Sorely Needed Update

It's been waaaay too long since I've written here, so I will try to bring everyone up to speed. This summer flew by, of course -- and got even speedier towards the end when we "acquired" a new family member. Three school years ago, we hosted an exchange student from Finland, and her sister was in the States this year. She was really unhappy with her host family in Indiana, and her mom emailed us to see if we would be willing/able to take her. So, after a mountain of paperwork and phone calls and emails, we picked Kaisa up on August 16th!

Then we took a whirlwind tour of every touristy place nearby, showing Kaisa the sights: Greenfield Village, Metroparks, Toledo Zoo, Tigers game, the mall, Crosswinds Marsh, etc...

I had planned on starting school early this year, but once Kaisa was here, we decided to follow her schedule instead, to make it easier on everyone. Not sure what happened to my enthusiasm, but it started really waning as school started getting closer -- I really was having back-to-school envy, worrying about whether I was capable, or whether I was "depriving" the kids of the school experience. I was also concerned about Mattie's developing attitude with me, and had several long talks with her about how she had to be willing to have me teach her things without eye rolling, sighing, and all those other oh-so-wonderful behaviors.
So I worried and I prayed and I talked with Tim...and worried some more.
The first day of school was....
Very nice! Kids were well behaved, really into checking out all the new stuff, receptive to the ideas I had for the year! Whew!
So long story short, things turned out better than I expected (as usual -- I think it's God's way of constantly reminding me that my worrying is completely ineffective and a waste of my time).
This Fall will probably race by too..we are planning a trip to the cottage for our 10 year anniversary at the end of September, and the kid's activities are all starting up again: soccer, skating, science at the nature center, and zoo classes.
I hope to update much sooner than I have this time! :)