Good News On All Fronts

Today has been a day of good news!!!

First of all, I was able to trade in my MIL's fancypants embroidery machine for $400, which bought me a brand-new machine that does about eighteen different stitches!!!! Yahoo!!! The machine I've been using for the past five years is ANCIENT, and I got it for $25 from an ad in the Pennysaver magazine. It's been adequate for learning on, but I've been ready for a long time now to do more advanced things, and now I can!!! (I got the embroidery machine from MIL about two years ago, and have only used it for one thing - to put kids' names on scarves we made for Josie and Patrick to hand out as Xmas gifts to friends. It was a really, really expensive machine when she bought it, and then she went and upgraded to a SERIOUSLY expensive one, like five-months'-mortgage-payments expensive.) I'm happy. It's another Singer, which is what I had before. I still have my old one, plus a serger the MIL gave me as well, which I haven't had the balls to use yet.

Second, DH's contract looks secure. Apparently, part of the fighting was over who was going to get to control the group he's in, because the higher-ups have identified what they're doing as The Wave Of The Future (Future...future....future..echo). This is good news. Also, the guy who currently is their contracting officer on the client side may be staying after all, depending on whether a sweet deal he was offered goes through. All in all, PHEW.

Third, both kids are in advanced placement, enrichment, whatever you want to call it. Josie has been pulled out for more challenging math and reading work in the past, at her previous school, but we hadn't heard anything about this school yet, so I was wondering what was going to happen. Today, she said that she was, in fact, pulled out this afternoon for advanced reading. She's the only one in her class, and then there are seven other children from the other fourth grade class. I told her that maybe she's in the wrong class at school! Patrick's teacher spoke with me yesterday about having him maybe go into a first grade class for reading, since he is completely fluent, and probably reads words at about a second-grade level, although his attention span/maturity isn't enough for him to go into that kind of an environment. Today she told me that he and one other child in his grade will be pulled out by the enrichment teacher as well for extra instruction. So, both of them will be receiving more challenging work twice a week. His teacher also told me, under the rug, that the enrichment teacher doesn't always follow through on what she's supposed to, so to be prepared to need to go into the school and complain if it doesn't happen with Patrick pretty quickly. I was glad that she thought enough of me to tell me, since of course she's not supposed to say things like that, but it's always good to know things like that. So, my babies are smart! I mean, I knew they were smart, but it's always nice to hear it from other people.

In still other good kid news, I'm going to be able to do things with both kids' classes next week. My volunteer date with Patrick's class is on Monday morning, and I'm excited to go in there and see the K class. On Wednesday, I'm going on a field trip with Josie's class to a local river museum and trail. I haven't been able to work in the elementary schools because I always had Patrick at home, so I'm glad that now he's in school and I can do things with both of them (although I'm apprehensive about going on a river trail with a group of fourth graders, at least I'll get to drive myself there).

Fifth, the chiropractor FIXED MY HIP!!!!!!! It's not totally back, since it's still a little sore from being messed up so badly, but I can get up and move around without having my first thought be, 'Oh, my hip!' like some kind of geriatric!!!! He did this funky thing where I laid on my back, and he put my leg up over his shoulder and then twisted it while also pulling a little. Tada! I felt it immediately that something had changed, and then I stood up and was almost normal!!!! You guys, you have no idea how much better I feel. Oh, well. I go back on Monday for more work, but hopefully what I'm feeling now will last through the weekend. This new guy is Awesome.

Finally, I got up the nerve to cancel my gym membership today. I haven't been going at all since we moved, because I've been able to walk the dogs every day, and sometimes twice. Plus, the kids like to walk home from school, so I've been walking over there with Baci to pick them up; it's about fifteen to twenty minutes each way, depending if I'm walking alone or with the kids. Also, we have a treadmill downstairs, which is finally in a good location for me to use it (before this it was in the living room or in the crowded office downstairs - the other day I moved it into a little alcove in the hallway, and it fits fine). I have a couple of weights, and can always get more with the money I'm going to save on the gym. I used to really like going to the gym a LOT before we moved to this part of the state, because I knew a lot of the people that went there, including my SIL, but since we moved here I don't know many people that go, and the facility here isn't as nice. Over the winter I may try a few yoga classes, since there's a studio here that allows you to drop in and pay by the class. We'll see. I used to do power yoga every week at my old gym, and I have a ton of dvds of it, although doing yoga at home is Boring. At least if I'm with other people, I'm shamed into continuing through the entire thing, since I refuse to let anyone else me more Yogic than me (AndreAnna, I'm looking at you, gym-competition girl! I'm still trying to think of a good name for you guys, BTW, 'cuz I Want that gc).

Anyway, I'm going to sign off so you can all read this and be super-jealous. :)