How I want to spend my nights, but what I must do instead.

Before Christmas I have to:

-Write five IEPs

-Write 35 sets of progress reports

-Give 15 sets of reading grades

-Write a ten page paper on visual arts including two lesson plans, one to be taught

-Sew a bunch of Christmas Gifts

-Hopefully close on a house, pack, move, unpack, decorate, and create a happy home for Christmas.

But instead all I would really rather do is spend my evenings sitting on the couch and read the book I just got sucked into. Ok, well read my book and the last thing about finally getting a house.

And now for a cute picture. James like his mama also likes a good book:

James is 15 months old this weekend, which is ridiculous. He has gotten to become a fun and exciting little boy. He likes to climb, dance, giggle, and sign. He has learned to sign "food" "more" "please" "water" "up" and "bye." It is cute. Sometimes he even says "more" "food" "please." We are still working on words out loud, sometimes he will say "da" for dog and "ca" for cat when he sees a picture of them. When he sees a cow he says "mmmmmmm." Bedtime is my new favorite, for about two months now our routine is read Jesus Storybook Bible and then Good Night Gorilla. Jason reads the bible while I feed him a snack. Then I will say "go get Good Night Gorilla" and he knows what I'm asking and will go find it. Last night he found it under the mattress at the side of the room which is impressive since Jason and I didn't know where it was.

On a personal note, work is kinda stinky this year. However, I lost ten pounds this summer!

On a house note, still none yet.

I redecorated our blog! Yippee!

Now if only I could figure out how to do different formates for the pictures.

It has been forever since I posted and since James and Jason are both napping I thought I would take advantage. James has been doing lots this past month. He turned a year! Had his first ice cream (picture stolen from Megan's blog), started walking, learned to take the wii remote from me and shake it at the tv while giggling. He also forgot how to sleep well. I quit nursing him a week and a half ago. The first week went great and this week it seems to finally have clicked and he is now having major melt downs at bed time when we put him down, then cries for an hour. Awesome.

On a non James note we now have offers on two different houses and we are looking at a third possible house today. The house that we had the first offer on is by far my favorite house, it is beautiful inside and fits perfectly with everything I hoped for in a house. It has a beautiful kitchen and fireplace. A decent sized yard. We should hear on this one in about a month we hope. The second house we call the mushroom house. There used to be a tree in the front yard and they chopped it down, to make the stub less obnoxious looking they put a big rock shaped like a mushroom cap on top. The inside of the house has a lot of potential. It needs a lot of paint and a total remodel of the kitchen (including knocking walls down). Its pros are it has a GIANT yard. I could use half of the yard for a very very large garden and the kids would still have a big yard to play and room for a trampoline if we wanted one some day. Plus it is one block from the school I want him at. That one will take at least four months for the short sale to go through on.

I'm torn on which house I want more and wish I could fuse the two properties into one. Luckily we can just pray about it and God will decide for us by letting the banks approve one for us. What it will come down to is which one we get approval on first because we had our apartment.

***edited***

We now have an offer on a third house as well. This one has a pretty good sized yard, the inside is great all it really needs is a lot of paint. Also it has a pretty decent view of the sound from two of the bedrooms. It is forty thousand more than the other two houses BUT it is 85 thousand less that what it was originally on the market for and we could know as early as two months.

James turns one year old next week! I'm stoked and sad at the same time. I can't believe he is already a year and sometimes I miss my itty bitty baby. But mostly I'm stoked because he is so much fun these days.

James is resourceful. Today I wasn't cooking dinner fast enough for him so he found the English Muffins, shook the bag until he got them out, and then sat on the kitchen floor eating it. He looked like a total big boy munchin away on his snack.

And also he totally took two steps today. Good work James.

teething is.... not fun.

On a side note... this is the 100th post! and there is 39 days until my son is 1 year.

Hi Great Grandma Wilma, Great Grandpa AJ, and Great Great Grandma Bohn!!