A few new things for January

Cute Evelyn

Whenever I am folding laundry, Evelyn likes to put Maggie's and/or Jared's underwear on her head and call it a "hat." Maggie decided to join in the fun this time.  Crazy girls.

So, a few new things have happened for us this January.  One is that Jared got glasses!  After some frustrating lack of communication with Jared's elementary school, I finally had his eyes screened at his primary care doctor to see if I needed to take him to an optometrist.   (The school tested his eyes twice but wouldn't let me talk to the school nurse about it!  "Oh, no. Don't worry. She'll call you if there's a problem.") He was a bit reluctant at first to admit he needed glasses, but I think now that he has them he is excited.

He doesn't need to wear them all the time--mostly just during school and if he wants to see better during a movie or something.  Doesn't he look handsome?

Alan also went to see the optometrist with Jared and ordered contact lenses for the first time!   Today is only his second day wearing them, but he has loved having peripheral vision that's not blurry.  :)  Hopefully contacts will continue to work well for Alan.  I sure think he looks handsome with or without his glasses on. (Wow, we have lousy vision genes in our family, don't we?)

 Another change in our house is that Jared and Maggie both got moved to their very own bedrooms in the basement!  (They had previously been sharing a very small bedroom on our main floor.)  I moved them to the basement about 6 months earlier than I had originally planned, but I think I was just so fed up with their shared room always being messy (there was not enough space to put all their stuff!) and the kids complaining about not having their own space.  I told Alan that I thought about 80% of the problems Jared and Maggie had with getting along were because they shared their bedroom, so we decided to move them down to the basement even sooner!  They have been down in the basement for two weeks now, and things are going well.  We have adjusted our furnace fan to make our basement a bit warmer now, and I think the kids like having their own space.

 Jared's new bedroom (not the cleanest in these pictures.)  I had fun buying some new things to decorate his walls.

Jared's bedroom does not have a built in closet, so we had to improvise with this wardrobe (our old coat closet we used before we built one into our kitchen.)

 Maggie's new bedroom.  This bedroom set was the set I used when I was growing up.  Maggie was thrilled to get some princess/Frozen decor.

Maggie always has her clothes for the next day laid out on her bed (complete with panties).  She is such a cutie.  

The third thing that is exciting (well, for me!) is that starting next week I am going to take an adult ballet class!  Alan has been saying that I need to have a "night off" every week where I do something for myself, so I found this adult drop-in class where I pay per class (so it's ok to miss if something comes up).  It's a bit expensive, so I feel bad about that, and I'm also worried that I'm so out of shape that I won't have what it takes anymore!  Yeah, it's been about 15 years since I have done serious dancing--sheesh!  Ha ha.  But the class description said it was for people who have danced a lot previously and have missed it in their lives, so I will try to be patient and gentle with myself.  I'm so excited, and I'm grateful that it was Alan's idea to have me do something for myself.  He is such a wonderful, sensitive husband, and I do admit that, as much as I ADORE my children, I have been kind of burned out lately with all the stresses that go along with mothering.  I'm sure I'm the only one out there who feels that way, right?  

Here's to ME having some "me time!"