A Dog's Life!

Where did January go? For me it went to balancing a heavy workload and looking after my two boys and husband. It involved two cold snowy visits to Chicago for work and one not much warmer visit to Houston. My work schedule is really in high gear for tax season. I will be delivering my first tax returns of the season next week! It is hard to complain with many people out of a job or wondering how long they will have their job. But I certainly have my days. Which leads me to the photo I have attached to my post.

The weather here in Austin has been totally unpredictable. It reminds me of what my sister used to say about the weather when she lived in Denver : "it has chronic PMS". For instance, two days that I was in Chicago in 25 degree weather it was 80 degrees in Austin. Just my luck! Anyway, on one unseasonably sunny and warm day I came home after rushing from my office downtown to get one child from school and taking the other child food before his game, to find my dog completely sacked out in the corner of her yard, oblivious to the world around her. I was so envious I had to capture the moment. Sometimes it would be nice to just be the family dog!

Jason continues his basketball season. He loves playing. His team's record is about 50/50, but they don't have a lot of height on their team either. I am just glad he enjoys playing. It is a good outlet for him and helps keep him out of trouble with girls and other things! Jason manages a heavy school load extremely well and gets excellent grades making it all seem quite easy. I did have to bug him about a big science project over the holidays. He did not start it until two weeks before it was due and it was assigned months ago. I was making my very salient point about how you can't do your best work if you wait to the last minute. This is the stuff responsible parenting is made of! Last week Jason came home to inform me his science project won third place and he will be going to the district finals. I was very happy for him, but in the back of my mind I am wondering when he will finally get a project that he can't ace at the last minute! It is hard to teach a brilliant child the value of planning ahead. Good grades never came that easy for his dear old Mom!

Scott returned to school after the holidays with a new person goal - to be recognized as an "Honorable Hawk" at his school. This requires good grades, good behavior and community service hours. So far Scott is doing great and I am proud of the strong effort he is putting in at school. Scott is a very bright kid who finds most of his homework a boring waste of time. So it takes a determined effort for him to complete it, do his very best work and turn it in on time. He is showing a lot of maturity and self discipline this semester. Scott also participates in Math club and Art club. Scott is one of those rare people who is actually quite gifted in both right brain and left brain activities. I can't wait to see what he does with all his talent!

As for Forrest, he has been quite busy as well. He works full time, but works four ten hour days, giving him Friday "off". Some of his recent activities at home on Fridays have included: putting completely new hardware on Jason's headboard and footboard because the old hardware broke, fixing the dishwasher - that was a real crises - which had "dirty pins in the timing mechanism", installing some new hardware on one of our computers, figuring out how to get music on everyones' new phones from Christmas, working out financing for his new Smart Car which will be here in 30 days!, and covering all parenting duties whenever Melissa was out of town. Forrest's wish for this week is that nothing in our lives breaks! I'm telling you there is very little in my life this amazing man cannot fix! Don't you wish you were married to him? Too bad he's all ready mine!

And our dog Beauty - well the picture tells you what she has been up to. It's a dog's life you know!