December 31, 2005

Here goes...first official post on the new, improved and revamped Larabie page. LOL! Today is the last day of 2005 and I keep thinking that maybe I should reflect back on the year. Nah! I guess I should make some resolutions too and I probably will but I haven't thought of them yet.

Today has been a pretty lazy day. I was awakened ever so lovingly by my children when one of them screamed. They were fighting over the computer. Such is the life with junior techno geeks. Thankfully it was short lived and they've been pretty good the rest of the day. After we came up with a 10 day menu, Morgan went with Corey to do the grocery shopping. While they were gone I got Alex down for a much needed nap. He gave them up a long time ago but still needs them. Every now and then we get lucky enough that he falls asleep while we are out driving in the afternoons. I'll take a nap by default any day. We read a Scooby Doo book until he crashed...2 pages before the end!

I am looking forward to a new year because it means we are that much closer to moving to Tennessee and getting out of this hell hole apartment complex that we live in. A new year means Corey heads back into the office. He normally gets to work from home 1-2 days per week. However, he's been working from home since the week before Christmas. We are used to having him around and the kids adapted quickly to the "daddy working at home" rules. Another change is that we are pulling Alex from the VPK program and homeschooling him alongside Morgan. He's been homeschooling in the afternoons for the most part but he doesn't want to go back to preK and we don't feel we should force him. He doesn't *have* to go, we will be homeschooling him anyway, I don't work, etc. Right now he loves to learn new things, loves doing school when his sister is doing it so we feel this is the right step to take. We had signed him up for the VPK program to give Morgan some one-on-one time with me for instruction and figured it would be fun for him..and if he learned something in the process then that would be a plus. He's been reading for a year already so we weren't doing this for educational purposes. So I've been working on getting set up to have him with us full-time again but learning instead of just playing all the time. I must say I think if I can keep the two of them busy when they are together we will be okay. I think schedule-wise and activity-wise it will be much easier not having to work around taking him to school at 9am and picking him up at 12noon.

Friday we went down to the Clearwater Marina to see a replica of The Nina. It is the most authentic replica, built the way they used to be built, and was used in the movie "1492". It was really interesting to be on the ship, talk to the crew, read the information they had available. We got the kids some activity books, information packets and a beautiful post card. Here is the site for the ship The Nina . We had gone to the library on Thursday and I picked out some books on Christopher Columbus knowing we would be seeing the ship. The kids are all excited about learning more. Next week our activities pick back up...Bravo theatre and dance class. The following week we add our science class with Doug back into our schedule and we add a new art class in.

This is a test. I am making some changes to the format of this page and should be updating it soon.