Jonathan and Matthew were both in huge groups so Jonathan didn't place in any of his events but he tried very hard and I'm very proud of him. Matthew got one 4th place medal in sparring due to a judge's error. Considering he had only really sparred once before, the fact that he got a couple of points in his second match was quite an accomplishment. Christopher took medals in all his events as he was in a much smaller grouping. I told the boys not to expect to bring home any medals but to look on this as a learning experience and a great opportunity to see what the higher ranks can do so bringing home medals was a huge bonus but really, I'm just so proud of them for going and trying their best and having such a great attitude about the whole thing.
• Halloween was fun as always. Christopher was Neku Sakuraba from one of his favorite video games, Matthew and Jonathan were ninjas, and Nico was Buzz Lightyear. They participated in Treats for Cici where they sold us some of their Halloween candy and donated part of that money to Cici to help with her medical expenses. I'm so proud of them that when talking about that, the three big boys all pulled out money from their savings to send in addition to what we would send for their candy. Another proud mommy moment.
• Christopher and Matthew are participating in NaNoWriMo's Young Writer's Program this year. All I really know is that Matthew's story has something to do with Cthulhu (he has really gotten into Cthulhu recently and is even starting to read Lovecraft) and Christopher's is going to have something to do with zombies.
  

As for me, October was the month I realized that I needed to be reading all of Christopher Art and History texts and doing the Algebra 2 in order to be the most help for him. I'm basically caught up on the Art and History but I've had a hard time finding the time for the math and I'm still very behind on grading all his papers. I also realized that I needed to read all of Matthew's History as well. With all of that and their activities, I've had very little time for my fun reading. :( I have managed to keep up with my exercise routine so that's good tho my eating habits still need work. I keep tweaking them but so far, no luck on getting the weight #s to head down. The BF% is moving down tho and so are the inches so it's doing something, just slowly.

In other fun news, I've been reconnecting with some friends from high school and it's been lots of fun. My friend Kat was up visiting in Sept and is coming up later this month so we'll try to get together again then. Chris and I went to see Zombieland (hilarious movie) with Luisa and Jen and then Luisa came up to work with Christopher on his novel and spent the night. We stayed up til 4am chatting and then ended up chatting at B&N for over an hour after missing her train (of course, that meant we missed several more trains but hey, we were in a bookstore with coffee and comfy seats LOL). It's been really nice for me getting to have time being me and not just the boys' mom.

October has also found us learning how to be more economical. My friend Melissa's parents have sort of taken us under their wings and are showing us a bunch of tricks of the trade as it were. They've told us about a free community breakfast on Saturday mornings and a couple of places that distribute food in the area with no questions asked. I make sure to get towards the end of the lines so that those who are really in need can get things first because we don't NEED it but it does help to reduce our grocery bill and every cent saved is a cent that we can put towards our debt reduction. We've also learned how to can and got a vacuum sealer off of Freecycle so we've been creating a huge stockpile of food. So far we have homemade applesauce and chicken soup canned and mashed potatoes, breadcrumbs, and croutons sealed. I'll be making split pea soup, lentil soup, chili, and spaghetti sauce to be canned in the next couple of weeks as well.

Speaking of that, we just went through the fun of switching banks again. Chase was finally really switching things over from WaMu and the second they had me start using a Chase debit card and I used it normally, they froze my card for possible fraud without informing me. I found out when the zoo calls me telling me my card was declined when they tried to charge it for Nico's zoo class. I was at the store when that happened and it was declined when I went to pay for my purchases. I called Mark to check that his paycheck had been deposited and there was plenty of money in the account so I call Chase and get hung up on when they tried to transfer me to someone who could tell me what was going on. When I called back, I was told that my card had been frozen for suspected fraudulent activity because I made my usual withdrawal at the new Chase ATM at the CVS I shop at. Their automated system was supposed to call and tell me to call them but it didn't. They didn't care. I talked to the manager. He didn't care. Now the funny thing is, just last week my Target card called me to confirm a couple of unusual charges. A real person called me to go over them. They were all mine and all was good. But Chase doesn't believe in customer service like that so we said F*** you and switched banks. Everything is finally switched so we are closing out the last of our accounts there this week. I really hope to never have to do that again as it's such a pain and thankfully the new bank looks good. Let's just hope they don't get bought out by some big corporate sh*ts.

As for right now I'm looking forward to the end of soccer. Jonathan's last game is this Saturday and I'm being a horrible mom and hoping they don't make it into the tournament. I need things to simplify a bit around here and we are both burned out on soccer. I'm still trying to find time to get a bunch of things caught up with the school and the house. I've still been unable to get a schedule going for us so I know we aren't being as efficient with our time as we could be but stuff is getting done and the kids are enjoying learning for the most part again so that's good. Now if I could just get them to enjoy doing their chores, I'd have it made. LOL

Sorry I've also been lax on the pictures. I've been forgetting my camera a lot and I just got the software reinstalled on this computer so I can download my camera. Look for pictures soon tho!