Whew!

Finally I can take a little bit of a breath! I am done with co-ops until after New Year's! I have really enjoyed CC, and I know the kids are learning a lot (even Anna walks around the house singing the history songs), but it has sure taken a lot out of me! Technically we still have 2 more weeks of our other co-op after Thanksgiving, a fine arts unit, but we are just skipping it. In fact, most of the kids and I are going to Ohio to visit! A vacation!! I say "most" because it looks like Nathan is going to stay here, and my dad is going to come here, and they are going to work on some painting/projects around the house while all the rugrats and anklebiters are out of the way. Oh, I hope they can get a lot done! There sure is a lot to do.

Originally the plan was that we would drive 2 vans out to Ohio, with Bob towing a trailer of stuff that we didn't want to store. But now he has dithered around to not being as excited about PCSing, so it looks like that plan is not going to happen. We have not gotten official orders yet, and so Bob hasn't had to make a formal decision, but if he were to have to decide today, we wouldn't go. Sigh. It's all been stressful. I guess I'll say more when we know for sure.

In the meantime, I am REALLY, REALLY looking forward to seeing my mom and Amy, and just relaxing, without having to be somewhere and preparing stuff all the time.

In other news, our digital camera has died. I'm so thankful that it waited to kick the bucket until after the Egypt 5th week! I had a lot of trouble uploading those pictures onto our computer, so I'm wondering if it wasn't in the death spiral then, so to speak. We got it the Christmas before Anna was born, back in 2005. I was not excited about it at.all. because I knew we'd never get pictures developed from all the images we would take, just like everyone always complained about. But then Dan and Melinda introduced me to Snapfish, and that hasn't been a problem for me! Last week I was going through stuff in my desk, and I found our old camera. It was on pictures number 22, so I took a few more pictures of the kids to finish out the roll of film. The little ones (Caleb and younger) were confused that you couldn't just see the picture immediately ("Where's the screen?"), and when the film was rewinding, they were quite amazed at all the noise! Now I need to get that film developed. Anyway, I finally did consent to start taking pictures with the digital camera. Now I guess we need to look for another one. I abhor shopping for technical things, because there are so many different options out there, all of them expensive, and it is so hard to tell which features really add value (especially to a non-technophile like me), and which ones just sound impressive (but we would never use). Maybe a camera will be this year's after-Thanksgiving sale purchase? Bob had cracked the code on that--shop the internet! Same great deals, no standing in line with crazy people! He's been able to get great deals on internet things the past few years, so we'll see what this year brings.