18 years; 11 years

Today is our 18th wedding anniversary. What a day. Alex and Kyrie's outside classes and Kyrie and Abigail's ballet classes started today. We also had our 2nd week of band.

I had intended to drop Alex and Kyrie off and come home to work with Aidan and Abigail. Kyrie did not bring her art materials, so I had to drive home and get them. I decided not to drive all the way home again so I tried working on math with Abigail and Aidan in the truck. I turned the truck on to just have the fan on- not thinking about the fact that I was draining my battery. About 20 minutes before their classes were over it was so hot, I tried to turn on the truck: no go. I called Tartan, who took the day off thinking originally he'd take me to a movie and then when realising I would have absolutely no time that he'd get some things done. He drove out to jumpstart my car. We went home, having to stop for petrol because I was perilously close to being out, and I tried to hurry everyone through lunch. That didn't work well and we were 10 minutes late to band. A little (very little) schoolwork got done and then I had to deal with Kayleigh having an "accident"- I won't go into the gory details.

I took the girls to ballet and was very blessed to have someone watch Abigail for me when she got out of class and someone else brought both girls home for me. I thought I was going to have to stay there for 2 hours until they were done.

Now I need to round up the younger kids so we can go to the mandatory parents' meeting for boy scouts. Tartan and Alex are already there.

Enough about today. On Saturday, I took Kyrie to get her ears pierced. The two girls from next door and Abigail came along to watch. Kyrie picked out 14K gold studs with her birthstone (peridot). That all went well. The only thing she said was, "Ow. That hurts," after the first one was done. I would have liked both ears to be done at once, but there was only one person in the store. They look very good on her.

Tomorrow she's eleven years old! Happy birthday, Kyrie!

Trying to remember that God is with us in everything that happens,
Naomi for the Colliers

It's August: time for school!

At the end of July, we hitched up the camper and went to Fiesta Texas in San Antonio. We had three free tickets from the Read to Succeed program, so we *only* had to buy four more. It was fun, but very hot and the lines for the popular rides were r-e-a-l-l-y long. I prefer to go off-season, but Tartan points out that usually they're closed on Fridays during that time. It was nice to leave Thursday afternoon, go on Friday and come back home on Saturday so we could be at church on Sunday. On Sunday afternoon, Kyrie met up with her girl scout troop and they headed to Galveston for a short campout. They came back Monday evening- well before Eduard made his appearance.

Speaking of tropical storm Eduard, it brought us a full day of rain and that's about it.

The rest of us eased into school on Monday and Kyrie got started on Tuesday. This week Kyrie and Aidan actually got schedule print outs. I'm still working on Alex's. Since most of our outside activities have not started yet, it's been hard to develop a routine. I also needed to take in Fluffy for her shots and check up and that threw things off this morning. But, we are making progress. Alex is about ready to take his first geometry test.

Gotta eat my lunch!
>Naomi for the Colliers